Spotlight Search not working on Mac after Ventura Update

One Potential Solution:

Updating to Ventura 13.2, the most current version at the time of this writing, created the problem on my end of Spotlight being unable to search anything at all within my user account folder, period. I've called Apple twice about this specific problem. Talking with them uncovered bug after bug after bug in Ventura 13.2. Weathering those storms, helpful Paul (who thankfully spoke English as a first language, not at all knocking the kindly staff in the Philippines), taught me how to now remove the presumably broken Spotlight index and start a new, clean indexing. I have not yet found this new procedure online. So here we go:

1) Open System Settings. This can be done via the Apple Menu.

2) On the list of Settings categories on the left, click on Siri & Spotlight. (No, I have no idea why Apple mashed these two very different settings together).

3) On the right are the two separate section for Siri (ignore) and Spotlight. At the very end of the list of settings for Spotlight is a button labeled, I know not why, "Spotlight Privacy". Click it.

4) A smaller box appears on top labeled "Privacy". Click the Plus (+) button to add a location. Apparently, the 'location' is where you'd like broken Spotlight to RE-index, if it was indexed at all. In my case, I wanted my entire user account folder to have its index, if it ever existed, deleted. You could choose your entire boot drive or an entire external drive. It's up to you to decide. Read on...

5) Once you've navigated to the directory you would like to have sanitized/reindexed by Spotlight, find the "Choose" button on the bottom right of that navigation window. Click "Choose".

6) This will return you to the Privacy sub-window again. Note that your chosen directory is now listed inside the Privacy box.

7) Inside the Privacy box, click on the name of the now added directory to highlight it.

8) With it highlighted, now click the minus (-) button to remove the directory again from the Privacy window. The Privacy window should now be blank again.

9) Click on "Done". You're done. Spotlight should have removed any index it had of that directory and automatically started indexing it from scratch.

10) Verify that the indexing is occurring by going to the Menu Bar, finding the Spotlight magnifying glass and clicking on it. Type in a search term. Do Not Hit Enter! If you do, Spotlight will send you off to whatever happens to be the first result of that search term. Instead, look below the search term line to see if there is a message that Spotlight is indexing. If it is, let if finish before proceeding.

At this point, Spotlight has presumably created a working new index for the directory area you chose. Spotlight should work properly.

IF Spotlight is still broken where you want to search, do the usual routine of shutting down (not just restart) your Mac, rebooting, re-login, and see if Spotlight is now performing properly. IF NOT: Call Apple Technical Support. Something else is the cause of the problem.

(Note that re-indexing my user folder did NOT solve the Spotlight problem for me. I called Apple for the third time).

Spotlight is a useful utility that allows you to search files, documents, apps, etc. on your Mac. However, sometimes, Spotlight won’t function normally, and may not locate files present on your Mac. This failure might happen due to wrong indexing on your Spotlight. Further, to fix the issue you can try the below DIY fixes:

1. Restart your Mac

2. Rebuild the Spotlight index with System Preferences

3. Reindex Spotlight with Terminal

4. Restart SystemUIServer Process

5. Check the startup disk with Disk Utility First Aid

6. Update/upgrade your Mac

Further, you can also check the below link for the steps to be followed in each solution mentioned above:

https://www.stellarinfo.com/article/rebuild-spotlight-search-index-on-mac.php

Hope it helps!

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.

Yes, your suspicion is correct. Everything was migrated from the iMac, on which it works well. I re-installed the OS and upgraded to 13.2. That fixed many problems, but not all. Ventura is incapable of minimizing and re-opening a window correctly. My wired track pad loses its connection to the Studio 5-10x per day. Simply unplugging and re-plugging it restores the connection instantly, but this is a pain.

Upgraded to new Mac mini (2023) running Ventura from older Mac mini. After using the new Mac mini for a week or so I noticed the issue where Spotlight wouldn't locate a file name while searching in the folder. But as soon as I selected "This Mac", the files would be found. After looking through several solutions, including trashing the CoreSpotlight file, the issue remained. I noticed that the trashed CoreSpotlight folder had a file named index.spotlightV3 dated Sept 16, 2019. Even after I trashed it and restarted, the file would reappear which seemed strange for a new OS install. So I found another solution outside of this forum that seems to have worked for me and the index.spotlightV3 has not reappeared. Using terminal, these are the steps to Rebuild Spotlight Index on macOS Ventura.

In the Terminal, type and run the command: "sudo -i".

Enter your root administrator password and press Return.

Continue to run the commands: "mdutil -Ea" and "mdutil -ai off".

Then enter the command "mdutil -ai on" and press Return, and you will see a message saying that indexing is enabled.

Pardon me if this "solution" has already been listed but I know how frustrating it is when a standard feature is not working properly and I just want to help anyone else in the same boat.

Cheers,

Cary

Hello,

TL;DR: I've had issues with spotlight indexing lately (indexing begins at computer boot but then stops after a few minutes) but I might have solved it by unplugging my external SSD.

