Spotlight indexing - Privacy list error - Mojave

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Level 1

6 points

Spotlight indexing - Privacy list error - Mojave

I was not getting results from Spotlight so I followed the instructions here for rebuilding the Spotlight index. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201716

Unfortunately, I added my disk to the privacy tab as instructed in step 3, but when I tried to remove it again as in step 4, I got this message: "Privacy List Error: The item couldn’t be added or removed because of an unknown error."

Now I can't even search inside of Mail because everything is being blocked from the index. I have tried resetting permissions from Terminal with full disk access, but that didn't work.

Any ideas? This is crippling my workflow!

Posted on Jul 29, 2019 7:43 AM

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Answer 1

neeleys30 Author

Level 1

6 points

Aug 13, 2019 1:00 AM in response to Eau Rouge

Yes, of course, and tried the terminal as well, as mentioned. Ultimately I had to reinstall the system and then I was able to remove my hard drive from the exclusion list. It was a huge waste of time and very frustrating since I exactly followed the instructions from Apple support doc and it caused me even more trouble.

Thanks for your suggestions!

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Answer 2

Eau Rouge

Level 8

42,678 points

Jul 29, 2019 7:51 AM in response to neeleys30

Have you tried a Restart?

Try manually getting Spotlight to re index, open Terminal type in;

sudo mdutil -i on /

press Return, enter your Administrator password (your key entries will not be echoed) press Return.

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Spotlight indexing - Privacy list error - Mojave

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