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Gnome Tracker

What Is Gnome Tracker?

The Gnome Tracker indexes content from the file system (home directory) and metadata. This provides an ability to do full-text searches to locate data or better interaction within various applications.

Tracker is made up of several components.

Component Description
tracker-store Database indexer and query daemon.
tracker-miner-fs A daemon responsible for crawling the file system for data.
tracker-miner-rss Populate Tracker with RSS feed data.
tracker-extract Extracts metadata from files.
tracker-writeback Write metadata set in Tracker back to physical files.

How To Disable Gnome Tracker

Use one of the following solutions.

Gnome Settings

  1. Open Gnome Settings.
  2. In the vertical navigation bar on the left, left mouse click on "Search".

  3. At the top right, left mouse click on the toggle switch to disable.

    Note

    The toggle switch position should be on the left to indicate it is disabled.

Note

Some users have reported that this does not truly disable the Tracker as of Gnome v3.34. See another solution.

Systemd

Current User

  1. Open the terminal.

  2. Mask Tracker's services. 

    $ systemctl --user mask tracker-store.service tracker-miner-fs.service tracker-miner-rss.service tracker-extract.service tracker-miner-apps.service tracker-writeback.service

    Note

    A warning may occur for some of these services due to not existing. You can safely ignore this warning as some systems do not include all of these services.

  3. Kill all Tracker processes and remove all databases. 

    $ tracker reset -r

    CAUTION: This process may irreversibly delete data.
Although most content indexed by Tracker can be safely reindexed, it can’t be assured that this is the case for all data.
Be aware that you may be incurring in a data loss situation, proceed at your own risk.

Are you sure you want to proceed? [y|N]: y

  4. Reboot the system. 
    $ systemctl reboot
  5. Verify all services are disabled. 
    $ tracker daemon -p

    Found 0 PIDs...

System Wide

  1. Open the terminal.

  2. Mask Tracker's services. 

    # systemctl mask tracker-store.service tracker-miner-fs.service tracker-miner-rss.service tracker-extract.service tracker-miner-apps.service tracker-writeback.service

    Note

    A warning may occur for some of these services due to not existing. You can safely ignore this warning as some systems do not include all of these services.

  3. Kill all Tracker processes and remove all databases. 

    # tracker reset -r

    CAUTION: This process may irreversibly delete data.
Although most content indexed by Tracker can be safely reindexed, it can’t be assured that this is the case for all data.
Be aware that you may be incurring in a data loss situation, proceed at your own risk.

Are you sure you want to proceed? [y|N]: y

  4. Reboot the system. 
    $ systemctl reboot

Disable Autostart

The X Window autostart processes are started by the following files.

/etc/xdg/autostart/tracker-extract.desktop
/etc/xdg/autostart/tracker-miner-apps.desktop
/etc/xdg/autostart/tracker-miner-fs.desktop
/etc/xdg/autostart/tracker-miner-rss.desktop
/etc/xdg/autostart/tracker-store.desktop

Note

Some of the autostart files may not exist due to system configuration.

Current User

  1. Open terminal.
  2. Create autostart directory. 
    $ mkdir ~/.config/autostart
  3. Copy X Window autostart files. 
    $ cp -v /etc/xdg/autostart/tracker-* ~/.config/autostart/

    '/etc/xdg/autostart/tracker-extract.desktop' -> '/home/username-here/.config/autostart/tracker-extract.desktop'
'/etc/xdg/autostart/tracker-miner-fs.desktop' -> '/home/username-here/.config/autostart/tracker-miner-fs.desktop'
'/etc/xdg/autostart/tracker-miner-rss.desktop' -> '/home/username-here/.config/autostart/tracker-miner-rss.desktop'
'/etc/xdg/autostart/tracker-store.desktop' -> '/home/username-here/.config/autostart/tracker-store.desktop'
  4. Disable each X Window autostart file. 
    $ for FILE in $(ls ~/.config/autostart/tracker-*); do echo "Hidden=true" >> $FILE; done
  5. Kill all Tracker processes and remove all databases. 
    $ tracker reset -r

    CAUTION: This process may irreversibly delete data.
Although most content indexed by Tracker can be safely reindexed, it can’t be assured that this is the case for all data.
Be aware that you may be incurring in a data loss situation, proceed at your own risk.

Are you sure you want to proceed? [y|N]: y
  6. Reboot the system. 
    $ systemctl reboot
  7. Verify there is no Tracker processes running. 
    $ tracker daemon -p

    Found 0 PIDs...

How To Enable Gnome Tracker

Systemd

Current User

  1. Open the terminal.

  2. Mask Tracker's services. 

    $ systemctl --user unmask tracker-store.service tracker-miner-fs.service tracker-miner-rss.service tracker-extract.service tracker-miner-apps.service tracker-writeback.service

    Note

    A warning may occur for some of these services due to not existing. You can safely ignore this warning as some systems do not include all of these services.

  3. Kill all Tracker processes and remove all databases. 

    $ tracker reset -r

  4. Reboot the system. 
    $ systemctl reboot

System Wide

  1. Open the terminal.

  2. Mask Tracker's services. 

    # systemctl unmask tracker-store.service tracker-miner-fs.service tracker-miner-rss.service tracker-extract.service tracker-miner-apps.service tracker-writeback.service

    Note

    A warning may occur for some of these services due to not existing. You can safely ignore this warning as some systems do not include all of these services.

  3. Kill all Tracker processes and remove all databases. 

    # tracker reset -r

  4. Reboot the system. 
    $ systemctl reboot

How To Remove Gnome Tracker

In most situations Gnome Tracker cannot be removed as it is a dependency of another desired application. For this reason it is recommended to Disable Gnome Tracker instead.

Last update: October 31, 2020