Disable "Spotlight Suggestions" and "Bing Web Searches" in System Preferences > Spotlight > Search Results.
Safari also has a "Spotlight Suggestions" setting that is separate from Spotlight's "Spotlight Suggestions". This uses the same mechanism as Spotlight, and if left enabled, Safari will send a copy of all search queries to Apple.
You'd be forgiven for thinking that you'd already disabled "Spotlight Suggestions", but you'll also need to uncheck "Include Spotlight Suggestions" in Safari > Preferences > Search.
Alternatively, you can apply the changes automatically using fix-macosx.py.
Spotlight isn't the only Mac OS X Yosemite feature that unnecessarily phones home; a myriad of system and user processes are sending data to Apple in a default configuration, and we want to fix those, too.
Yosemite Phone Home is a collaborative project to identify additional data that collected by Apple and other third parties. This work is powered by Net-Monitor, our open-source toolkit for auditing phone home behavior system-wide.
If you've upgraded to Mac OS X Yosemite (10.10) and you're using the default settings, each time you start typing in Spotlight (to open an application or search for a file on your computer), your local search terms and location are sent to Apple and third parties (including Microsoft).
Mac OS X has always respected user privacy by default, and Mac OS X Yosemite should too. Since it doesn't, you can use the code to the left to disable the parts of Mac OS X which are invasive to your privacy.
Disclaimer: Please be aware that this site is not affiliated with or approved by Apple, Inc. This site describes certain privacy-invading features of Mac OS X and how to fix them; our use of the trademarked term "Mac OS X" is plainly descriptive — it helps the public find this site and understand its message. This site is a Mac OS X fork of fixubuntu.com. Prior to Ubuntu 14.10, Ubuntu's Dash feature behaved identically to Spotlight in Mac OS X Yosemite. In Ubuntu 14.10, however, Canonical switched Ubuntu to an opt-in model.
