spotlight not working on Sierra

It does NOT take allot of commandline hacks to "get finder working" - it does not take a single one.

Apple is "not ignoring a problem": it works for everyone else.

This person has hacked his box and wants an answer to avoid restoring his machine with the following (which is ok but he is blaming apple and apple certainly doesn't deserve blame for his hacking):

Did you try resetting SMC and or PRAM/NVRAM yet ?

http://osxdaily.com/2010/03/24/when-and-how-to-reset-your-mac-system-management- controller-smc/

If you did that already, do you have your data backed up or need it backed up before attempting anything further ? Do you think it is the OS, or perhaps a problem peripheral attached you could leave un-attatched ?

see macOS Sierra: Erase and reinstall macOS

did you try all those things yet?

Hi Buzz,

I have had Sierra on the mac for awhile, so I don't know why spotlight stopped working in mail. Just did.

Yes, I would backup and reinstall the system. I use time machine which backs up several times a day so however us backup do that first. Then I used the apple guidelines to do a clean reinstall just the system (not erasing/restoring the whole hard drive). You will use disk utilities for this.

Here is the link I used. Good luck.

How to reinstall macOS - Apple Support

FWIW - this solution solved my slightly different problem of spotlight search working, but finder's search not working for the exact same search terms. Running those two commands as described did result in the spotlight search box showing "indexing" for a brief time, followed by everything being normal again, this time, with finder's search actually working. Hooray/sigh.

Hello Pétur, I figured out a way to solve this issue in Sierra:

Create the following directory:

sudo mkdir -p /private/var/db/Spotlight-V100/Volumes/

Then re-enable indexing of that Volume:

sudo mdutil -i on /Volume/your_volume_name

This will re-enable Spotlight indexing of your external volume and you should be able to see mdsworker happily indexing away in Activity monitor.

"

JayaII

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!"

Wow, Thanks!! Fixed Mine!!

mostly so, i think

i've had el capitan to current sierra working for both spotlight and locate(1) since the first week i had it.

i've never used any commandline commands - it always works and updates do not cause issues

i'm surprise i had to use one command to get BSD locate(1) working and it's remembered it and kept it working across all the update, which i'm very happy with

I've been having this same issue. I've even completed erased my drive and installed a fresh copy of Sierra and a completely new user profile. Things worked for about a month and now suddenly it's happening again.

If I try to add my startup drive to the spotlight privacy list, I get this error:

Privacy List Error

(null)

"The item couldn't be added or removed because of an unknown error."

If I try the terminal command:

sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist and enter my password, I get:

"Operation not permitted while System Integrity Protection is engaged"

After months of this, I guess I'll just stop using spotlight entirely. Its annoying though because I so far have been relying on it in mail and as an app launcher. There's workarounds to both but I'd prefer to use it if I could.

I've been using a SSD raid as a startup volume and wondered if it somehow had something to do with that. For the people seeing this same issue, what kind of system drives are you using? Maybe there's a pattern?

In my point of view starting the OS on an external volume it not a good thing, always. I also switched with iTunes back to the default path due errors all the time; only the assets stored on a NAS.

With many many help of Synology I was able to solve my problem with Spotlight. The Synology OS has its own indexing service which is able to collaborate with Spotlight. But in fact I use it almost never because it is slow; if a file is located on the working station it is OK.

So at first - and if you are not a man who is often in a hurry - I would recommend a NAS which has such an indexing service on board (and it is always a good recommendation for data integrity). At second - if you have often searching for files - I would recommend the program "Foxtrot Personal/Professional Search" which indexes your whole network. Due security restrictions of Apple it is a good idea to buy the little application "AutoMounter" in the AppStore in addition - this lets your shares always logged in without entering your password.

Hope this will help.

PS: You have to give Spotlight enough time rebuild its index; if you have a big network it takes 2 to 5 days with shares to work well (index-time of my system is always 3am in the night).

Throwing this out for people who have been searching every thread, byway and highway trying to get spotlight up and running again. Since upgrading to Sierra spotlight would only return results from the web and the local dictionary app. Tried everything. Then I tried this - Open Terminal which is in the utilities folder in Applications, type in or paste:

sudo mdutil -a -i on

Hit return, terminal window should ask for password, enter it, hit return. The reply from Terminal is "indexing enabled"... I went to spotlight, typed something in and voila, not only did the application I typed in show up but spotlight was now indexing again.

