Spotlight Search not working on Mac after Ventura Update

Thank you!! This works for me

I'm having a similar issue with searching a network folder, by using the search box in finder. Previously I could open the network folder in finder and then type something in the search box and it would find the items. Now I just get the spinning wheel in the bottom right (leave it long enough and it will crash finder). I've still got a machine on V12 and that is still working fine, so it must be something to do with Ventura.

I had this same issue. If you get a message stating that indexing is disabled, you will need to re-enable it. You can do so with the following command:

sudo mdutil -i on /

This will enable indexing on the entire volume. It returned that indexing was enabled. I did not have to run the command with -E / as it began rebuilding the index immediately. You may or may not have to run the previously mentioned command after you run this one.

My machine is now indexing properly and Spotlight is showing me the expected items.

I have a problem in that Spotlight and search in folders or in Mail does not work since I installed 13.0.1. It is not the window location. Spotlight comes up but when I search only applications show up. And Yes I have Spotlight set to search almost everywhere.

In this image I typed Mac and this is what shows.

If I type in the search of a finder window I can search for files appropriately either in a folder or on my entire mac.

Again if I type in the finder window for this Mac I get thousands of things.

On the other hand search in mail does nothing. Just no response. I have rebuilt mailboxes etc. Mail search just does nothing except show me three recent searches (which yielded nothing)until I type then nothing happens.

Hi Bruce,

I had the exact same issue (cmd-space spotlight menu showed only apps, no files PLUS Mail doing nothing when search is entered), Force quitting 'corespotlightd' from Activity Monitor seemed to do the trick. Have restarted the computer multiple times, so far it's good.

Hope it helps.

THanks. It is not a problem with the way I am searching. I just showed something that would be generic but no search in spotlight gets me anything.

Also when I refer to searching in mail I mean directly in the mail app.

Same for me. I feel like the software quality control at Apple is getting worse...I also tried everything you mentioned and nothing...

Please all make sure to submit feedback via the "Feedback Assistant" app provided by Apple so that they see that there are more and more people facing the same issue. So far my feedback says that there are no other cases which is obviously not the case. So please submit your feedback via the app to get Apple pay attention to this.

The app you mentioned is for reporting issues with beta software. Beta software has bugs by definition.

The rules of this forum forbid discussion of beta versions.

Issues with release versions should be reported via the feedback page:

https://www.apple.com/feedback

So I created a new user and tried Spotlight after reindexing. It works quite well although "Safari" (the app) cannot be found via Spotlight but all other results are back including the search inside the "Mail" app. Not sure if it will stay like that but at least for me it looks like it might be connected to the user. Now I will try to find out which Spotlight files/settings are bound to a specific user in order to see if I can get it fixed for the original user as well.

@Bruce: That's an exact description of my system's behavior – Spotlight search on the desktop will not find any files/file contents or e-mails whatsoever.

The following steps did not make a difference at all:

_ Turning off all search categories in System Preferences and turning them on again after restart.

_ Shift-start of Mail (as search doesn't work there either).

_ Reindexing Spotlight by terminal command.

_ Reinstall of MacOS (although not from a usb drive).

_ Force-quitting "corespotlightd" via Activity Monitor.

_ Adding a folder to the privacy settings and removing it afterwards.

I'm quite desperate what to do next ... Any suggestions?

Regards, André

Do the following Google search: site:

discussions.apple.com cleanmymac

You'll find literarily hundreds of posts where CMM had messed up the system or apps' normal functioning. All CMM does is compromise your Mac's performance and lessen your bank account.

Had the same problem and tried everything i found in forums, nothing worked. So i checked in which folder spotlight stores the database and gave it a try to delete it.

macOS is pretty robust and often missing data/folders will rebuild itself.

Glad to help others with the same problem. Cheers!

It worked... until it didn't. I started seeing Spotlight results after a minute or two, but after I restarted, Spotlight results were once again returning ZERO items -- even on names of folders and basic words. Hopefully, the new 16.2 update fixes this bug, even though it's not one of the ones mentioned on the Apple update page.

Exactly the same for me -- starts to reindex, and then -poof-!!

And hey, it's not like "search" is an obscure feature. How are we supposed to find anything without it?? Is there an "search" alternative to Spotlight for the MacOS??

Peter - There are two separate issues on this thread. One is with people who have lost their Spotlight window. And yes, simply holding the Spotlight icon resets the window to the center of the screen.

However, the other issue is far more complicated, and does NOT have a simple solution: the Spotlight index failing to index one or more drives, so a Spotlight search returns zero results when searching your files. As you can imaging, trying to find a file within literally terrabytes of data is virtually impossible without a viable search engine. Fortunately, there are utilities that don't rely on the Spotlight index -- I'm now using "Find Any File", which seems to work, but it's not nearly as fast or convenient as a Spotlight search