Spotlight is screwy?

[devburke]

I am having some Spotlight issues, and was wondering whether it’s just me or not:

• Certain files will not show up (the ones I've found specifically are iPhoto Library and iTunes Library)
  Update: It appears that strangely enough, if I duplicate those files, the duplicates do show up in Spotlight.
  Update II: Ha! Turns out this issue is cuz these are classified as system files. If you include those in your search, you’re good. Although I really don’t think they should be counted as system files, these are files users need to be able to get to. Especially when iPhoto Library contains ALL your pictures!
  
• Sometimes, even though results should be sorted by date opened, they're out of order. I tried to get a screen shot, but I couldn't reproduce it at the moment.
• I have the following saved search:
  
  but system and hidden files don't actually show up until I start typing something (anything) into the search box. Then I can delete whatever I typed and everything will be there.

Do any of these things happen for anybody else? I’d hate for my SL installation to have gone wonky already (I clean installed, BTW).

 

[DMann]

I am having some Spotlight issues, and was wondering whether it’s just me or not:

• Certain files will not show up (the ones I've found specifically are iPhoto Library and iTunes Library)
  Update: It appears that strangely enough, if I duplicate those files, the duplicates do show up in Spotlight.
  Update II: Ha! Turns out this issue is cuz these are classified as system files. If you include those in your search, you’re good. Although I really don’t think they should be counted as system files, these are files users need to be able to get to. Especially when iPhoto Library contains ALL your pictures!
  View attachment 192335 View attachment 192334
• Sometimes, even though results should be sorted by date opened, they're out of order. I tried to get a screen shot, but I couldn't reproduce it at the moment.
• I have the following saved search:
  View attachment 192336
  but system and hidden files don't actually show up until I start typing something (anything) into the search box. Then I can delete whatever I typed and everything will be there.

Does any of these things happen for anybody else? I’d hate for my SL installation to have gone wonky already (I clean installed, BTW).

You might want to try removing all 3rd party mdimporters found in System/Library/Spotlight. 3rd party mdimporters interfere with the mdworker_32 process of indexing meta data for Spotlight, and removing them will solve this problem.

 

[devburke]

You might want to try removing all 3rd party mdimporters found in System/Library/Spotlight. 3rd party mdimporters interfere with the mdworker_32 process of indexing meta data for Spotlight, and removing them will solve this problem.

I don’t think I have any 3rd party ones.

 

[bimmerchop]

Certain files will not show up (the ones I've found specifically are iPhoto Library and iTunes Library)
Update: It appears that strangely enough, if I duplicate those files, the duplicates do show up in Spotlight.
Update II: Ha! Turns out this issue is cuz these are classified as system files. If you include those in your search, you’re good. Although I really don’t think they should be counted as system files, these are files users need to be able to get to. Especially when iPhoto Library contains ALL your pictures!

I'm having the same problem... how did you get it to automatically include system files in your search?

 

[devburke]

I'm having the same problem... how did you get it to automatically include system files in your search?

Click the dropdown box that says “Kind” and select “Other…”. That gives you a ton more options for refining searches. You can’t tell it to include system files in all searches by default, but what you can do it tell it to include system files, then save that search to the sidebar, so whenever you want to search system files, just open the saved search and search away.

 

[bimmerchop]

Click the dropdown box that says “Kind” and select “Other…”. That gives you a ton more options for refining searches. You can’t tell it to include system files in all searches by default, but what you can do it tell it to include system files, then save that search to the sidebar, so whenever you want to search system files, just open the saved search and search away.

Well that sucks. I never had this problem before upgrading to snow leopard. It's such a hassle now to upload photos