Spotlight search not working

[donawalt]

Just got a new MacBook Pro, and it's working great except spotlight search is MIA. (I assume this is spotlight search, the search bar that's within finder?) Specifically, I use it to search my Documents folder a lot, and it does nothing. I have done some searching on the internet and found some generic solutions to try -

- fix interrupted indexing process - sudo mdutil -i on /
- Delete the file com.apple.spotlight.plist.
- Force Quit corespotlightd process
- re-enable indexing - sudo mdutil -i on /
- I added the Documents folder to the list of folders not to index, then I removed it
- reindex spotlight - sudo mdutil -E /

with ample restarts, but nothing seems to work. The corespotlightd process has not returned after a restart, hours later. Should it?

I was wondering if someone here has some good advice. I look in the Activity Monitor, and I only see Spotlight process, and it has used 0% cpu. Is there anything you can think of that could get spotlight search working again?

Thanks!

 

[manuelg]

You could try

`sudo mdutil -X /`

and reboot ..

(From the man mdutil page)

-X volume-path
"Remove the Spotlight index directory on the specified volume. This does not disable indexing. Spotlight will reevaluate volume when it is unmounted and remounted, the machine is rebooted, or an explicit index command such as 'mdutil -i' or 'mdutil -E' run for the volume."

 

[NSMacGuru]

I'm having the same issue. Spotlight has been missing in action for over a week.

I've tried the many troubleshooting tips, the latest being the use of Onyx to delete the old Spotlight index and force rebuild, but no-go (I tried TinkerTool and MacPilot previously, neither were able to bring it back).

Next step is a full reinstall of Ventura. Might as well run a backup overnight to be ready for that...

And of course, I'm in the middle of a few projects that all require the ability to actually find things on my HD.

My situation is a bit different from yours, in that I upgraded from Mojave to Ventura, and perhaps my method had something to do with it:

1/ I cloned my internal HD to an external
2/ I repeated this step on another external, so I would have a backup.
3/ I booted from the external and upgraded the system to Ventura.
4/ I've been running off the external for a few weeks now (surprisingly snappy over USB3 to my external dock; certainly more responsive than my existing internal Fusion drive).

It seems as though the computer was having a hard time understanding that the old MacintoshHD was no longer the boot drive... I know that when I used Spotlight to launch apps, it would sometimes launch the version in the internal drive for some reason. I'm not entirely sure, but I think my trouble began when I deleted the files from my internal drive (I would have done a straight-up erase, but Disk Utility wouldn't allow me to do that - again, seems like the old MacintoshHD still has some "hooks" in there).

I think the next step will be to backup the drive, wipe the external (my current boot drive), install Ventura clean, and then migrate over the User accounts from the backup.

And I'll see what I can do about properly erasing the internal Fusion drive....

Wish me luck....

 

[MacBH928]

I am not sure what you mean by its not working. First thing I would do so is click on the apple icon top left ->system preferences-> software update

install all the latest software updates. Restart.

Another place to check is the following:-
apple icon top left ->system preferences->Spotlight

check to see if the files and folders you want have a check mark next to them.
Next click on the privacy tab, any folder in here will not show up in spotlight so make sure nothing is in there.

***trick***

click the + button in that privacy tab and add your Mac HDD folder in there. Yes this will make spotlight not search it. Now click on it again and press - button. it will take it out. This will rebuild the spotlight index and hopefully it starts working again

 

[donawalt]

Thanks @MacBH928, I actually tried all those things including the trick! I just tried @manuelg 's idea to remove the directory, and reboot - I'll keep you posted. I know the remove directory worked, it said something like 97 files and directories removed. Maybe something is corrupted in there?

So I just rebooted, and I believe the spotlight indexing process is MDS - is taking up some cpu time - good! I did two tests:
1) From the Spotlight magnifying glass, I typed in a word that's in a text file in my Documents folder. It suggested a bunch of stuff BUT it also nailed that file almost instantly!

2) HOWEVER - I opened Finder, clicked on the Documents folder, and in the Search field (top right) I typed the same word - nothing. Is that correct, that may take awhile but Spotlight search is more instantaneous?

3) One last question (thank you all so much for your help) - is there a way to see the progress of the indexing?

 

[donawalt]

So here's an interesting update - about 90 minutes later now, and if I bring up finder, and it comes up "Searching this Mac", and I type a word in the search bar that's contained in a Documents document, it shows up immediately. But if I click at the top away from Search: This Mac to "Documents", nothing - no files come up at all. Why would that be?

