diff --git a/nixos/modules/misc/locate.nix b/nixos/modules/misc/locate.nix
index 66a49b0b888f..204a89143008 100644
--- a/nixos/modules/misc/locate.nix
+++ b/nixos/modules/misc/locate.nix
@@ -183,7 +183,11 @@ in
 
     pruneNames = mkOption {
       type = listOf str;
-      default = [ ".bzr" ".cache" ".git" ".hg" ".svn" ];
+      default = lib.optionals (!isFindutils) [ ".bzr" ".cache" ".git" ".hg" ".svn" ];
+      defaultText = literalDocBook ''
+        <literal>[ ".bzr" ".cache" ".git" ".hg" ".svn" ]</literal>, if
+        supported by the locate implementation (i.e. mlocate or plocate).
+      '';
       description = ''
         Directory components which should exclude paths containing them from indexing
       '';