None of the search works in Big Sur Mail.app

I'm not sure if you have seen the posts but people have figured out its an issue with the process "corespotlightd" and the behavior starts if second (or third...) user has logged in and logged off on this same computer. To get search working again you need to restart this process, rebooting will do this, but an easier way is to open Activity Monitor, then search for this process under CPU, select it and click the X button at the top of the window and select quit. It will immediately restart and search should start working again (until a second user logs off again). This is much easier then rebooting, hope it helps.

Same problem here. Both the mail Search functionality and the "Smart Mailbox" feature is affected. Sometimes the search and/or Smart Mailboxes work after logging in and a quick logout/login helps.

Potential Solution

I noticed, that search results are found again (including Smart Mailboxes) if I rebuild the mailboxes. I cannot yet say how long this will stay ok, but so far it looks good.

1. Select one or multiple mailboxes
2. If you have many mailboxes arranged in folders, option click on the top-level to quickly expand the entire structure and then select as many as you like
3. Use Menu "Mailbox" / "Rebuild"
4. wait
5. Should be ok immediately after mail is done, but quitting/reopening should not harm either.

Thanks to GanawaGangunawa for the hint with corespotlightd.

I would prefer if Apple would actually fix this issue. Its affecting many users in every days activities.

Meanwhile using Stream Deck (or any other macro player) you can build a workaround. Make your tool execute "killall -9 corespotlightd" and you should be up and running again without a reboot.

FWIW, I've noticed the following on my iMac which is showing this problem:

if I am logged in as User 1 (no other users active) the smart mailboxes seem to work ok

if I "fast switch" to User 2 there are now 2 instances of corespotlightd active

if I "fast switch" back to User 1 (whether I log out of User 2 or not) then:

there are sometimes still 2 corespotlightd running and I have the smart mailbox problem

sometimes only the original corespotlightd is running and then smart mailboxes work ok

Also, in the first case (where there are 2 running) if I kill only the second one, then smart mailboxes work ok

so at least on my machine, the problem seems to be related to having 2 instances of corespotlightd running

Hey there!

I see it’s the same on both accounts, and the steps you’ve taken so far.

Can you try this:

Backup your data of course, especially if POP accounts, and export mailboxes if needed. (You’ve already manually attempted mail index, so sounds like you know what’s involved).

Quit the Mail app.

Open:

Finder > Go > Go To Folder, type:

~/Library/Username/Metadata/CoreSpotlight/

Press “Go”.

Delete the contents of the folder, restart and test.

If issues persist:

Does the same issue occur:

In other apps?

In a different admin account?

In Safe Mode?

On your other devices?

With WiFi and Ethernet disconnected?

Likewise, I know you’ve deleted the entire ~/Mail folder, (Make sure to restart before opening, but I wouldn’t recommend deleting a necessary folder like this), but did you try removing all the accounts from:

System Preferences > Internet Accounts, restart > are-add > Launch Mail and rest?

Just throwing out steps and possibilities out there, but that info might help if the first step didn’t work.

Hope that does help though, cheers!

Problem solved, apparently!

Found this old item about Catalina, tried it, and it worked!

https://www.techradar.com/how-to/macos-catalina-problems-how-to-fix-the-most-common-issues

macOS Catalina breaks search in Mail - here's how to fix it

There are reports that the search function no longer works in the Mail app after installing macOS Catalina.

The first thing to try, if you encounter this problem, is first close Mail completely. Then hold Shift and click on the Mail icon to open it in Safe Mode. Then, close Mail again, then hold Shift and open Mail again.

Finally, close Mail yet again, then reboot your Mac. Open Mail normally, and search should work again.

MacOS 11.1 has corrected the fault. I'll let y'all know if the fault returns.

Not encouraging Apple did not respond here with so many others affected.

However, I'm glad it is now working.

Thanks all,

fellow

You can fix the problem quickly by force killing the process 'corespotlightd' in Activity monitor. But the bug will happen again when you log out another user. So sad to see a bug like this not corrected in months !

philthehumanist, did you try killing the corespothlightd process in Activity Monitor ? it takes 2 seconds to do and works every time.

So this fixed it for me (not sure exactly what did it but this is the order I did things).

1. Rebuilt the mailboxes in Mail using the Mailboxes menu, then quit Mail when finished.
2. Excluded my hard drive from Spotlight searches (System Preferences - Spotlight - Integrity).
3. Restarted my computer.
4. Removed the exclusion of my hard drive from the Spotlight settings.
5. Let Spotlight fully reindex before starting Mail (you can check the status by opening the Spotlight search and typing anything).
6. Launched Mail, and search was working.

Hope this helps.

It does work it's just painfully slow.

You can speed it up by opening Terminal App and typing

sudo mdutil -i off -E /

then

sudo mdutil -i on /

You might need to add your password in each time depending on your settings. It then seems to work better but I'm having to do it quite a bit - very annoying.

This (holding shift a few times, then rebooting) worked for me.

I also removed an old gmail account (that I was actually not using anymore) which was also suggested could be the problem.

Happy to report that Big Sur 11.2 fixed search in Mail for me. Was driving me nuts.

killall -9 corespotlightd - in terminal seems to work.

Which is good because I was using my laptop where it seemed fine, but it's no longer working.

Hi, was at my wits end with this. Tried most of the fixes in this thread...None worked for me. Finally gave in and reinstalled Big Sur. Seems to have fixed the search issue in Mail, but indexing is slow.