Spotlight crashes after typing a few letters since Safari 12 update

My problem that Safari did was every time I even selected a .webloc file in the Finder the Desktop would refresh. And not a quick blink. Many times I though my desktop had been wiped.

I have a Installer on a Thumb Drive that I use. But I trust you could boot to your "Recovery Drive" and reinstall through the Installer? The first time I did that I was scared to death that it would wipe the drive and reinstall since the motions don't tell you otherwise. But to my delight, it didn't.

I'd back up the drive, CarbonCopyCloner, if only a TimeMachine back up to an external/separate drive/partition for the first time you try it. Just to make sure things go as they should. I just resigned myself in that moment of shear terror to the fact that I did have TM backups, as spotty as they have been in the past, on a separate drive and that I had the afternoon open in case I had to rebuild from scratch. Since I have done this 3 times until I stopped updating Safari and have had no major problems, I feel comfortable suggesting it. ALSO down the road when the OS goes wonky, and it will, this process that I discovered while on the phone with Apple asking if it could be done and them not knowing and when he returned to the call and I had done it successfully, THEN when it was proven, they (Apple) started suggesting it themselves . . . . cures a ton of ills.

Hope this helps. Good Luck. "Hide that Safari update" in the App Store and forget Safari until they really fix it!!! OR if you get comfortable with this "Refreshing" process, be the one to find out when Safari is fixed for those who can't.

I tryied to install the latest Combo update for Sierra, but my HD stays greyed, it says that it can't find a suitable HD to install it...

we are stuck in a buggy Sierra for ever (unless you do the titanic work of delete your HD and reinstall from a backup your 1TB... which it isn't extent of possible failures and it takes a long long time to complete, last time I did, downgrading from HS to Sierra again, I lost the modified dates of all folders, which cost me a lot lot lot of problems)

I haven't tried rebuilding the spotlight index yet, but this workaround seems to have solved it for me:

System Preferences > Spotlight

Under the Search Results tab, uncheck the "Bookmarks & History" option.

I have the same issue.

Reindexing has done nothing to help!

I am trying your work-a-round by unchecking "Bookmarks & History" option in the Spotlight pane of System Preferences.

So far it WORKS!

Thanks!

@sparky67,

Thanks again.

I posted your work-a-round in my thread on this same issue:

Spotlight Crashes Often - Despite Rebuilding Search Index

It has been extremely annoying to not be able to use Spotlight!

Once I upgrade to Mohave, I may be able to include "Bookmarks & History" option in the Spotlight pane of System Preferences, once again.

Sorry @sparky67, you're right I didn't read carefully beyond where you tried reindexing spotlight. I appreciate your post though, because this had been annoying me and it got me on the right track knowing it was related to Safari. I don't use Spotlight to look up browser history or bookmarks, so this workaround is great for me, but I understand it's not ideal for someone who likes to use it for those purposes. Hopefully they'll fix it with the next Safari update.

I can confirm that UN-checking the "Bookmarks & History" option in the Spotlight pane of System Preferences corrects the problem. Also, this problem started for me after installing the Safari V 12.0 update.

Good work finding the offender. Your workround works great for me.

What kind of testing did they do for Safari 12. I would have thought that interacting with Spotlight would have been on the list as it is a specific checkbox on the Spotlight preferences.

Somehow I don't think I will be instantly updating to Mojave when it comes out. Give it a couple of updates maybe...

@dabricka - I did rebuild Spotlight index, the easy way through Preferences and the hard way deleting the indexes, to no avail. Unchecking Bookmarks & History works, thanks so much. Spotlight is to me a critical tool and why I stay on Mac OS...that goes and so does overpriced Apple hardware. 🙂

YOU SIR, ARE A BLOODY LEGEND!!!!! Thank you so much!! I wish Id seen this before the clean install of Sierra and re-install of all software but I will take the fix anyway. I really can't thank you enough

I am running macOS Siera 10.12.6, on a MBP Retina mid 2012.

Safari's version is 12.0 (12606.2.11)

I have already tried rebuilding spotlight's index. it didn't work.

The only workaround that seems to be effective is the one pointed by the op (sparky67). I have unchecked the "Bookmarks & History" option and it stopped crashing. Lets hope it will hold, because It was getting really annoying.

I've been noticing this same problem for quite some time. It's been pretty frustrating and disruptive to my work flow. I tried reindexing Spotlight, but that did not help.

I'm very happy to have found your post. Unchecking "Bookmarks & History" seems to have solved the issue for now. I do not consider Spotlight to be fixed, but at least I have a work around.

This confirms the same problem I am having. I am on the latest version of Sierra. Spotlight disappears if I try and add a space early in a query. Anything less than six characters with a space makes it disappear. Sometimes it just vanishes as I start entering text. I'll be ****** if I waste my time reinstalling the entire operating system just to see if it resolves a problem that is Apple's job. In any case I never found spotlight all that useful or intuitive. I prefer the 'command f' way of searching from the Finder. Never quite figured out what was so special about Spotlight. Meaning it fails to replicate common sense for me in the way I look for things. It probably meets the needs of other more organised/ disciplined folk. But for the run of the mill user it is much over hyped.