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Spotlight search does not work properly on High Sierra

The following steps are reproducable on my mid-2015 15' macbook pro Retina. OS: High sierra. It's upgraded from Sierra.

(a) click the spotlight search icon on the right top of the screen. (b) type any text on the spotlight search text box shown on the screen.

Actual result: the spotlight search box disappears immediately following my typing in any one character. Other applications work well though. Any suggestion? Thank you.

MacBook Pro with Retina display, macOS High Sierra (10.13), upgrade from macOS Sierra

Posted on Oct 7, 2017 10:31 AM

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Posted on Oct 7, 2017 10:38 AM

Try rebuilding the Spotlight Index:

How to rebuild the Spotlight index on your Mac - Apple Support

EDIT: Actually it seems more like a wonky preference file. Try this first:

From your Finder "Go" menu > "Go to folder" and enter

~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Spotlight.plist

Press Return.

Delete the plist file.

Then, restart, or log out and in again.

3 replies
Question marked as Best reply

Oct 7, 2017 10:38 AM in response to dhs772

Try rebuilding the Spotlight Index:

How to rebuild the Spotlight index on your Mac - Apple Support

EDIT: Actually it seems more like a wonky preference file. Try this first:

From your Finder "Go" menu > "Go to folder" and enter

~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Spotlight.plist

Press Return.

Delete the plist file.

Then, restart, or log out and in again.

Oct 23, 2017 7:58 AM in response to dhs772

  1. Choose Apple menu () > System Preferences, then click Spotlight.
  2. Click the Privacy tab.
  3. Drag the folder or disk that you want to index again to the list of locations that Spotlight is prevented from searching. Or click the Add ➕ button and select the folder or disk to add.
    To add an item to the Privacy tab, you must have ownership permissions for that item. To learn about permissions, choose Help from the Finder menu bar, then search for “permissions.”
  4. From the same list of locations, select the folder or disk that you just added. Then click the Remove (–) button to remove it from the list.
  5. Quit System Preferences. Spotlight will reindex the contents of the folder or disk.

Spotlight search does not work properly on High Sierra

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