Spotlight won't give results for Applications (Mojave / Catalina)

[glawrie]

Have a 2015 13" MBA running (now) Catalina, but previously Mojave.

Prior to the update to Catalina something happened to the spotlight configuration on the computer, and it stopped providing results for applications. This has continued after updating to Catalina.

I have tried following Apple's advice for how to reset spotlight (open system preferences, drag Macintosh HD to Privacy Window, and then delete it again) and it has not helped.

For good measure, I repeated this action using just the Applications directory too. That didn't help either.

Spotlight for things other than applications appears to be working OK.

Any suggestions about what might be going on / how I can get applications back into my search results?

Thanks in advance for whatever help you can provide.

 

[bogdanw]

Check in System Preferences - Spotlight for Applications to be enabled

If it is, try do uncheck it and recheck it again.

 

[glawrie]

thanks for the suggestion.

I tried unticking applications, and putting applications into the exclude list and then ticking / removing them again, but it has made no difference

Any other methods I can try?

 

[Dahoffman85]

Sounds like you need to re-index spotlight, I had this same issue and it worked for me.

How to Rebuild the Spotlight Index on Your Mac

Apple has enhanced Spotlight search in macOS in recent years, with the addition of Spotlight Suggestions allowing it to tap into a variety of online...

www.macrumors.com

 

[glawrie]

Sounds like you need to re-index spotlight, I had this same issue and it worked for me.

How to Rebuild the Spotlight Index on Your Mac

Apple has enhanced Spotlight search in macOS in recent years, with the addition of Spotlight Suggestions allowing it to tap into a variety of online...

www.macrumors.com

Well I tried all the methods in that article that I had not tried before - including

mdutil -i off /
sudo rm -rf /.Spotlight-V100
sudo rm -rf /.Spotlight-V200
mdutil -i on /
mdutil -E /

And so far still not got Applications appearing in the Spotlight output.

It is mystifying and frustrating in equal measure...

Any other ideas anyone?

 

[bogdanw]

Although it shouldn't be related, try to rebuild Open With https://osxdaily.com/2013/01/22/fix-open-with-menu-mac-os-x/

 

[Dahoffman85]

Do you happen to use Alfred? If not my out of the box suggestion would be to download it, then use it to try and reload your macOS metadata. TBH I actually think this was how I ended up fixing my issue and I stuck with using Alfred as its a fantastic program. If you do try this, once downloaded, type “reload” into Alfreds search bar, then go to the Advanced tab in Alfred's Preferences and click "Rebuild macOS Metadata". It will ask for a password but you might not see anything when entering (that’s ok just hit enter when done). It might take a while for the index to complete so find something else to do for the next 45min. Once complete type “reload” again and you should be all set. If this works and you don’t really want Alfred just uninstall it and you should be good to go from there.

 

[glawrie]

Well I tried the Alfred reset as suggested, but it didn't fix it either.
I'm drifting towards simply nukeing the setup and reinstalling Catalina as a clean install and then resyncing the data back... fortunately my setup allows for this (it is just tedious to do).