None of the search works in Big Sur Mail.app

Same issue. 2020 MacBook Pro 16", BigSur 11.1 . I did the Shift+Mail, quite, times 2, reboot. It made it worse. Before I was able to get a hand full of worthless results of a search. Now, I get no results.

I also tried removing Gmail accounts. That did nothing.

Try a search and leave it for 20minutes. I think the problem could be very,very slow results as opposed to 100% not working. Seems to be the case for me, but only have the 1 machine where that’s happening.

It’s broken, that’s a given. But it would be good to try work out in what way. I’ve been playing about with deactivating Non-iCloud email addresses to see if it speeds up. Would be good to have others try the same so I can validate my results.

Will continue to post updates.

I have to use my iPhone to search my emails. Ive updated to Big Sur 11.2.1 and email search is still an issue. I'm just in shock how this can be an issue at all but Its apparent that the Mac has been neglected by Apple since they're putting all their efforts on the phone-business.

[Edited by Moderator]

yes, same here. 11.2.1 seemed to work fine for a moment, until I switched accounts and logged out from the other account on the same machine. By returning to the first account mail search was broken again. Notes also doesn't work. I hadn't noticed yet, because I don't often search in Notes.

apparently... until switching between accounts on one machine and logging out from the other account. Upon return in the first account, all search is broken again. And again, and again. Unfortunately even in 11.2.1 still the case

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 !

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

There is a corespotlightd for each logged in user, you can see on the right of the window which user is the owner of each process. And now I run all day with two processes running, fast switching between users and never logging off, and Mail search works. If by mistake I log off of one user the bug happens !

What I see is that Mail search works even when I have two corespotlightd processes running (it happens because I fast switch between users, so both users are logged in and each users has is own corespotlightd process). Now if one user logs off, I see only one process and mail search is broken.

The only time where I see two processes and Mail search is broken, is when a third user has logged off: then the two processes are impacted, and they will both need to be force killed.

I Keep getting this issue in 11.2.2 and 11.2.3.

I found the suggestions in forums to 1. Quit mail app, 2. Open holding shift a few times, then 3. rebooting. It works but the issue re-appears after few hours. Is there a permanent fix available rather rebooting overtime.

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.

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.

No, your script deletes the Spotlight index, then Macos will need 15-30 minutes and a lot CPU resources to rebuild the index.

My suggestion is simply killing a process, it restarts the next second and the search works again: it's a 100 times faster than deleting the Spotlight index !

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!