Spotlight in Ventura (13.4) no longer identifies local files.

Using the finder because Spotlight is broken is not a solution. Spotlight used to be a nice application launcher before Ventura, now it's useless. See my thread on this (post 1 for potential solutions). Ventura 13.4 broke Spotlight - Apple Community

I did a clean install of Ventura, and like you, I'm mostly getting web results and inaccurate search results. In other words, Spotlight is now virtually useless for me. If I want to search the web, I'll open a browser and search there Apple. I need to find local files and launch apps like Spotlight has been able to do since before Ventura.

Hi Barney:

It's not just me though: Search - Apple Community, and this is not counting all of the people on the web that are having these issues. No local files or applications search results are showing up, there are many threads on this issue. This is not an isolated issue. Apple needs to fix this.

< It sounds like your Spotlight index is corrupt or incomplete.

So how did the problems persist after a clean install of the operating system? Or trying to rebuild the index through terminal commands or by dragging the HD in and out of Spotlight privacy, or deleting the spotlight index? The problem is Ventura.

So how did the problems persist after a clean install of the operating system? Or trying to rebuild the index through terminal commands or by dragging the HD in and out of Spotlight privacy, or deleting the spotlight index?

As I already stated, some files can hang it up, and that can be tied to something amiss in the mdimporter. It can also happen with interference from third party system modifications.

It just never completes correctly. It may find some things, but other unindexed stuff can’t be found.

I couldn’t tell you what part of the user population uses that aspect of Spotlight, so I wouldn’t make any conclusive statement on the cause. Do you have that data?

I don’t have any problem with Spotlight. Many others appear to not have a problem, either. So, it is a Ventura bug that only affects a small minority of the user base, or it is something else unique to your Mac. It could be a bug that is only affected on systems uniquely configured like yours.

Hey Carlos Garcia5!

I think Barney-15E provided the best article to troubleshoot this issue. If that didn’t work, nor any other troubleshooting steps have, and you say Apple needs to fix this, then I’d recommend contacting Apple to provide support directly:

Contact - Official Apple Support

Hope it works out for you and Mark Mcshane!

Considering Spotlight isn’t finding local files, I may check to see if you have Optimize Storage enabled for iCloud Drive via System Settings > Apple ID > iCloud Drive > Options. I do believe Spotlight normally finds even optimized files, but if for whatever reason it’s not, and considering your local storage, I may disable this feature and see if a difference considering reindexing Spotlight didn’t make a difference.

Optimize storage space on your Mac - Apple Support

Have you tried reindexing Spotlight?

Spotlight: How to re-index

Using the finder because Spotlight is broken is not a solution.

Perhaps I wasn't being clear.

It sounds like your Spotlight index is corrupt or incomplete.

Spotlight works fine. There is nothing "broken" about it. There may be something wrong with yours which you can attempt to fix, or not. Since re-indexing didn't work, there may be some process or file that is causing it to hang up in the index. You do have Documents selected, correct?

I agree with you Carlos Garcia5. Search from spotlight was a definite feature and it's gone. I've followed Barney-E15's plan to the letter, twice, and it still doesn't work. Am i really going to have to find some thread that has me mucking around with terminal (that just isn't my thing). Reddit is alive with people whose spotlight stopped working. For me it times closely with the updates to ventura. It's a disaster for my professional work. There's a new OS coming? Is that true? Is there the possibility of a fix in that? Please let this be fixed...

Oh, and search has gone in mail too!

This annoyed me too so I added a rule to Little Snitch to block Spotlight accessing the internet, which stopped it fine and now Spotlight only searches my Mac and just has a line in the "Related Searches" section with a "Search the Web" link. I appreciate that this won't help people who don't have Little Snitch, but maybe you could add a rule to the Mac's Firewall to block it.

Search isn't "gone", it's just not working. And no, an upgrade to a new operating system most definitely won't fix it. You'll need to correct the problem first and then you can upgrade, which I really wouldn't recommend if you are using this computer for professional work.

What is causing it to break?, you ask. Good question. You can run Console.app and look for Spotlight crashes. Please DO NOT attempt to use Console.app to look at log file entries. That's not what I'm asking. Just look for crashes. Start your own thread and post one of those.

The most likely cause is trying to do something funky. What that is, I can't really say. I'm sure it is something that, supposedly, Apple supports 100% - like an external boot drive, another boot volume, or something like that. Another possibly would be any one of 3 dozen system modification apps, "clean up" apps, hacking tools, etc.

Not very intuitive, but I find that for files, it is much better to search from the finder. There is a little magnifying glass in the top par.

Easyfind. Not as fast as Spotlight, but if Spotlight's not working then it'll be better.