Spotlight has stopped correctly handling Apple Notes results

kylieo wrote:

Yes, like I described, results are found. They just don’t open correctly when selected.

A SafeBoot Start up your Mac in safe mode - Apple Support will sort many anomalies

Does a quick disk repair before it fully boots up, and certain system caches get cleared and rebuilt, third party system modifications and system accelerations are disabled temporarily.

Login and test. Reboot as normal and test. Caches get rebuilt automatically.

no resolve—

To be proactive you can file a bug report / submit your Apple Feedback here: Feedback - macOS - Apple

( make a note of your macOS 26.5 if it is not in the list yet for macOS "versions" )

Similar to contacts in the Contacts application and emails in the Mail application, notes in the Notes application can be located on My Mac, iCloud or a third-party cloud-based service.

Using iCloud with Notes, searching with Spotlight

Examples;  include Google Chrome as a search, Etrecheck as a search, Purgeable Space and resetting the password.

Spotlight can find several items, including notes in the Notes application. 

Tested on a M5 MBA, M4 Desktop, M4 MBA and M2 Desktop 

Each are running macOS macOS 26.5 ( 25F71 )

kylieo wrote:

Thank you; this was helpful. It did not solve the issue, but I was able to narrow it down.

The problem only appears with Spotlight search results of Notes or containing folders that have emojis in them.

So it looks like it's a real bug. I'll pass this to the feedback address you listed.

Good computing kylieo !

I would have never considered using an emoji in a file/folder name...