Spotlight can't find apps any more

[kirbyrun]

Running El Cap (10.11.1) on an iMac. Everything was absolutely fine until this morning when -- all of a sudden -- Spotlight doesn't surface apps any more!

I type "iBank" and it shows me a link to the app on the Mac App Store.

I try "Activity Monitor," it shows me the Wikipedia entry.

As an app launcher, it's suddenly dead. No idea why or how. Haven't installed anything or done anything weird. It just...stopped working.

I tried rebooting. Tried adding the Applications folder to my Privacy list in System Preferences, then removing it to jostle Spotlight into re-indexing it.

Nothing.

Has anyone else encountered this? Anyone have any ideas?

 

[Ebenezum]

While I don't have exactly same problem I am very disappointed with Spotlight in El Capitan. It cannot find all the documents that very easily found in Mavericks.

What you can try is add whole drive into Privacy list and remove it to force Spotlight to reindex whole drive. In my case it helped a little but search results are still incomplete. I reported it to Apple last month and I'm hoping it will fixed in the future. Currently I'm using Mavericks because El Capitan has too many bugs.

 

[Partron22]

Does
sudo mdutil -E /
no longer work?

Reindex Spotlight from the Command Line

 

[kirbyrun]

Looks like Ebenezum's idea worked. I'll keep the command line in my pocket in case it acts up again! My thanks to both of you!

 

[Partron22]

Looks like Ebenezum's idea worked.

It should've.
I just prefer going hardcore because if one thing is wrong, there may be others I don't know about yet.

 

[KALLT]

Looks like Ebenezum's idea worked. I'll keep the command line in my pocket in case it acts up again! My thanks to both of you!

It's practically the same thing. Adding a volume to the privacy tab will cause Spotlight to erase the search index for that volume (in this case the entire drive). All the command does it erase the index of your drive without blacklisting it first. In both cases the index is cleared and can be reindexed.

 

[BrianBaughn]

I think Spotlight in El Capitan behaves differently on every computer I've tried!

Because of this I've started using Launchpad to start apps. Made the keyboard shortcut for Launchpad "Control-Space".

 

[KALLT]

I think Spotlight in El Capitan behaves differently on every computer I've tried!

Because of this I've started using Launchpad to start apps. Made the keyboard shortcut for Launchpad "Control-Space".

You may also want to have a look at some good third-party applications like Alfred, LaunchBar and Quicksilver.

 

[Shaaun]

Does
sudo mdutil -E /
no longer work?

Reindex Spotlight from the Command Line

You will need to disable System Integrity Protection, Go to recovery mode and in terminal you will need to type "
csrutil disable" and then "reboot" then try and re index your spotlight.

 

[KALLT]

You will need to disable System Integrity Protection, Go to recovery mode and in terminal you will need to type "
csrutil disable" and then "reboot" then try and re index your spotlight.

You don't need to turn off SIP for this. The command works. Ebenezum posted also posted a method that doesn't require root access.

 

[andressm]

My spotlight it has been like the screen shot (indexing) for more than a week, eaven after reindexing ate the spotlight sistem preferences, adding and removing the entirely hard drive.
Somebody have a clue? I dont know how to use the commands.

Many thanks,
Andres