Spotlight "Privacy List Error"

@pgoddin After about 2 months of trying everything, and thinking that one of the main reasons I use Mac (Apple since 1979) has ended (ie the incredibly fast search functionality), I found your solution and ran it yesterday, and it took under 2 hours to reindex my hard drive. Thank you so very much and well done for working this out.

Before I read this thread, I had already removed all the apps that I don't really need on my Mac including Zoom, HoudaSpot, CleanMyMac, and others, and also doing rm /System/Volumes/Data/.Spotlight-V100 but nothing helped to get the Spotlight indexing to work, except your method. And it only took 2 hours to reindex my Spotlight; I been waiting a month for it to complete, and trying to work out ways to speed it up. Maybe the latest 14.4.1 update broke spotlight. Now I've put all those Apps back.

I know that lots of people here don't think that CleanUps are necessary, but I like that CleanMyMac has a deep clean and that it cleans old logs and other things so that I don't need to do that manually. In the old days we were told to leave our Mac alone, but now with 2 TB hard drives and even with 32GB of RAM, we need to run cleanups even more regularly and importantly. I also use ClamXAV and have supported this app since its beginning. Although one couldn't get viruses on Mac (back on those days), I didn't want to inadvertently receive a virus and forward it to someone. I also like the new Moonlock feature in CleanMyMac and these guys are always looking for new cleanups, which keeps their program current.

Thank you so very much - I nearly cried when I saw this post/answer because I had been googling and searching endlessly for months (no exaggeration) and not even knowing exactly what to type in google to find what I was looking for. I don't understand why little gems of the internet like this are the minority, why can the right information not be the first information we come across? Thank you again!

pgoddin wrote:

Let me summarize the above which was a bit wordy. I can't be the only one with this problem.

(3) CleanMyMac has a reindex spotlight maintenance tool. Gave a permission error when i ran it.

Any help?

<CleanMyMac> is known to cause nothing but issues on the macOS.

It has always been recommended do not install it or uninstall it.

third party software

Look for a built-in or in-app uninstaller and use that.

for your third party app— If in doubt refer to the developers website; Support/Help/FAQ

Contact a third party vendor

Contact a third-party vendor - Apple Support

Uninstalling CleanMyMac AND any other fixit/optimizer/cleanup software AND any anti-virus software should be enough. After removing all that, then reboot and test BEFORE re-installing Sonoma. You shouldn't need to re-install Sonoma unless there are other programs causing problems like I mentioned. Only re-install Sonoma if removing all those apps doesn't help. After the reboot, and things still seem broken, try a safe boot before re-installing Sonoma.

Start up your Mac in safe mode - Apple Support (English)

@pgoddin Your solution worked for me. Highly appreciated. Thanks

Per the recommendation of @leroydouglas, when you remove CleanMyMac, make sure you go to their website and follow their uninstall instructions. Don't just drag the app into the trash. If you have any other cleaner or anti-virus apps, I'd remove those as well.

Thanks. It also solved a different problem that I've been having which is that I could never su - root on my computer. I assumed it was because I bought it second hand, but it turns out that the su password can be changed in a different way. :)

One tiny thing is that I cd'd into the subdirectory where the rm -rf command takes place. I didn't want to take a chance of wiping my drive. One of my jokes is to go to su - root, then cd / then rm -rf *, which is equal to cd \ and format c: on DOS (Windows), so I'm always extremely careful with rm -rf ...

@pgoddin - Thank you for this comprehensive solution - I can offer a syntax correction (Aug 2024).

Like others here, I'm grateful for this fix - it worked for me after several days of searching on the interweb.

Similar problems for people here and elsewhere.

So, there is one change since your post. These commands didn't work for me:

sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist
sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist

the LOAD / UNLOAD options in launchctl are now deprecated in favour of BOOTOUT and BOOTSTRAP.

Also the domain specifier syntax appears to be different. It requires: system/<name-of-service> (no .plist required)

I found this worked

sudo launchctl bootout system/com.apple.metadata.mds

Also, I found that the corresponding BOOOTSTRAP option was not necessary since MDS loads automatically on a restart.. (However, you can prevent this in a way that persists between restarts, should you want to, using the DISABLE option - which you'll need to reverse with the ENABLE option).

sudo launchctl list

is helpful since it shows whether the daemon is running or not.

I recommend using:

man launchctl

To get some more clarity on all this.

Hope this is a useful addendum.