The first character is lost sometimes in spotlight window

Good news, ... I'm not alone. When the searchfield is empty, the first character gets selected and removed by the second.

Are we too fast for this generation of software? So far I have found no solution, just be more patient. 😟

A bug has been filed for this issue on 22nd October 20015: https://openradar.appspot.com/23222411 .

I'm having the same issue. Very annoying.

I've been affected by this since the first day I installed El Capitan and have been desperately looking for somebody else with the same problem. Glad to have found you guys. It's amazing how annoying this thing is. Let's hope for a bug fix and thanks to those who filed the bug report.

My issue seems to be resolved by reformatting the disk. While investigating, I discovered my disk could not be repaired. Restored from my cloned backup. Much snappier after the reformat.

I'm having the same issue for quite some time now. I'm not entirely sure, but IIRC it started even before installing El Capitan (I'm using it since the first public beta).

A quick video I made showing the issue can be found here: http://cl.ly/dxn8. Note I type "das" every time and you can see some times the first letter is "dropped".

Running frame by frame is possible to see that the "d" appears but the cursors does not move after it replacing the letter on the next key stroke:

A more repeatable way of reproducing it (at least for me) is following the steps:

1. launch the bar and type something that matches;
2. wait for the details to appear (or just the icon on the right side);
3. clear the input using the ESC key;
4. try to type anything after that.

It seems a little better under 10.11.2 but the problem is still there.

Same problem for me, even on 10.11.2 (15C50).

I had this exact same issue, for months. After all simple troubleshooting failed, I seem to have solved it with an erase and install to a clean copy of OS X 11.2, followed by a restore of data from my Time Machine backup.

Back up all your data, boot your Mac to it's Recovery Partition, select Disk Utility and then erase Macintosh HD. Then quit disk utility, choose to reinstall OS X, and when it's reinstalled and booted, select to transfer your data back from your backup.

It's only been about 48 hours, but I was previously having this issue very frequently, and it hasn't happened once since I erased and reinstalled.

If I wanted to wipe my computer and re-install my operating system whenever a small problem occurs, I would have bought a PC.

First, I want to note that this problem is being discussed elsewhere, though none of them provide a solution:

https://openradar.appspot.com/23222411

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7296308

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7318604

https://www.reddit.com/r/OSXElCapitan/comments/3wczrk/spotlight_eating_the_first _letter/

I too have this problem. I've spoken with three senior advisors with Apple Technical Support, none of them had a solution. I have this problem on both of my computers (both 15" MacBook Pro Retina). The problem arises most commonly when I spotlight search for "Things" (which is a todo list program); the subsequent spotlight search then loses the first letter that is typed. It seems like the problem arises after Spotlight does a certain kind of search.

I did a complete erase and reinstall of OSX. At first the problem was gone, but as I reinstalled software the problem came back. One time I observed that it came back as soon as I reinstalled "Things". However, another time I did an erase and reinstall of OSX and some programs (but not Things), and the problem recurred.

Given how relatively uncommon this problem seems to be, but some of us have had it on multiple computers, suggests to me that it is some software or setting that we have that has contaminated both computers. If I had the time I would repeatedly do erase and reinstalls to try to isolate what programs make the problem come back.

Any other ideas? Apple?

I also have this issue since upgrading to El Capitan. As none of my colleagues at work (about 30-50 mac users) have this problem I thought it is a app with "deep integration" I installed on my computer which causes this. In the hope that somebody else posts his apps and so we could find the one app which causes this, here is my list of apps with "deep integration" (especially those which have an icon top right)

- aText

- caffeine

- calends

- captured

- divvy

- google drive

- istycal

- karabiner

- parallels

- seil

- share bucket

- sonoair

- synology cloud station

- tunnelblick

- viscosity

This is troubleshooting 101 – three of your programs fiddle with what is typed on the keyboard, which is exactly the problem you are having:

• aText, which says it "accelerates your typing by replacing abbreviations";
• karabiner, which is described as "A powerful and stable keyboard customizer for OS X"; and
• seil, which is described as a "utility for the caps lock key and some international keys in PC keyboards".

One of these, or the combination of two or three of them, is likely to be the cause of your problem. That's because all of them "hook into the innards" of OS X to watch as you type on the keyboard and sometimes change what you type, which, as I wrote above, is exactly the problem you are having.

I advise you to first make sure that you have the latest versions of all of these programs and that those versions are supposed to work on El Capitan. After doing that, if the problem persists, try uninstalling them (one by one, in combinations) until the problem disappears. By "uninstall", I mean that you must uninstall each one using a utility or directions provided by the program's authors. Not fully uninstalling them may be worse than doing nothing.