Somehow when Sierra was installed it shut down all local indexing. No amount of fiddling with spotlight in preferences, unchecking boxes and checking them again, rebooting, various complicated Terminal commands to rebuild stuff, dragging the HD into the spotlight preferences privacy window and then removing it, all the stuff I sifted through online, nothing worked until I simply re-enabled indexing via the terminal with that short but sweet command.

Hope someone gets the relief I did. cheers.

I had just recently (last few months) encountered this issue.Been running 12.2.6 for quite awhile. Mail would come up empty when searched. A real pain. Tried ALL the workarounds (spotlight privacy, mailbox rebuilds, reindexing spotlight and terminal code.) NONE worked, then I decided to reinstall the system. THAT worked and now my mail is searchable.

Hope it doesn't happen again, and no idea why it did on the first place.

macbook pro, Sierra 12.2.6

Hi Artofax,

I have the same problem since updating to Sierra. Now on High Sierra the same.

After starting the comand "sudo mdutil -E /" the index works for some hours, sometimes some days. Then the problem is the same like before. It is crazy.

I am also thinking about reinstalling the system. What did you do? Making a backup and then a "repairing" of the system or a complete new installation and then restore your backup?

Thank you for your help!

There are too many people posting different questions than the Original Poster, many reporting "solved", many simply introducing complications: many of which who have been hacking their system (which is their own issue not an issue with Sierra or Apple - though they are claiming it is). Some are even posting issues with custom hardware changes.

Please keep the topic limited to ONE problem (Spotlight is not working in ONE specific manner with one specific solution, rather than many hacked failures (ie, permission changes) with many re-hacked fixes (differing startups)).

Most of the problems and answers posted were not posted by the OP and do not resemble OP's problem, and are "false reports" against Sierra, as if Sierra has a problem, caused by the poster. Furthermore it's impossible to follow who is asking what and who is answering what: which is the real problem - the NEW question and answers are off-topic and disorganized so that even someone attempting to follow the thread cannot sift through who has which failure and who is answering which of those failures as it's all intermingled.

--------------------------------

BOTTOM LINE: Sierra has no issues with Spotlight not working for the vast majority of users, and most of the people posting admitted one way or another they modified things to not work while blaming Sierra.

Suddenly for no apparent reason, when I try to launch Spotlight, I get something called "NameChanger" which I have never used nor even heard of. And I don't even get a version of "NameChanger" that works; I get a window saying something to the effect of, "NameChanger won't work with this version of MacOS."

I get this whether I launch Spotlight with the menu item at the top-right, or the keystroke combo (which I have set to Ctrl-Space, since I use Cmd-Space to invoke LaunchBar 6.9.1)

What gives? Spotlight USED TO work fine alongside this version of LaunchBar in this version of MacOS.

hello,

I had this problem too, and adding and removing the Harddisk to the "privacy" list didn't work.

In the end it turned out that the whole spotlight indexing system was shut off.

Enter the following Terminal command to re-enable indexing:

sudo mdutil -i on /

I have a MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Early 2013) running High Sierra v10.13.1 which I love. Not enamored with the new architecture, yet. My friends at a professional photography shop in LA said it best: "They took the Pro out of MacBook Pro" -- if you up in Cupertino are listening, please put it back.

First my Mail search completely stopped working, then I noticed that Spotlight stopped returning any results. I read each solution thread and responded accordingly, to no avail. The most useful pieces of knowledge that I learned along the way is to find "mdworker" in Activity Monitor -- that is apparently Spotlight indexing. The other is "Other" - in System Preferences, you can check "Other" to have Spotlight search Other -- that seems to be where my Mail search is.

I isolated my problem. At work, we decided to backup my work-related folders on an external Seagate "Backup Plus Portable Drive", a small, TB HD. It only works if you install it's enabling software "Paragon NTFS for Mac 15" which comes on the Seagate HD, and which I had installed to make the manual backup work. What I didn't know is that Pagagon NTFS for Mac 15 mounts all your operating disks. There are "Enable Spotlight Indexing" checkboxes on each disk which were not checked. How dare they? I checked each box -- and "mdworker" lit up on my Activity Monitor like a Christmas tree. Spotlight is now working, and so is the search function in Mail, (after I went to System Preferences and checked "Other" in Search Results tab box).