I noticed that spotlight no longer "sees" Application files when I search. To remedy, I added and removed the Applications folder from the Spotlight Privacy pane. When that didn't work, I added and removed the entire hard drive with the same result.
The next steps were sudo mdutil -E / and then sudo mdutil -sa. I got the victory message after sudo mdutil -sa, but spotlight still ignores apps.
Next step?
Mac mini
For those who are still struggling with this, here's the fix. You have to execute all four commands in this order (thanks to the unnamed person who posted this way back in 2011):
sudo mdutil -i off /
sudo rm -rf /.Spotlight*
sudo mdutil -i on /
sudo mdutil -E /
In order, these accomplish:
Thanks for responding. My frequently-used apps are already in the dock. It's the others I should, by OS design, be able to quickly find using spotlight. I have no idea what disabled it.
Then try the method discussed in the document I linked to.
Thanks. That's the first thing I did. No luck
This did not work (hence the original post)
I'm glad it worked for you. That one frustrated me for quite a while.
Spotlight indexing somehow disabled--how to re-enable?
