Google Drive indexing and Spotlight search in Big Sur

The latest versions of Google Drive for desktop include Spotlight integration, which supports both name & content indexing even for streaming files. It seems to be disabled by default for some unknown reason, so check your Google Drive preferences.

Hello pio97,

Thank you for reaching out to Apple Support Communities, and we'll be happy to help in any way we can. We understand you're having issues with Spotlight indexing on your Mac. Try the steps listed here to see if they resolve the issue: Rebuild the Spotlight index on your Mac - Apple Support

"Before rebuilding the Spotlight index

• Follow the steps for when Spotlight returns unexpected results.
• If you're having difficulty finding items in the Mail app, follow the steps to rebuild Mailboxes in Mail.

Rebuild the Spotlight index

1. Choose Apple menu  > System Preferences, then click Spotlight.
2. Click the Privacy tab.
3. Drag the disk or folder 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 disk or folder to add.
4. 
5. You can add an item to the Privacy tab only if you have ownership permissions for that item. To learn about permissions, choose Help from the Finder menu bar, then search for “permissions.”
6. From the same list of locations, select the disk or folder that you just added. Then click the remove button (–) to remove it from the list.
7. 
8. 
   
9. Quit System Preferences. Spotlight will reindex the contents of the disk or folder. This can take some time, depending on the amount of information being indexed."

We hope this helps.

Cheers!

Mine was working great on Big Sur until I did the latest update 11.7.1. At the same time, the google drive icon disappeared from my desktop. Now it returns results slowly, inconsistently, and only from finder. Wondering if it has something to do with the drive streaming location...

Temporary workaround has been to use the native search function through the google drive taskbar icon, which still shows the relevant information. Let's hope this gets solved soon.

No real fix yet (( 

1. search works only in finder ( but with significant delay) 

2. search from spotlight doesn't work 

3. search from "save as" menu doesn't work ( the most painful issue for me )

It works correctly if you connect your personal account to Google Drive. After connection, the location of the file translation also changes and it starts to be detected automatically

Search does not work when executing the command save as...

This setting is disabled. The search for the save location does not work when executing the "save as ..." command