Spotlight disables itself

Question

Spotlight disables itself

Spotlight has stopped working for me for a few weeks. I used to launch applications by hitting cmd-space followed by typing the app name, but apps and documents no longer appear in Spotlight. Checking System Preferences shows that all options(including Applications) for Spotlight are checked. I've tried the Apple Support suggestion of adding and then removing my hard disk from the list of folders not to search but that doesn't help.

When I checked "mdutil - s /" in Terminal, that shows that indexing was disabled. Re-enabling indexing via "mdutil -i on /" works in that Spotlight will start re-indexing my hard drive and find apps/documents as it did before. The next time that I login, though, Spotlight will stop working and using mdutil again shows that indexing has been disabled.

What's happening ? What is causing Spotlight indexing to spontaneously disable itself ? Yeah, I can manually restart Spotlight everytime I login but that's not the way it is supposed to work !

References:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201716

https://www.cultofmac.com/154458/re-index-spotlight-from-the-terminal-re-gain-valuable-time-for-life-os-x-tips/

MacBook Pro Retina

Posted on Aug 26, 2019 7:55 AM

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Answer 1

Sep 10, 2019 9:00 AM in response to Barney-15E

Finally solved the problem, but it turned out to be the nuclear option. Reformat hard disk and reinstall MacOS. As I mentioned earlier, I had tried this once before and used Time Machine to restore my old settings and documents, but that just replicated the problem. This time, I created a new user account and only restored Documents from my Time Machine backup. I did not restore settings and I did not restore Applications. Instead, I re-installed all my apps fresh. Finally, search works properly again, both in Finder and in Mail !

So problem solved but I don't know what was the original problem. Most likely there was some setting or software that was causing Spotlight to crash after running for several hours. The only new software I recall installing was the driver for a U-Green USB-C to ethernet adapter, but I can't be sure that that was the cause of the problem. I did not re-install to try. Would be nice to find out, but I don't have time to keep on restoring from backup and waiting hours for the problem to show up.

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Answer 2

Joseph_S.

Community Specialist

Aug 27, 2019 12:05 PM in response to Shih-Tung Ngiam

Hey there Shih-Tung Ngiam,

Thanks for reaching out to Apple Support Communities. I understand you’re having issues with using Spotlight as expected. It sounds like you’ve done some excellent troubleshooting so far and I’ll be happy to help with this.

Since you’re seeing that indexing was disabled, you should first boot into safe mode and see if the issue continues there. This will start up your Mac so that it performs certain checks and prevents some software from automatically loading or opening:

Use safe mode to isolate issues with your Mac

You can also see if this happens in another user account on your Mac. If an issue stops happening when you log out of your macOS user account and log in with another, the issue could be related to the files or settings in your user account:

How to test an issue in another user account on your Mac

Another step that may resolve this would be to reinstall the macOS using the recovery partition on your Mac. Take a look at this article for ways to reinstall the macOS while keeping your files and user settings intact:

Reinstall macOS

Best wishes.

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Answer 3

rose_10

Community Specialist

Sep 1, 2019 8:47 AM in response to Shih-Tung Ngiam

Thanks for going through each of the steps and providing the results. To verify, do you have any updates available on your Mac or are you using a beta version of the macOS? Check out this link for info on how to check for an update:

How to update the software on your Mac

If your Mac is up to date or that doesn’t help with the issue, you may want to reach out to Apple Support using the following link to continue to look into this with you. This doesn’t sound like expected behavior and they could help get to the bottom of this and work with you towards a resolution:

Contact Apple Support

Take care.

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Answer 4

Barney-15E

Level 10

123,812 points

Sep 1, 2019 10:46 AM in response to Shih-Tung Ngiam

Is that Mac managed by a company? Perhaps they have a profile that disables it for some odd reason.

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Answer 5

Aug 30, 2019 6:17 AM in response to Joseph_S.

OK, so now I am well and truly stumped. Tried all the suggestions but spotlight is still not searching my hard drive. Apps and documents do not appear. I start indexing using "mdutil -i on /" and it will work for a while then a few hours later, apps and documents disappear from spotlight results. Spotlight will only find Siri suggested websites, bookmarks and so on.

Safe boot - this does not work. Spotlight does not find apps and documents. When I go into terminal and check indexing status with "mdutil - s /", I get the response "Indexing and searching disabled". Trying to reactivate searching with "mdutil -i on /" returns the same response - "Indexing and searching disabled".
Using another user account - No difference at all. Exactly the same behaviour. Spotlight works normally after manually starting indexing using mdutil, but again after a few hours, Spotlight does not find apps or documents and when I check indexing status using mdutil, I find that indexing has been disabled.
Reinstall MacOS - Same thing ! Reinstalled latest MacOS using cmd-option-R on startup and after installation is complete, Spotlight works normally. Next morning, when I login again, exactly the same problem ! Indexing has diabled itself.

What's the next step ? Reinstalling MacOS should have been the nuclear option, but even that didn't solve the problem. It's not that Spotlight totally doesn't work. It works when started manually, but after a few hours, it always spontaneously disables itself. What is going on ?? Is there any solution ?

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Answer 6

Aug 30, 2019 6:43 AM in response to Shih-Tung Ngiam

I forgot to add that Searching in Mail also stopped working when indexing disables itself.

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Spotlight disables itself

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