Spotlight not working on Big Sur?

Spotlight has begun to return more reliable results when I let my Macbook Pro sit, unused, and at full power for two full days while it indexed. It's still a little squirrely, but better to the point I am able to function with it. I do not use TM.

I had the same problem on MBP 2017 (Big Sur, 11.1 (20C69).

Was using Terminal and restarted my MBP and the spotlight function stopped working, couldn't search for anything or use the calculator.

Fixed it after I ended the session on Terminal (Control+C), also turned my wifi off when doing so and turned it back on again.

Works fine after that.

The latest updates didn't do anything for me as well, but removing Time Machine from being indexed fixed the issue. Are you using Time Machine?

Rather than unmount Time Machined try putting the disc into the System/Spotlight/Privacy exclude preference pane and see if that will let Spotlight operate even with TM connected and mounted.

Thank you Sir..

This one worked!

I opened System Preference, and search for 'iCloud'. I clicked 'Internet Accounts' as suggested by system.

Suddenly it went to Spotlight setting, and voila! the spotlight running again.

Not working for me:

• Reboot
• Turn off Wifi
• Reindexing with terminal
• Disk Utility First Aid
• Reset spotlight setting

I have the same issue and spent already an incredible amount of time with APPLE support. The search is for me extremely business critical to find information on short notice. Unfortunately I did the BIG SUR update immediately after it came out and since this timeframe I suffer daily extremely as I can't search my E-Mails any longer. It took a long time on standard try and error to get to a point where APPLE Support has now taken the log details of my Mac to analyze it with engineering. I hope that I get soon at least a temporary hot-fix.

The issue:

After BIG SUR update my result list showed up after a search in E-Mail for approx. 1 day. After this, the search never came back with a results list. You can see that the system tries to do something and shows at the end of the email folder where you search: "SEARCH..." , but nothing happens.

• 1st contact with APPLE SUPPORT: re-installation of BIG SUR => Search list worked for approx. 1 day and then didn't show up
• 2nd contact with APPLE SUPPORT: CONTROL-COMMAND-P-R => deleting the VRAM => worked for one day, same issue
• 3rd contact with APPLE SUPPORT: in Finder: pressing OPTION-key => Select: MOVE TO - LIBRARY => deleting under messages the SPOTLIGHT index => worked for one day => same issue
• 4th contact with APPLE SUPPORT: creating new user and installing E-Mail and loading my Account => worked for one day => same issue
• 5th and 6th contact with APPLE SUPPORT: I was now finally able to provide my log information to give it to an APPLE engineer => I hope that I get next week a hot fix => otherwise this will be a disaster

my learning: never doing an upgrade too enthusiastic too quickly if one needs the system for business;-( I rely now on APPLE engineering to get a hot fix..

my learning

I wanted to follow up on this. This morning I rebooted (and did not walk through the above steps in my previous post) and am no longer experiencing the issue. As far as I am aware I did not make any additional config changes nor did I attempt to troubleshoot further than the steps above.

macOS: 11.0.1 (20B50)

Yes, click the Apple icon top left and select System Preferences. Click on Spotlight and uncheck tours of items that you don’t want it to search.

if you want to get more specific, you can go into privacy and add locations that you want the search to ignore.

Unfortunately, I don’t know of a way to implicitly block all locations except the ones you want.

I downgraded to Catalina and all is well once again!

I see that I am not alone I have this same problem also! But for me it does not happen all the time and when it does I reboot or sign off and everything is back to normal.

No problem!

As an addendum, the latest SUR update seems to have fixed and search lag for me now!

Just turning wifi off and on again fixed it for me. My internet had been out for a while, so I was tethered to my phone. When the internet came back on I connected to my wifi network, but Spotlight had stopped working. Just a quick wifi off then on worked for me.

This has been a nightmare to me. I have thousands of file and hundreds of folder that I need to locate on regular basis. Now Spotlight is useless and I cannot work. It's been two weeks calling several times. I had wiped clean my computer three times and the error persists. Lots of other annoying bugs as well. I have a brand-new iMac! When Spotlight works, it take two to three minutes to find lots of useless stuff from the web and god know from where, not even what I need from my computer.

So basically I have a piece junk sitting on my desk. I cannot work at all.

Same for me. Since I upgraded to Big Sur, I need to open my apps by clicking in my menu bar and searching for them. I'll try Alfred app, since mac OS native spotlight not works for me anymore.

Also, battery time and system performance seems to be lower then it usually was.

I have tried everything including every suggestion listed on this forum to this point in time. I keep getting unexpected indexing state. -s tells me indexing is disabled.

$ mdutil -s /

/:

Indexing disabled.

$ sudo mdutil -i /

Error: unexpected indexing state (/)

Any help would be greatly appreciated.