baloo-ops

name	baloo-ops
description	Inspect, pause, resume, and reset the Baloo file indexer. Use when search is missing files, indexing is hammering disk/CPU, or the user wants to add/remove indexed paths.

Baloo File Indexer Operations

Baloo backs KRunner file search and Dolphin's content search. Daemon: baloo_file. CLI: balooctl6 (Plasma 6) / balooctl (Plasma 5).

Status

balooctl6 status
balooctl6 monitor          # live progress
balooctl6 indexSize        # disk usage of the index

Pause / resume / disable

balooctl6 suspend
balooctl6 resume
balooctl6 disable          # stop daemon and disable on boot
balooctl6 enable

Reset

balooctl6 purge            # wipe and rebuild
# Or nuke the on-disk index manually:
balooctl6 disable
rm -rf ~/.local/share/baloo
balooctl6 enable

Configure included / excluded paths

Config: ~/.config/baloofilerc.

[General]
exclude folders[$e]=$HOME/Downloads,$HOME/.cache,$HOME/VirtualBox VMs
only basic indexing=false

Apply:

balooctl6 disable && balooctl6 enable

Check a file

balooctl6 indexed /path/to/file       # is it indexed?
balooctl6 fileinfo /path/to/file      # extracted metadata

Notes

• Default index location: ~/.local/share/baloo/index.
• High CPU/IO? balooctl6 suspend, then exclude noisy directories before resuming.
• Baloo is content-aware for many MIME types — including PDFs and Office docs — but not arbitrary binary blobs.