Quick Look not working for .pdf .jpg .mp4 .mov again after CCC full clone to new formatted HD

OSX 10.13.3 (17D102)

MacBook Pro (15-inch, Mid 2012)


Quick Look not working for .pdf .jpg .mp4 .mov files "again" after CCC full clone to new blank formatted HD.


Large icons of PDFs JPGs MP4 MOV do not show a mini document, just a simple generic icon.

Quick Look works for all other items, text files, web, mp3, excel files.


This happened twice under the same circumstances:

I used CCC to make a clone of my Macintosh HD to a new blank drive formatted as Mac OS Extended Journaled with GUID Partition Map as I always do when formatting an OSX drive.

Everything seems to work except Quick Look of PDFs and JPGs... again.


I tried all things i could find in this forum... except terminal commands. I never do those.

And I will not update my OSX.

The trouble both of those have cost me in past decades is not worth it. I'd rather have the Quick Look problem, the devil I know.


I've had Apples for 43 years, gone through many dozens of computers, thousands of updates of hundreds of OSs & SW. I know when to stop at the last best update for my work flow that my hardware supports.


I have restarted finder, booted into Safe Mode. Booted into another account on the same OSX. pressed space bar and other Quick Look activation methods. Lots of restarts. Nothing fixes it.


This happened a few months ago and went away after a few months. I did nothing I know of that would make Quick Look randomly start working again.


So far a mystery. Might go away again on it's own.


Looking forward to tips.


MacBook Pro

Posted on Sep 24, 2022 11:12 AM

Reply
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Sep 25, 2022 6:17 PM

  1. Choose Apple menu () > System Preferences, then click Spotlight.
  2. Click the Privacy tab.
  3. Drag the folder or disk that you want to index again to the list of locations that Spotlight is prevented from searching. Or click the Add (+) button and select the folder or disk to add.
  4. To add an item to the Privacy tab, you must have ownership permissions for that item. To learn about permissions, choose Help from the Finder menu bar, then search for “permissions.”
  5. From the same list of locations, select the folder or disk that you just added. Then click the Remove (–) button to remove it from the list.
  6. Quit System Preferences. Spotlight will reindex the contents of the folder or disk.


Similar questions

9 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Sep 25, 2022 6:17 PM in response to dgd

  1. Choose Apple menu () > System Preferences, then click Spotlight.
  2. Click the Privacy tab.
  3. Drag the folder or disk that you want to index again to the list of locations that Spotlight is prevented from searching. Or click the Add (+) button and select the folder or disk to add.
  4. To add an item to the Privacy tab, you must have ownership permissions for that item. To learn about permissions, choose Help from the Finder menu bar, then search for “permissions.”
  5. From the same list of locations, select the folder or disk that you just added. Then click the Remove (–) button to remove it from the list.
  6. Quit System Preferences. Spotlight will reindex the contents of the folder or disk.


Sep 24, 2022 11:21 AM in response to dgd

Never happen in my many uses of CCC!???


Manually Rebuilding Spotlight via Terminal

If the aforementioned Spotlight control panel approach doesn’t spur a reindexation of the drive, you may need to initiate it manually through the command line. Open Terminal and use the following command string to do so:


sudo mdutil -E /

This basically asks for temporary super user status, which is why Terminal may ask you for your password (it may not if you’ve used a sudo command recently or are already logged in as a super user or root. The command asks the unix tool mdutil to reindex the spotlight database for everything on the computer, including external drives, mounted disk images, etc. To re-index only for a specific drive, use the /Volumes path. For example, for an external drive named “MiniMe,” the command would look like this:


sudo mdutil -i on /


Rebuilding a drive index can take a long time, so be prepared to wait whether you do it through the System Preference panel or the command line.


If still need be…


Open Terminal and run each of these one at a time


/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Versions/A/Support/lsregister -kill -r -domain local -domain system -domain user


sudo /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Support/lsregister -kill -seed -lint -r -f -v -dump -domain local -domain system -domain user -domain network


killall Dock


sudo mdutil -E /


sudo mdutil -i on /


If that doesn't work reinstall the OS.



Sep 26, 2022 9:20 PM in response to BDAqua

good news. I left Photos running for 6 hours indexing.

quick look magically started working.

the delay must have been because I have a 1.2TB personal Photos Library and 300GB iTunes library with another 10TB of other programs & data on my main boot drive.

counting backups I have somewhere over 40TB.

i am an aearial photographer so lots of videos.


next time I will reindex spotlight then let Photos run a few hours.


thanks for all the help!

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Quick Look not working for .pdf .jpg .mp4 .mov again after CCC full clone to new formatted HD

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