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Why isn't Finder's tagging system working?

thebart

thebart

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Feb 19, 2023
606
632
In Finder, you can tag a folder with a color and I assume when you choose the tag you'll see a list of folders tagged with that color

This only works for me with folders on an external USB C connected drive. Tagged folders on internal drive or network drive don't show up. When I navigate to the folder I can see the folder has a colored dot next to it, but it doesn't show up when I select the tag on the left panel

Any idea what's going on? Thanks
 
Do colour tags work as expected with files in the internal drive?

When you choose a tag, Finder uses the Spotlight index to find items with that tag. Not working on internal disk suggests there is a problem with your Spotlight index for that disk.

I never attempt to Spotlight index network drives, so don't expect any tag search to work for them.
 
Thanks, you're right. It appears my internal drive isn't indexed at all. I tried

1) adding Macintosh HD to list of folders to not index then remove it from the list, hopefully to force re-indexing

2)
sudo mdutil -i off
sudo mdutil -i on
sudo mdutil -s /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/
/:
Indexing enabled.

I left it for 10 hrs. Nothing doing. Spotlight is still not finding anything in my internal drive. I have every category in Siri & Spotlight > Spotlight search results checked.

Interestingly:

sudo mdutil -L /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/
Spotlight directory not found at root: /Volumes/Macintosh HD/

That's not good. Running the same command on my external drive shows a bunch of results.
 
Just turning indexing off and on is not enough. You need to erase or remove the index. So:
sudo mdutil -I off / sudo mdutil -X / sudo mdutil -I on /

And sudo mdutil -L / works for me.
 
gilby101 said:
Just turning indexing off and on is not enough. You need to erase or remove the index. So:
sudo mdutil -I off / sudo mdutil -X / sudo mdutil -I on /

And sudo mdutil -L / works for me.
Click to expand...
I did as instructed and sudo mdutil -L / returned a bunch of folders at /private/var/db/Spotlight-V100/ but still spotlight search is giving me nothing from the internal disk. I gave it a few hours. I'm looking at disk activity in system monitor and not much is going on, so either it's not indexing or it is done.

Baffling.
 
thebart said:
It only says "Indexing enabled."
Click to expand...
Mine is like this:
mdutil -sv / /: Indexing enabled. Scan base time: 2024-07-17 22:16:52 +0000 (1037877 seconds ago), reasoning: '(null)'
The lack of a scan base time is, I think, an indication that the indexing is not complete. For the root volume, the time is when you last booted and the indexer was happy.

Since you have erased and deleted the index, I am now lost as to why the indexer is not working for you. Maybe someone else will comment.
 
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Maybe there's something corrupted or misconfigured within the Spotlight dir at the root of the volume. In other words, the dir itself isn't the problem, but something within it is.

I suggest renaming any ".Spotlight*" dir you find there, and then enabling Spotlight on the volume. I'd rename the dir to something visible, like "bad-spot". It might need 'sudo' to get the 'mv' to work. You might need to restart the OS, too.

Please post the output from this cmd:
Code: 
ls -lad /.*
 
chown33 said:
Maybe there's something corrupted or misconfigured within the Spotlight dir at the root of the volume. In other words, the dir itself isn't the problem, but something within it is.

I suggest renaming any ".Spotlight*" dir you find there, and then enabling Spotlight on the volume. I'd rename the dir to something visible, like "bad-spot". It might need 'sudo' to get the 'mv' to work. You might need to restart the OS, too.

Please post the output from this cmd:
Code: 
ls -lad /.*
Click to expand...
Code: 
ls -lad /.*
drwxr-xr-x  20 root  wheel  640 May  7 00:01 /.
drwxr-xr-x  20 root  wheel  640 May  7 00:01 /..
lrwxr-xr-x   1 root  admin   36 May  7 00:01 /.VolumeIcon.icns -> System/Volumes/Data/.VolumeIcon.icns
----------   1 root  admin    0 May  7 00:01 /.file
drwxr-xr-x   2 root  wheel   64 May  7 00:01 /.vol

ls -lad /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/.*
drwxr-xr-x  20 root  wheel  640 May  7 00:01 /Volumes/Macintosh HD/.
drwxr-xr-x  20 root  wheel  640 May  7 00:01 /Volumes/Macintosh HD/..
lrwxr-xr-x   1 root  admin   36 May  7 00:01 /Volumes/Macintosh HD/.VolumeIcon.icns -> System/Volumes/Data/.VolumeIcon.icns
----------   1 root  admin    0 May  7 00:01 /Volumes/Macintosh HD/.file
drwxr-xr-x   2 root  wheel   64 May  7 00:01 /Volumes/Macintosh HD/.vol

no spotlight folders
 
thebart said:
no spotlight folders
Click to expand...
Nor for me with those commands. In Terminal, this is where I find the Spotlight index:
ls -lad /System/Volumes/Data/.* -rw-r--r--@ 1 admin admin 6148 30 Jan 2023 /System/Volumes/Data/.DS_Store d--x--x--x 10 root wheel 320 18 Jul 11:58 /System/Volumes/Data/.DocumentRevisions-V100 drwxr-xr-x@ 5 root wheel 160 16 May 09:05 /System/Volumes/Data/.PreviousSystemInformation drwx------ 4 root admin 128 26 Jan 2023 /System/Volumes/Data/.Spotlight-V100 -rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 1730020 17 Dec 2019 /System/Volumes/Data/.TempReceipt.bom ...

or do it as root:
sudo su # cd /System/Volumes/Data # ls -lad .*
And then you can cd into .Spotlight-V100
 
Last edited:
gilby101 said:
Nor for me with those commands. In Terminal, this is where I find the Spotlight index:
ls -lad /System/Volumes/Data/.* -rw-r--r--@ 1 admin admin 6148 30 Jan 2023 /System/Volumes/Data/.DS_Store d--x--x--x 10 root wheel 320 18 Jul 11:58 /System/Volumes/Data/.DocumentRevisions-V100 drwxr-xr-x@ 5 root wheel 160 16 May 09:05 /System/Volumes/Data/.PreviousSystemInformation drwx------ 4 root admin 128 26 Jan 2023 /System/Volumes/Data/.Spotlight-V100 -rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 1730020 17 Dec 2019 /System/Volumes/Data/.TempReceipt.bom ...
Click to expand...
Ok, I get the same

Code: 
ls -lad /System/Volumes/Data/.*
drwxr-xr-x@  21 root  wheel    672 May 20 13:34 /System/Volumes/Data/.
drwxr-xr-x   14 root  wheel    448 May  7 00:01 /System/Volumes/Data/..
d--x--x--x    9 root  wheel    288 Jul 28 18:45 /System/Volumes/Data/.DocumentRevisions-V100
drwxr-xr-x    5 root  wheel    160 May 20 13:34 /System/Volumes/Data/.PreviousSystemInformation
drwx------    4 root  wheel    128 Feb 14  2023 /System/Volumes/Data/.Spotlight-V100
drwxr-xr-t    2 root  wheel     64 May 20 13:34 /System/Volumes/Data/.TemporaryItems
drwxr-xr-x   19 root  wheel    608 May 20 13:14 /System/Volumes/Data/.com.apple.templatemigration.boot-install
drwx------  871 root  wheel  27872 Jul 29 18:36 /System/Volumes/Data/.fseventsd
 
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