Basically, indexing would begin every time I started/rebooted my computer, but then after a few minutes it would stop and turn off indexing for all volumes. Looking at my system logs I can see mds_stores crashing several times during this short period.

I've spoken to apple support but they couldn't really help me except advising me to do a complete factory reset of my Macbook, which I'd rather not do. I've tried adding and removing a folder to Spotlight privacy but it gave me an "Unknown Error" (thanks). I've tried using Disk utility to check the health of my internal Macintosh HD but the problems could be repaired and didn't solve the issue.

As a last resort, I checked if it made any difference if I unplugged my external Samsung T7 SSD and it seems that was the culprit all along. Spotlight indexing has been running now for an hour with no mds_stores crashes and I can use Spotlight search for the files that have been indexed thus far.

I will reconnect the SSD later and use Disk utility to check the health of the drive after indexing has completed.

So, if you haven't tried already, try unplugging any external storage device and see if it makes any difference.

If Spotlight searches were the only problem, it would certainly be worth the attempt, but truthfully, this computer has so many problems, many of which are intermittent, that it seems pointless. Even dependable apps like the iWork suite now have numerous problems, especially Pages, in which the arrow keys no longer work correctly at the ends of lines. Maybe the computer itself is a lemon, but I'm glad I kept my great old iMac.

I had issues in mail and saw later also that search in other places like system setting did not work.

The solution for me were these steps:

Force re-index spotlight:

sudo mdutil -Ea

sudo mdutil -ai off

sudo mdutil -ai on

And then clear the application caches (all of them):

Quit all open apps. Then, open Finder and press Command+Shift+G to bring up the Go to Folder box.

Type ~/Library/Caches (don’t forget the tilde at the beginning) and click Go to open the application cache.

Press Command+A to select all files and folders, and then right-click and select Move to Trash to delete the entire application cache.

Restart your Mac afterward. Then, right-click the Trash icon on the dock and select Empty Trash to free up the space related to the deleted files.

Good luck!

Cheers, Ruud

This is what I finally resorted to also, and it worked. The problem seems to occur when importing files from another Mac. So in desperation I finally erased the entire computer, reinstalled Ventura from scratch and then began the painful process of re-loading everything by hand. An earlier attempt to simply reinstall the OS failed.

Ventura seems to have caused a variety of problems for Mail and for Pages. The right and left arrow keys no longer work In Pages at the ends of lines. They simply keep the cursor on the same line. Mail can no longer attach more than two documents at a time. If you attempt to attach four, only the last appears. Mail sometimes cannot attach iWork documents (they appear gray in a file list). Ironically, it seems to have no trouble with Word documents. (Is this sabotage?)

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.

New MacBook Pro 14" (M2), got it set-up using Migration Tools from my other (older) MacBook.

As part of the whole set-up Ventura 13.5 (22G74) got installed = current macos version.

Spotlight was not properly working from inside Finder.

Applied the usual trick of adding and removing my home directory from "Spotlight Privacy" - which didn't kick off the Spotlight reindexing.

Finally performed - as per 'allwissendemüllhalde's suggestion:

# sudo mdutil -E /System/Volumes/Data

The reindexing is now back on. In Activity Monitor, I see %CPU and CPU Time increasing plausibly for the mdworker and mdworker_shared processes.

I got the same thing, here is how to fix it:

In Terminal, run: mdutil -sav

Look for all the drive, some are disabled. Particularly:

/System/Volumes/Data:

Indexing disabled

That means the entire Data disc is not indexing.

sudo mdutil -i on /System/Volumes/Data

This will turn it on.

The answer from allwissendemüllhalde helped for a while, but the problem returned.

Now I have found an alternative solution, but for me, it is not entirely satisfying.

I had set up my machine with two administrator accounts. One had a hard password to unlock FileVault. The other main account had a simple password, but could not unlock the machine.

My logic was: The machine was encrypted with a hard password, but once I unlocked it, I simply changed users and opened my main personal account with a simple password. The idea was to make shifts to sudo and so on much simpler. In effect, it took a large effort to enter the building, but once I was in, it was easy to navigate my office.

Cutting to the chase – I found that when I gave my main personal account FileVault access – that is – when I could turn on and open my machine with my weak key for my main personal account, then all of my Spotlight problems disappeared.

Please ask if you need clarification. I am considering a reverse solution: My main personal account will have FileVault access and a hard password, but then I will give another admin account (with no FileVault access) a simple password that I can just log into in terminal or go su.

For now, this problem is solved. I just need to work out why Sonoma keeps forgetting my mouse (not-natural) setting and my "No sound effects" setting.

Very weird that Apple has let this one out of the cage with so many issues.

Your comment about "no window appears, just its shadow" actually helped me fix my issue. Turns out the search bar was offscreen with just the tiniest bit of the window on the edge of my display. I was able to mouse over and bring it back to center.

Hoping this helps others.

THANKS

• kill corespotlightd process in activity monitor

worked for me!