spotlight not working on Sierra

This is what I get in the terminal box when I do this

/System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist: Could not find specified service

I want to add my voice to the chorus of folks experiencing Spotlight-related issues. On my 5K iMac system with plenty of RAM and hard disk (SS) space, I began noticing frequent spinning beach balls and slowed performance some time after installing Sierra (10.12.1). I used Activity Monitor to help pinpoint the issue, which persisted even after taking measures based on repeated EtreCheck scans. I never experienced this problem with El Capitan (or Yosemite). Apple: Are you listening?? Please please please fix!!!!!!

Apple are not great listeners - they like telling people, but not listening, that's my impression anyway.

As an update - my laptop literally goes through a continuous indexing cycle (without me doing anything). Sometimes Spotlight is working okay and I think "great, its fixed itself, I can move on with my life" other times Spotlight doesn't work and the indexing has disappeared and then a bit later I find it re-indexing - except even when apparently on the most fully indexed part of this tedious cycle, ALL FILES in finder never works (it used to and I found this very useful for organising things) and it never indexed my emails (Apple Mail) - so now I have to take out my iPhone to search my mail which is ridiculous. Apple please fix, or help us or something you useless listeners!

Adjusting the iCloud settings seems to have resolved the issue (I unchecked all of the options under “Documents” and unchecked the “Optimize Mac Storage” option). Apparently, the default settings are not for everyone!

I am having the same problem. This is very frustrating. I have rebooted the mac, and that did not work.

I first noticed the problem that my Apple Mail app does not search and then went to the internet to find what might be happening and saw this is part of a larger problem as my spotlight does not search either. I tried the fix that others posted except for using terminal. (don't know how to do that). This all started after upgrading (or downgrading) to macOS Sierra 10.12.1 on a iMac 27" mid 2011 with SSD 16GB RAM.

I have been a loyal Mac user since the apple 2E and this is not very pleasant

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!HELP!!!!!!!!!!

Dear John 007

Since 3 months i have installed Sierra and i have only trouble. I have tried all the above without success (i am administrator on my macbook):

- if i try to go in system preferences/spotlight and add anything into privacy it would tell my unknown error and i have no sufficient rights. So i can't do anything to start reindexing

- if i try the first of your command with sudo it would tell me "Could not find specified service"

Really i don't know what to do, since 3 months i am using webmail, because i can't search and find anything in my mails. I cannot use any search function on the macbook. It is absolutely ridiculous, that there is no solution this!!

I'm having the same problem and have spent countless hours trying every fix listed here on the support site to no avail. An upgrade shouldn't cause global functions like searching to just stop working. MACs have become just as bad if not worse than Windows based machines as far as the problems you encounter. At a minimum someone from Apple support should post a definitive answer to this issue as there are many posts about it. Is it a bug? Or does upgrading change some system setting? How about some help here Apple? Why does upgrading to Sierra (which by the way I would have never done except that my iphone 7 wasn't recognized by the version of Itunes I was running on Mountain Lion which I was very happy with) cause me to now not be able to search for anything on my MAC?

Hi Hypercussion,

same for me.

But just now i tried following solution and something seems to be moving for me.

Link to this post

try

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

I hope all the good chance for you as well!!

same problem

This worked for me. It makes no sense though. I also removed iCloud drive from the privacy settings.

SOLUTION:

sudo mdutil -i off /

GO TO SYSTEM PREFERENCES, SPOTLIGHT... Add your Storage to the "privacy" list then remove it from the list.

sudo mdutil -E /

sudo mdutil -i on /

I had this error, went away for a while and when I came back I could remove the drive from Spotlight privacy and then Spotlight (and my Smart Mailboxes in Mail) came back.

after i drag the folder to the privacy area and click OK, there is a notification that i have no permission to do the operation. haah...?

Thanks 🙂