Smart Folders not working (Solved)

[Princess Cake]

Basically I can't get Smart Folders to recognize files anymore >.> no matter the criteria I select the folder remains blank.

It sucks as I like to use them to organize my movies a bit by genre and it won't recognize Tags either... halp!

 

[Gregg2]

Have you tried anything to get this fixed? Would be helpful to know what failed to work.
So, plunging into "already tried that" territory...

First, reboot if you don't do that often.

Second, trash your Finder plist file, com.apple.finder.plist and restart Finder. You'll find that file in the User's Library folder. Hold down Option and click the Go menu, select Library, then open the Preferences folder.

 

[Princess Cake]

No good :/ I shut my Mac down every other night and trashing com.apple.finder didn't fix it either... I have no clue what happened, this is nearly a fresh install of High Sierra. I formatted the HDD, installed High Sierra and restored my Time Machine backup and it was working fine. Now all of a sudden smart folders have gone stupid.
[doublepost=1510492726][/doublepost]Alright, as a follow-up, I should have done a little more testing. Smart Folders DO work on my Mac's internal hard drive. But if I try to make one for an external hard drive (which is formatted as MacOS Journaled) which is where I keep my movies, it doesn't work. No file is recognized no matter the criteria "Movie" "Last Opened Date" "Tags" "Size" nothing, its always blank.

 

[Superhai]

Removable drives are not indexed and cant be used with smart folders.

 

[Princess Cake]

...Well then, for the past 5 years I've been doing the impossible I suppose.

 

[Superhai]

...Well then, for the past 5 years I've been doing the impossible I suppose.

I guess I should have been more specific. By default external devices and network mounts are not indexed. Supposedly it is possible to add another volume by first adding the volume to the spotlight exception list and then remove it, this will trigger a reindexing which takes some time.

If you want more fine grained control you should use Terminal and mdutil:

For displaying the indexing status:

mdutil -s /Volumes/Name-of-volume/

For turning indexing on/off:

mdutil -i on /Volumes/Name-of-volume/

mdutil -i off /Volumes/Name-of-volume/

Disable search on the volume:

mdutil -d /Volumes/Name-of-volume/

Erase the metadata store on the volume:

mdutil -E on /Volumes/Name-of-volume/

If you use Terminal a lot you can use

mdfind filename

to find a file from the metadata index.

It is also a note that volumes with little available disk space are not always (fully) indexed even when turned on.

 

[Princess Cake]

Well I guess we can mark this thread as solved, I stupidly turned Spotlight privacy on for the external where the movies are stored

I must have done that while half asleep as I was annoyed at how long it was taking Spotlight to give me my results... didn't realize Spotlight and Smart Folders were tied together >.>