frankinsanity

Q: New Spotlight not working on El Capitan

Just updated El Capitan. I find the Spotlight works just as the old one. I tried "weather" and sports evens and it shows nothing.

MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X El Capitan (10.11)

Posted on Sep 30, 2015 4:05 PM

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Q: New Spotlight not working on El Capitan

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  • by sp0993,

    sp0993 sp0993 Oct 3, 2015 2:27 AM in response to frankinsanity
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Oct 3, 2015 2:27 AM in response to frankinsanity

    Macbook user from India: same complaint.

  • by Gerrya,

    Gerrya Gerrya Oct 3, 2015 2:54 AM in response to dadro
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Oct 3, 2015 2:54 AM in response to dadro

    Mine was the same this morning I went to system prefrences , spotlight, privcay tab, then added my HD confirmed ok left for two minutes then removed. Forcing a  reindex. Unfortunately El Capitan does not show it,s actually reindexing. After about 5 minutes I typed in weather London and Spotlight sprung to life also you can see the reindexing bar below the search

  • by straubns,

    straubns straubns Oct 3, 2015 2:56 AM in response to frankinsanity
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Oct 3, 2015 2:56 AM in response to frankinsanity

    Same problem.  Nothing populating the search tool.  No indication that it's even trying except to find items on my machine.  No weather, stock info, sports, news...nothing.  Is there a setting or on/off toggle?  Looked and can't find it.  Even tried the Spotlight Search to find it!  Ironically ineffective.

  • by Neon Ma,

    Neon Ma Neon Ma Oct 3, 2015 6:59 AM in response to frankinsanity
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Oct 3, 2015 6:59 AM in response to frankinsanity

    Same problem in Hong kong. I wonder who can actually get this working

  • by epicentre_uk,

    epicentre_uk epicentre_uk Oct 3, 2015 7:06 AM in response to An_Fong
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Oct 3, 2015 7:06 AM in response to An_Fong

    Apparently there are some restrictions to where the enhancements are supposed to work, in terms of both search language and location:

    https://www.apple.com/osx/feature-availability/#spotlight-suggestions

  • by intellix,

    intellix intellix Oct 3, 2015 7:53 AM in response to frankinsanity
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Oct 3, 2015 7:53 AM in response to frankinsanity

    Got a retina MBP 15" from the UK with all the UK settings. Using it in Malta and not seeing any of the new El Capitan stuff. Tried using Tunnelbear to proxy my location to UK/US but no luck, maybe the location check happens on startup or so.

     

    I'm guessing someone just needs to create an app that spoofs your location for Spotlight.

     

    It's quite annoying really. If I can speak/write English but am outside of the US, why should I not have access to all this magic? I can understand natural language not working for other languages but based on location...

  • by mustardnut,

    mustardnut mustardnut Oct 5, 2015 2:35 PM in response to Gerrya
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Oct 5, 2015 2:35 PM in response to Gerrya

    Thanks for the tip. Once it started reindexing some of the features (weather specifically) began to work. We'll see how it does when indexing is done

  • by jodyr,

    jodyr jodyr Oct 5, 2015 2:37 PM in response to frankinsanity
    Level 1 (89 points)
    iPhone
    Oct 5, 2015 2:37 PM in response to frankinsanity

    Confirming that Spotlight is useless for me under 10.11

  • by gooober,

    gooober gooober Oct 7, 2015 2:33 PM in response to Gerrya
    Level 1 (30 points)
    Oct 7, 2015 2:33 PM in response to Gerrya

    When I go into System Preferences, Spotlight, Privacy Tab, and try to add my "Macintosh HD", I get an error message stating that "The item couldn't be added or removed because you don't have the appropriate permissions." I do have admin privileges, but apparently only 'system' has write privileges.

     

    And therefore, my iMac will not re-index.

     

    Screen Shot 2015-10-07 at 2.29.40 PM.png

    Screen Shot 2015-10-07 at 2.32.32 PM.png

  • by Adan Chou,

    Adan Chou Adan Chou Oct 10, 2015 4:44 PM in response to frankinsanity
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Oct 10, 2015 4:44 PM in response to frankinsanity

    I checked the Bing Search in System Perference>Spotlight but nothing have changed, would it be able to change the default search provider such as Google or Duckduckgo? Because actually if this thing works, I think the Bing can't go as well as Google.

  • by gooober,

    gooober gooober Oct 15, 2015 7:01 AM in response to Adan Chou
    Level 1 (30 points)
    Oct 15, 2015 7:01 AM in response to Adan Chou

    I found in my case, that the indexing service was not enabled. Once I enabled it, spotlight now works!

     

    $ sudo launchctl load -wF /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist

     

    $ sudo mdutil -a -i on

     

    If you do not wish to enable indexing on all drives (with the above command), see the man page for the mdutil command.

     

    **Also of note**

     

    When I restart my iMac, spotlight briefly indexes for a minute or so before it starts "working again".

     

    I created a clean install of El Capitan on a fresh VM and it behaves in the same manner. Only the VM is finished indexing in less than a minute. I am guessing that is because I only have the OS installed and no other programs.

     

    Hope this helps!

     

    Mark

  • by ricdick,

    ricdick ricdick Oct 15, 2015 2:56 PM in response to frankinsanity
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Oct 15, 2015 2:56 PM in response to frankinsanity

    Same problem in Puerto Rico, i reindex several times but still have the issue

  • by gooober,

    gooober gooober Oct 15, 2015 3:39 PM in response to ricdick
    Level 1 (30 points)
    Oct 15, 2015 3:39 PM in response to ricdick

    Your spotlight is not working at all? I had to give my Mac a little while to finish indexing the first time. Also, whenever I restart, it re-indexes for a few minutes, but works fine after that.

     

    I Created a virtual machine with a clean install of El Capitan and it behaves in the same way. Only takes less than a minute to re-index as I only have the OS installed.

  • by lovelypippy,

    lovelypippy lovelypippy Oct 16, 2015 8:04 AM in response to gooober
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Oct 16, 2015 8:04 AM in response to gooober

    this helped ....thx

  • by profaen,

    profaen profaen Oct 18, 2015 2:03 AM in response to devaoPolo
    Level 1 (2 points)
    Oct 18, 2015 2:03 AM in response to devaoPolo

    I feel the same. El Capitan has been El Crap on my MBP. Slow and dysfunctional.

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