Spotlight has never worked

Spotlight has always had reserved words that help you narrow your search results. Simply typing unquoted cat people is asking Spotlight to search for the separate words cat and people in every selected Spotlight Search Results category including within documents, PDF, and the web.

Let's say that you wanted to find all files associated with the 1942 Cat People. Spotlight uses case-insensitive searches. The name reserved word confines the search to files and/or folders:

name:1942 AND name:"cat people"

or

name:"cat people 1942"

or just the .mkv video file:

kind:matroska AND name "cat people 1942"



I can find anything in my filesystem with the correct combination of reserved words and within the bounds of what Spotlight is equipped to do.

in Sys Prefs>Spotlight>Search Results, what all filetypes are checked?

As part of narrowing the search in the Finder window, I suggest that you visit Finder Preferences > Advanced, and set When performing a search: [ Search the Current Folder ]. Now, when you use Spotlight search commands in the Finder window, the currently active folder in the Finder will appear right-most in the Search: sub-panel just after This Mac.

If you want your external data indexed by Spotlight, drag and drop the Desktop icon of that mounted drive into System Preferences > Spotlight > Privacy panel, wait 15 seconds, and then select and remove [-] that external drive. Spotlight will not reindex it.

Paradox Machine Said:

"Spotlight has never worked: Thank you but sorry, you misunderstand. To be clear, adding the the quote mark at the beginning fixes the problem – it’s my workaround, regardless of whether I add a second one to the end or not. It’s when I enter a search without, that Spotlight fails."

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You need to select: "Filename"

Perform the Following:

1. Type: cat people (Screenshot 1)
2. Press: return key
3. Press: spacebar
4. Click: Dropdown menu (Screenshot 2)
5. Select: Filename (Screenshot 3)
6. Perform the New Search

Seenshot 1:

Seenshot 2:

Seenshot 3:

Paradox Machine Said:

"Spotlight has never worked: Thank you. I am searching in the Finder on Mojave. Pressing the Spacebar, after Return, just clears the search (ie replaces Cat People with a Space); there’s no drop-down menu. Incidentally, typing “filename: cat people” works, but that’s even more inconvenient than adding the quote marks, if I have to do it every single time I search."

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Various Typing Techniques:

Try clicking a few things, until you get that dropdown box. Currently, it is search everything. Seems you need to get the dropdown box.

Paradox Machine Said:

"I can do it like this, using search criteria to specify the filename, but again – doing so omits 14 of the 15 results. (Which OS are you using?)"

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I am using OS 11 (Big Sur).

Paradox Machine Said:

"Spotlight has never worked: For as long as it’s existed Spotlight has failed to find many files that I know are both present and indexed. The attached screenshot shows only one result when searching for, 'Cat People'[...]"

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Quotation Marks:

Al is working as indented. It is seeing it as a search queue, as a full quoted mark. So, end the last word with a quotation mark, and all would show up as it should. There's nothing wronging with what is occurring.