Spotlight Search not working on Mac after Ventura Update

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!

Thanks, Ruud! In my case, there were so many problems (about 25) that I knew the problem had to be more fundamental. I finally erased the entire computer, re-loaded the OS and then began to re-load all the files by hand. Now, most things work.

Same here! Spotlight started working immediately after reindexing began.

Thank you very much.

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.

@allwissendemüllhalde, that solved my problem! Many thanks! But how, why?

Could not kill corespotlightd, so deleting the CoreSpotlight folder saved the day, I guess.

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

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

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

Expat_in_Japan wrote:

I have the same problem with Ventura pre-installed on a new Mac Studio. In fact, this thing has so many problems that I wish I had not purchased it. My 10.5-year-old iMac works better.

Please start a new thread and give more details about the issues you are facing on the new Studio.

To save time, post an Etrecheck report.

Two possibilities come to mind: a) you may have a lemon (it happens), and b) you migrated all the stuff from a previous mac and one or more of old system extensions or daemons is causing havoc.

I strongly suspect case b) above.

Thie woeker for me.

Killing corespotlightd did not seem to work but deleting the folder worked and has for a week or so.

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'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?

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.

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.