Spotlight Search not working on Mac after Ventura Update

hi I have been reading many posts over the pas three weeks and getting into technical steps like making sudo commands in the terminal app, re indexing blah blah creating an additional user etc but reading the below tip of just click and HOLD the Spotlight icon for a few seconds and it pops back to the centre. how weirdly simple and it worked for me. thank you. it was driving me nuts

Try this:

• delete the folder ~/Library/Metadata/CoreSpotlight
• kill corespotlightd process in activity monitor
• in terminal enter:

sudo mdutil -Es -i on /

I've recently installed/upgraded to Ventura 13.0.1 on my Macbook Pro (2021). Since then, SPOTLIGHT is not working. I press the Command Space OR the magnifying glass in the upper right and nothing.

Well, that is not entirely true. I do see a shadow appear in my upper right side of the screen (either screen, depending on which I am on), but no window appears, just its shadow. I tried moving said window using keyboard short cuts to no avail. I know it is there and working as I can type the app I want to launch and it does launch it.

Any help?

It is marketed very aggressively as if you "need" to er... clean your mac, which is not true.

It claims to "clean", "optimize" and "speed up" your mac, which are three lies.

Any program that claims any of the three above should looked at with suspicion. This one claims all three.

There are probably hundreds of threads on this forum of users affected by using this program.

In older versions of the OS, it was often necessary to do a clean install, as it deleted files that were part of the system and caused catastrophic failures. Since Catalina, and particularly with Big Sur and later, the OS is much harder to tamper with, but cmm can still harm user files.

Effective defenses against malware and other threats

It may or may not be directly related to the present problem, but your screenshot shows that you have “cleanmymac” installed. This is utter **** and could already have caused damage. I recommend that you fully uninstall it as per their instructions (it is not enough to drag it to the trash).

Wow... a friend showed me and it was SO simple... click and HOLD the Spotlight icon for a few seconds and it pops back to the center.

Not working how: the search doesn’t find what it’s supposed to? The Spotlight window doesn’t appear? Something else?

Check that the Spotlight settings are correct, namely that everything you want to seach for has the respective box checked.

If the search still doesn’t produce correct results try resetting the Spotlight index: in Terminal, paste

sudo mdutil -E /

type your password and press enter (nothing shows as you type the password, that is normal). Give some time to reindex.

There are Spotlight reserved words that help you narrow your search results. Not using them effectively can lead you to believe that Spotlight is not working correctly. When specifically searching for a file by name, it helps if you declare the file kind and its case-insensitive name or partial name. The following would find a PDF with the string "mac" in its name:

kind:pdf name:mac

Using Spotlight searches in Apple Mail is an acquired skill using different keywords than interacting with the filesystem. The following finds all emails from Peet's Coffee received after Sept 1, 2022:

from:peets created:>09/01/2022

Spotlight searches in Apple Mail are an acquired taste as it can take some Spotlight syntax or limited natural langage requests (.e.g. attachment name contains IMG, .etc). This is poorly documented by Apple.

I actually had the same issue on an M1 Mac as well. All the methods suggest throughout the Web actually didn't work. Like Adding the Volume to the privacy list and then remove it again to start a reindex. Also all the terminal suggestions didn't work as well.

So I booted into Recovery mode for M1: Use macOS Recovery on a Mac with Apple silicon - Apple Support

Then I simply reinstalled Ventura and everything got back to normal and everything was searchable again.

All the files and account were not touched, so nothing got lost.

However this is a radical move and your mileage may vary, so make sure, you have a backup in place - just in case.

It is a bit hard to say, what is going on, but if the Spotlight-Window comes up, when hitting Command + Space as a first step, you could try forcing a reindex of the Spotlight:

Rebuild the Spotlight index on your Mac – Apple Support (UK)

If that doesn't work as expected, try resetting the index through the terminal:

sudo mdutil -E

I had a similar issue. Went into System/Siri & Spotlight/Spotlight Privacy (bottom at bottom of the pane) and added my iMac internal boot drive and ALL external drives to the privacy becton. I then closed System settings and reopened it. Went back and removed all items from the privacy section. This started a reindexing of all files on all drives. It will take maybe a ay to finnish but you should be able to search after it's done.

Glad someone is experiencing exactly the same issue!

@bruce, were you able to solve the problem? I did every trick I can find on the internet but nothing works, nothing. Any search on the entire OS does not work, even the search in the system settings!?!!

Plus, I have nothing installed like CMM or any similar apps, nor I did anything different recently, I have no clue what could have happened.

I hope someone can help..

Thank you so much!! Simply holding down the spotlight icon works perfectly. The search bar pops up after a second or two.

> delete the folder ~/Library/Metadata/CoreSpotlight

> kill corespotlightd process in activity monitor

> in terminal enter:

> sudo mdutil -Es -i on /

This worked for me! Thanks!