[Miles Davis]

Hi,

At home we have 4 users on our iMac. I would like to make it so that each person will not see another person's files on the computer, especially when they search in spotlight. This would go for pictures, documents etc. Is there any way to truly make each user's files and desktop private?

thanks,
-M

[mdc]

if you browse to your /Users folder and into a folder that is not yours, you will see that the folders have locks on them.

these folders are unaccessible to your account, because they are owned by that user. spotlight can't look in those folders if you are not that user. that is how it is working on my imac with 2 users accounts.
the only folders (that belong to another user) that by default i can search in are the public and sites.

[RevEvs]

spotlight only searches your stuff, and not other people.... so all should be as you want

[Millennium]

No matter who you are, Spotlight will try to search all of the folders on the machines. However, it searches as you, and so it can only see files which you could see yourself. If you're root this means everything, but for most ordinary users it can't get into folders belonging to other users unless they've explicitly reset the permissions on those folders to allow it.

If you'd like an extra level of assurance, use FileVault. FileVault stores Home "folders" as encrypted disk images, so your files do not actually exist as separate entities on disk. Spotlight will try to index the disk image, but because the image is encrypted Spotlight will see only junk. Meanwhile, when you log in, Spotlight will index your drive as though it were a separate hard disk, but because of the way permissions work only you will be able to access it.