Searching in Finder gives no results on Mavericks. Spotlight is working.

I'm having the same problem with useless search results (zero) in Finder in El Capitan. Obviously, Apple has fixed nothing. But this reply that suggests repairing disk permissions is even funnier since Apple has since removed that features from the disk utility program. The only possible way to do it now is through the shell (ah progress for a GUI that "just works") or buy a 3rd party program. I never really believed in repairing permissions anyway. There would have to be one set wrong that had something to do with your issue. Getting no results is something wrong with the search feature. I get results for the entire computers, but since I have my external drives set to not be indexed, it can't find anything on them and that's ridiculous. It should still be able to do a manual search when you ask for it. They got rid of all "busy indicators" in El Capitan as well so you can't even tell whether it's even attempting a search or it already gave up. OS X (macOS now sadly) used to be so much better and faster. It's a shame.

Rebuild the Spotlight index. If you try to search now from the magnifying-glass icon in the top right corner of the display, there will be an indication that indexing is in progress.

I am very disappointed on Mavericks: The finder truly is a basic feature. I do not know if I have the same Problem: When using the finder I get a kind of "frozen" screen with the file names, any further info is missing and I cannot open any file!

The finder totally lost it's basic purpose to finde files... also Spotlight becam much less reliable.

Thanks for discussion!

I am having the same problem, even after rebuilding the search index (which we shouldn't have to do, btw), When I'm using Spotlight from an "Open File" dialog from within an app, I cannot find any results.

Linc Davis,

Thanks, it works for me.

I too had the same problem. (enter text to search and nothing)

What I found was that once I added additional criteria (eg. name, kind) by clicking the plus symbol next to save and directly below the search bubble in the finder tool bar, I was able to get results.

I am so disappointed.

Same problem.

Agree, totally disappointed with Mavericks.

So messing, so slow, and not works as expected at all….

Missing so much Snow Leopard, best OS ever.

What Apple wants to be for the future? It’s appears that Apple wants to be only an old history of triumph, but not looking for success, anymore.

No respect for users, no marketing… Not an great company?

I have the same problem. The finder does not properly search the files. When I search any name it is changing the result, especially when I have a connected external hd.

I'm so glad to hear someone else point out the superiority of Snow Leopard to any Mac OS since. With each subsequent version, it has gotten more bloated, gimmicky and less useable. Apple seems so eager to make changes, they have adopted second-rate solutions to previously solved problems (case in point Tags versus Labels, and any recent version of iTunes). It is disheartening when Apple "improves" things that used to work with things that don't.

Hi,

any solution for this? i have the exact same issue i cannot search in finder, but the spotlight search is working fine, tried to follow the re index steps. still nothing in finder.

please i need help.

on the other hand i missed in finder the color tags which was easy one step to apply any idea if we can get those back.

Dear all,

This may sound obvious and rather old fashioned but I too suffered the following problems

1. Search not working in Mail

2. Mail Junk and Trash folders missing

3. Search not working in Finder

I fixed it by........restarting my mac.

Now everything works.

Give it a try.

Fingers crossed,

Cheers.

🙂

Hey all,

I was having the same problem trying to find a solution but no solution is out there worked. So I just download the Yosimite Beta and everything is working as normal and faster. It comes out this fall so its probably 90% complete with out bugs.

I installed it 24 hours ago and no problems along with spotlight working, preview, mail search and time machine works which many had problems in Maverick.

https://appleseed.apple.com/sp/betaprogram/guide

Search in Finder, OS 10.9.5* is hit or miss. Searching a folder for [name includes] "slide" (or just "slide) returns no results. However, a search for .psd pulls up "Home Page Slide.psd".

*Apple's new interface designs for both mobile and desktop are so ugly that I'm waiting until I absolutely have to to update.

You can probably do this to fix this issue:

1. Go to Finder -> Applications -> Utilities -> Disk utility

Then inside Disk Utility select your HDD partition then click Verify permissions and finally Repair permissions.