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Using Sierra 10.12.3 and Spotlight is acting weird.
No matter what I put in to search for it shows the same result.
So I thought "reindex"... but now I followed the instructions how do I know it is actually indexing?
MacBook Pro with Retina display, macOS Sierra (10.12.2), iMac, Mini, MacBook Pro, iPhone
You can also see in ActivityMonitor (in Utilities) if Spotlight is indexing:
select CPU Tab button,
then click the "ProcessName" column once to sort it alphabetically,
find the mdworker name in the ProcessName column,
as soon as the %CPU is above 0 it is "working" (even at 0% it is), it may be 50% or higher when indexing seriously...
You can also see in ActivityMonitor (in Utilities) if Spotlight is indexing:
select CPU Tab button,
then click the "ProcessName" column once to sort it alphabetically,
find the mdworker name in the ProcessName column,
as soon as the %CPU is above 0 it is "working" (even at 0% it is), it may be 50% or higher when indexing seriously...
When Spotlight reindexing is in progress, click the Spotlight search icon in the menu bar
and enter index in the text area next to the icon.
At first a pulsating bar and then a steady progress bar next to Indexing will appear.
thanks, did both before the last reinstall, didn't make a change, the last reinstall seemed to fix TM, we'll see... will upgrade to 10.12.4 in a couple weeks after seeing what if any problems are posted.
I have about 13 cases of mdworker showing in Activity monitor, some list _spotlight as the User, some are my name. Is this normal?? I'll see numbers like .1 or 0 or 5.3 etc in the % of cpu column. As I type this , about 8 of those are showing some indexing, albeit slight and mds_stores is showing 19.1% at the moment. They change constantly. I have a 2010 iMac i7 and I always hear this faint noise like the hard drive is working and I've wondered if it was Spotlight in the background running amuck. Any suggestions? Quit all this cases of mdworker in Activity monitor perhaps? I suspect they would all come back.
Thanks,
Mark
Restarting seemed to clear the frozen Spotlight... have had other issues with Sierra that restarting seemed to help or reinstalling the OS... "Just Works" seems a thing of the past.
yes, restarting helps. In terms of time "cost" when something is frozen:
1. Relaunch Finder (in Apple menu Forcequit).
2. restart the mac
3. restart in SafeMode
4. SMC and NMVRAM reset
Yes that is normal, Spotlight/mdworker... has several entries in ActivityMonitor.
How to tell if Spotlight is indexing.
