Preventing Spotlight from Indexing Files & Folders? Spotlight is a very ingenious "tool" of OS X, attributable in no large part to its indexing feature. Hiding various files &amp; folders is challenging even when using various encryption applications. I am aware there is a built in option, that allows you to mark as necessary, files, folders etc that Spotlight should not index.

Are there more effective, (possibly faster methods) of hiding files &amp; folders from Spotlight's "prying eyes", therefore in essence protecting you from other prying eyes that may have access to your Mac ?
Create a file named .metadata_never_index inside a folder.
Rename folders or files so that they end with .noindex.
If you only want to hide files from the GUI, move them to a system folder like ~/Library/.
Move the files to a folder that starts with a period like ~/.fontconfig/. It doesn't remove them from mdfind queries like mdfind 'kMDItemFSName=*' -onlyin ~/.fontconfig/ though.


Related questions:


Exclude files from "central metadata store"
How to add folder to Spotlight "do not index"?
How can I hide the privacy tab from Spotlight.prefpane?