Q: Spotlight doesnt work after Sierra upgrade

Try to rebuild Spotlight Rebuild the Spotlight index on your Mac - Apple Support

OK. Try this. Open a Terminal windows and type or paste this:

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

... wait a few seconds, then type or paste this command ...

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

If you now go to spotlight it should say its indexing.

Have you tried rebooting the Mac? It helped with some users.

If that doesn't help, open System Preferences -> Spotlight and uncheck "Allow Spotlight Suggestions in Spotlight and Look Up" and then recheck it.

You might want to check your regional settings if they got messed up in Sierra upgrade since Spotlight relies on regional preferences in some of its functionality.

If all of the above don't help, I've found this fix on the interwebs that might do it for you:

• Launch ‘Activity Monitor’ (located in /Applications/Utilities/)
• Locate the process ‘SystemUIServer’, highlight it, and click the red button “Quit Process”
• Within a few seconds the menubar will rebuild itself and often Spotlight will magically work

Good luck.

Ok, I've got the same problem.

After hours of trying and searching for solutions I suddenly got Spotlight back on track...

My issues after installing Sierra and activating CloudDrive were:

*/ Fluctuating free disk space;

*/ 'mds_store' activity that consummed all my memory;

*/ Issues with finding my mac keyboard on the login screen after a fresh start;

*/ No spotlight reaction, and if it did something it was stuck in a never ending loop of rebuilding without any progress;

*/ Apple mail database got stuck.

What didn't worked:

*/ Rebuilded my mailboxes;

*/ Reboot;

*/ Checked my system activity: 'mds_store' was the issue;

*/ Reset RAM and also deconnected my mac for 15 seconds;

*/ Put my HD on privacy (do not index) in the spotlight pref. This resulted in a weird 'null' error when I tried to remove it again. I needed a reboot, but the mds_store stayed overactive.

*/ Unchecked all the spotlight pref's: no effect.

*/ Reputted afterwards again my full HD on privacy in the spotlight pref. Got confronted with the same 'null' bug an rebooted.

*/ After the reboot the mds_store activity stayed silent until I removed my HD from the privacy menu and it all restarted...

*/ Checked terminal: mdutil -sv / (result: error) , sudo mdutil -E / (result: error), ...

Tried and retried this a couple of times, but without any progress.

What finally worked:

*/ Unchecked all spotlight pref's;

*/ Opened terminal and entered the next line: 'sudo touch /.metadata-never-index'  and rebooted afterwards my mac.

*/ Reopened terminal after the reboot and entered the next line: 'mdutil -sv /' and got the message "Indexing enabled"; followed by 'sudo mdutil -E /' and got the same message "indexing enabled".

*/ Opened system pref's > Spotlight and activated again all spotlight pref's.

*/ 'cmd+space' gave back reaction and all items could suddenly be searched again on my HD. When hitting enter in the spotlight search bar you could see a working indexating bar. 'mds_store' is active also, but just using a fraction of my memory now...

I don't know or this will be the end of the problem, but at least I can finish my work.

I hope this will help you!

Did not work still flashing mail archive.

Apple should find a fix must be a lot of people with this problem.

An extra option I found:

Terminal:

sudo touch /.metadata-never-index 

Reboot your engine ;-)

sudo rm /.Spotlight-V100/VolumeConfiguration.plist sudo rm /.metadata-never-index 
sudo rm /.metadata-never-index

And a new reboot.

(more info: http://www.filetypehelp.com/purpose-files-metadataneverindex-file-extension/)

Hi, when I tried the Terminal, I got this:

Try this one:

Terminal:

sudo touch /.metadata-never-index 

Reboot your engine ;-)

sudo rm /.Spotlight-V100/VolumeConfiguration.plist sudo rm /.metadata-never-index 
sudo rm /.metadata-never-index

And a new reboot.

you got to have Spotlight to re-index the system

+1 for this problem. I've spent well over 4 hrs trying to resolve this. Must have tried 10 different methods including everything here, everything on reddit (regarding El Capitan) as well as deleting the spotlight index and forcing a reindex. Nothing works.

In addition, I cannot search in mail, all searches render zero results.