EDIT: Documents is in iCloud - which it was on my old MacBook Pro with an issue. Maybe it hasn't indexed that yet? But Searching this Mac found it??? Confusing...

 

[donawalt]

This is definitely a different problem than I thought it was, as I have investigated further.

Spotlight (from the main menu bar) search works fine;
From within Finder, "Search this Mac" searches using the top right corner works fine;
But click on any folder from the Finder pane, and search that folder only using the search at the top right corner, does nothing. Click to "Search this Mac", fine. Click back to the folder name right next to "Search this Mac", nothing.

So it's not a search problem, it's a finder problem?

 

[donawalt]

Resolved! I'll give a kudos to @MacBH928 for an assist to the solution! Maybe this @NSMacGuru 's issue as well - do you have your Documents folder in iCloud? If so, read on...I do....I got to thinking about @MacBH928 's tip on dragging the Mac HD to the privacy tab, and pulling it out again - which I had done. This time, I first did the iCloud drive folder into Privacy, waited 30 seconds, and out. Then I did the Mac HD again. I just came back from lunch, and Finer folder searches are working perfectly yay! So was it:

1) Dragging the iCloud folder into Privacy and out?
2) Dragging the Mac HD into privacy and out, that for some reason one of the other attempts to fix this, like deleting all the index directory per @manuelg 's suggestion, needed to be done first?
3) Or was it waiting about 30 seconds before I dragged the iCloud folder/HD drive out of the Privacy pane?

Thanks so much for everyone's help!

 

[NSMacGuru]

donawalt, no - all of my files are local. I do have extra storage purchased on iCloud, but my desktop & documents folders are not set to synch to the cloud. I'm old school

MacBH928: Tried all of that, no-go. And when I say "spotlight isn't working" there's nothing more to say - it's simply not working. I bring up spotlight, enter a term, and it offers me web results but nothing from the HD. The "indexing" progress bar just shimmers....

The Privacy trick I had attempted before, but am unable to do (hence my intention to reinstall Ventura a a possible fix). This is what trying to add any folder to Spotlight privacy gets me:

And just for other folks who may pop in with a spotlight issue, this website has additional suggestions (including using Activity Worker to find out which folder might be causing Spotlight to get stuck) - none of which worked for me.

How To Fix Spotlight Forever Indexing Issue On Mac OS X

If i'm asked about the most used feature when i use Mac, i will honestly say: Spotlight. Yup, it's a killer feature which has not been rivalled in any other operating system and keep going better. I want to explain shortly about Spotlight if you haven't heard it before or have never used it even...

www.pcbezz.com

YMMV.

If and when I get this fixed, will post with info.

 

[gilby101]

Before doing anything `mdutil -sav` will show the current state of indexing. What is its output?

 

[NSMacGuru]

Before doing anything `mdutil -sav` will show the current state of indexing. What is its output?

Output is:
____________________________

/:

No index.

/System/Volumes/Data:

No index.

/System/Volumes/Preboot:

No index.

/Volumes/Macintosh HD:

No index.

___________________________

Interestingly, the boot volume is /Ventura/ and it's not named in that output. The Startup disk has been selected in System Settings.

 

[gilby101]

Interestingly, the boot volume is /Ventura/ and it's not named in that output.

The first three listed in your results as the expected volumes, but all should have indexing enabled.

I assume Macintosh HD is your old boot volume.

It is very unusual for the boot disk (what we see in the list as / and /System/Volumes/Data) not to be indexed. Something odd must have happened in the somewhat convoluted steps you took when migrating to Ventura.

I have never had to do this with the boot volume, but try enabling indexing with: sudo mdutil -a -i on
You may also need: sudo mdutil -ae

Failing that I would start again in Internet Recovery mode, erasing the internal disk, reinstalling macOs and using Migration Assistant to recover from your backup.

 

[MacBH928]

check out the official apple discussion forums, maybe you get there help or subreddit /r/applehelp

 

[NSMacGuru]

With more apologies to donawalt, for completely hijacking the thread - mea culpa!

In the end, what I suspected was the best approach proved true. Trying to delete the Spotlight index and force the system to rebuild it just would not work. Onyx, MacPilot, TinkerTool and Terminal were all employed, to no success.

I had a couple of hair-raising moments, with an oddity in the Internet Recovery process (it refused to join a Wifi network while in IR), I ended up creating a Ventura boot stick, wiping the original (internal) Fusion drive (after performing two full backups), installing Ventura onto the Fusion drive, and then migrating the user accounts over from the backup.

I should note that the backups were all done with Carbon Copy Cloner.

For whatever reason, indexing is once again working.

Now - back to work!