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cannot type in spotlight

Hey Everyone hope someone can help me out. Im running EL Cap 10.11.4 on a MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid 2010) I know I need a new one LOL


The problem that has come about is when I open the Spotlight search in the upper right hand corner.. The search opens up and the blinking cursor is the however when I click the box and Type it won't fill anything in. I have tried everything and this keeps happening.




Has anyone had this problem or know what I can do to fix it.



Thanks


Matt

MacBook Pro, OS X El Capitan (10.11), Mid 2010 Doesn't Support Apple TV

Posted on May 15, 2016 9:40 AM

Reply
Question marked as Best reply

Posted on Oct 25, 2017 5:25 PM

HI guys , i had this issue ,, Really simple fix , go to utilities , activity monitor, select spotlight and all the process with spotlight in the name , force quit them by selecting the top right hand side cross ,and then it should work.. hope it helps

16 replies

Jan 12, 2017 9:33 AM in response to Linc Davis

I'm experiencing this exact same issue on the new 15" MacBook Pro with Touchbar. Restarting the computer always resolves this issue, but it then starts happening again after using spotlight for a little while.


When I look at the logs after attempting to type in spotlight, this is what I repeatedly see:


GetCurrentInputSourceKeyboardProperties detected invalid keyboardLayout inputSource=<TSMInputSource 0x600000220fe0> Unknown Input Source: (**kind=NULL**)

Jul 10, 2017 6:33 AM in response to matthewfromspring hill

I had the same problem and I was searching for a way to fix this. Fortunately while I was scrolling through the answers on this question to try them out, I opened spot light and pressed cmd + V to paste my clip board and it registered it. Then I selected all the characters and deleted them. Surprisingly, the spotlight began to work fine again like before.

Hope this helps.


Thank you.

Aug 15, 2017 7:28 AM in response to Thurston217

Thurston217's response did not work for me, on 10.12.6, but this did from terminal (saves a reboot for sure):


sglewis$ ps aux | grep com.apple.spotlight.IndexAgent


sglewis 25250 0.0 0.0 2541204 3592 ?? S 9:03AM 0:00.06 /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/CoreSpotlight.framework/Support/com.apple.spo tlight.IndexAgent

sglewis 25900 0.0 0.0 2432804 808 s000 S+ 10:27AM 0:00.00 grep com.apple.spotlight.IndexAgent


I highlighted the 'PID' for the spotlight process we're looking for, it will be unique, so not 25250 in your case except maybe by random chance.


$ sudo kill -s hup 25250

This will restart the process, and for me, instantly fixed it... until the next time that is! This happens once a month or so.

Sep 1, 2017 8:35 AM in response to matthewfromspring hill

Just had the same issue. I restarted Spotlight and it's fine now. Open Terminal.app and type:


sudo ps aux | grep Spotlight\.app | grep -v grep | awk '{print $2}' | xargs kill -9


That line finds the running Spotlight process and kills it. Your computer will automatically restart Spotlight. When it asks you for a password, type your normal user password you log in with.

May 15, 2016 3:37 PM in response to matthewfromspring hill

Please launch the Console application in any one of the following ways:

☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)

☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.

☞ Open LaunchPad and start typing the name.

The title of the Console window should be All Messages. If it isn't, select

SYSTEM LOG QUERIES ▹ All Messages

from the log list on the left. If you don't see that list, select

View ▹ Show Log List

from the menu bar at the top of the screen.

Click the Clear Display icon in the toolbar. Then take an action that isn't working the way you expect. Select any lines that appear in the Console window. Copy them to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C. Paste into a reply to this message by pressing command-V.

The log contains a vast amount of information, almost all of which is irrelevant to solving any particular problem. When posting a log extract, be selective. A few dozen lines are almost always more than enough.

Please don't indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into this discussion.

Please don't post screenshots of log messages—post the text.

Some private information, such as your name or email address, may appear in the log. Anonymize before posting.

When you post the log extract, you might see an error message on the web page: "You have included content in your post that is not permitted," or "The message contains invalid characters." That's a bug in the forum software. Please post the text on Pastebin, then post a link here to the page you created.

If you have an account on Pastebin, please don't select Private from the Paste Exposure menu on the page, because then no one but you will be able to see it.

May 16, 2016 8:11 AM in response to Linc Davis

5/16/16 7:37:56.276 PM Spotlight[344]: (

0 CoreFoundation 0x00007fff8ceba4f2 __exceptionPreprocess + 178

1 libobjc.A.dylib 0x00007fff8c9e473c objc_exception_throw + 48

2 CoreFoundation 0x00007fff8cf214bd +[NSException raise:format:] + 205

3 AppKit 0x00007fff9627f398 _convertEventRefToString + 274

4 AppKit 0x00007fff9627f1f6 -[NSEvent charactersIgnoringModifiers] + 628

5 QuickLookUI 0x00007fff841cec3c __55-[QLPreviewPathOverlayController _activateEventMonitor]_block_invoke + 58

6 AppKit 0x00007fff9626a54a _NSSendEventToObservers + 344

7 AppKit 0x00007fff96268188 -[NSApplication sendEvent:] + 56

8 Spotlight 0x0000000108c01ef1 Spotlight + 360177

9 AppKit 0x00007fff960cfef6 -[NSApplication run] + 796

10 AppKit 0x00007fff9609946c NSApplicationMain + 1176

11 libdyld.dylib 0x00007fff93aa65ad start + 1

12 ??? 0x0000000000000001 0x0 + 1

)

May 16, 2016 11:02 AM in response to matthewfromspring hill

Please read this whole message before doing anything.

This procedure is a diagnostic test. It won’t solve your problem. Don’t be disappointed when you find that nothing has changed after you complete it.

The purpose of this test is to determine whether the problem is localized to your user account. Enable guest logins* and log in as Guest. Don't use the Safari-only “Guest User” login created by “Find My Mac.”

While logged in as Guest, you won’t have access to any of your documents or settings. Applications will behave as if you were running them for the first time. Don’t be alarmed by this behavior; it’s normal. If you need any passwords or other personal data in order to complete the test, memorize, print, or write them down before you begin.

Test while logged in as Guest. Same problem?

After testing, log out of the guest account and, in your own account, disable it if you wish. Any files you created in the guest account will be deleted automatically when you log out of it.

*Note: If you’ve activated “Find My Mac” or FileVault in OS X 10.7 or later, then you can’t enable the Guest account. The "Guest User" login created by "Find My Mac" is not the same. Create a new account in which to test, and delete it, including its home folder, after testing.

cannot type in spotlight

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