Tracker and GNOME - Frequently Asked Questions

Please read through these common questions and answers before emailing the mailing list, asking on IRC or filing a bug report.

What is Tracker?

See the What Is Tracker page.

Tracker is causing high CPU or IO usage, why?

We hate this as much as you do, and we apologise if Tracker is causing high resource usage on your computer.

Tracker sends messages which tell you what it's currently doing. You can view this information in a terminal by running this command: tracker status. For more detailed information, run tracker daemon status.

There are two possible causes of high resource usage: either Tracker is indexing a huge amount of content, or there is a problem in some part of the code.

First, make sure you have the latest version of GNOME -- you may need to upgrade your operating system. You might find that the problem was already found and fixed by someone else.

You can see log output from Tracker in your system log, which should tell you if there is a problem. Use the GNOME Logs application and search for 'tracker' to see the relevant messages. Alternatively, try this command in a terminal: journalctl GLIB_DOMAIN=Tracker). If you see error messages, please report them in the [[https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/tracker/issues|issue tracker]].

By default, Tracker looks at files in the following locations inside your home folder: Documents, Downloads, Music, Pictures, Videos. It also looks at files in your home folder itself, but this is non-recursive -- it won't look inside other directories.

If you have a lot of content inside these locations, or content that changes frequently, you might see high resource usage from the tracker-extract process. You can stop Tracker from indexing certain locations, see the question "How can I control what Tracker indexes?".

Tracker creates an SQLite database inside your home directory. It's possible for this database to become corrupted, which can cause high CPU usage in the tracker-store process. If you see this issue, you might be able to solve it with a "hard reset" -- see the "How to do a hard reset" question.

How can I control what Tracker indexes?

From the GNOME system menu, click the settings icon. Select 'Search' and click the '⚙' button. In this dialog you can choose what locations are indexed by Tracker.

You can also tell Tracker to ignore a directory by creating an file named .trackerignore inside it.

A location must be indexed for content to appear in these GNOME applications: Documents, Music, Photos and Videos.

The search bar in Files will do full-text search inside locations that are indexed, and filename-only matching for other locations. The "Star" feature of Nautilus only works inside locations which are indexed.

How can I disable Tracker?

Rather than disabling Tracker, we recommend that you just tell it not to index any locations. This will have an effect on some applications. See the previous question for details.

You can also do a "hard reset" to remove all data stored by Tracker -- see "How to do a hard reset" question.

What personal data does Tracker store?

Tracker only looks at files that are saved on your computer, and only stores data on your computer. It does not and never will share it will anyone else.

You can control what Tracker does -- see the "How can I control what Tracker indexes?" question.

How to do a hard reset

A "hard reset" stops all Tracker process and removes all indexes.

WARNING: This will lose any data that applications have stored in the Tracker store. This means any starred files from Nautilus, and possibly more stuff.

If you are aware of the dangers, you can perform a hard reset from a terminal by typing: tracker reset --hard.

You can then restart Tracker by running tracker daemon start. This will cause it to index any locations that are configured for indexing.