Why does the spotlight window randomly close after typing a few specific characters?

I believe it has everything to do with the Safari 12 update as a bunch of threads just popped up reporting the same issue. Turn OFF (uncheck) the "Bookmarks & History" option in Spotlight pane in System Preferences. The problem will stop until Apple fixes Safari.

BTW - reindexing only fixes the problem until the reindex completes; then the problem comes right back.

Is it crashing?

Do a backup, preferably 2 on 2 separate drives.

Quit Mail.

Go to Finder and select your user/home folder. With that Finder window as the front window, either select Finder/View/Show View options or go command - J. When the View options opens, check ’Show Library Folder’. That should make your user library folder visible in your user/home folder. Go to Library/Containers/com.apple.mail. Move the folder com.apple.mail to your desktop. You must move the entire folder, not just the contents.

Restart, re-launch Mail and test. If the problem is solved, recreate any required Mail settings and import any emails you want to save from the folder on the desktop. You can then put the folder in the Trash. If the problem remains, return the folder to where you got it replacing the one that is there.

If that doesn’t solve it repeat the above using Containers/com.apple.MailServiceAgent.

Information learned from Linc Davis. Thanks to leonie for some information contained in this.

Mail crashing

Crashes/quits unexpectedly

Thanks, I've had this issue too, and that has solved it.

Something else that has happened since that update is my 'Mail' is when inactive suddenly decides to go 120% CPU and freezes with the fan going mental. Not sure if it's related, but Sierra on MBP and it's only happened since this update. Never had a problem with Mac Mail overheating when idle ever. On any other OS either.

@sparky67, this helps. It was driving me nuts for the past few weeks. I use spotlight a lot for simple calculations. But now the window always disappeared while typing.

My bookmarks and history is synchronised to another mac with iCloud. So both macs use the same data and the same Safari 12, but the other mac has no problems with spotlight.

The problem mac uses Sierra and the other High Sierra.

Re-indexing of spotlight was the first thing I tried, but that didn't help.

Thank you! It worked. And yes, I only started to experience the Spotlight problem after updating Safari a few days ago. I couldn't function without Spotlight. Funny, I used Safari for a few days and then went back to Chrome. I forgot how much I don't like Safari especially because it won't translate non-English webpages instantly, as far as I know.

This solution works for me!

Unbelievably, Apple still hasn't fixed this problem and it is now January 2019. Guess Apple just doesn't give a flying f#*!? about quality control anymore. They break things, they never fix them, they just keep adding features and changing things that worked fine before.

Boot into Safe Mode, Mac OS X: Starting up in Safe Mode, and try Spotlight there. Any improvement? Reboot normally and test again.

Some have posted they fixed it by reindexing Spotlight.Try re-indexing Spotlight by excluding your hard drive and then remove it.

Spotlight – Re-index

Hello!

I would only like to verify that this solution worked for me. Thank you!

Thank you sparky!! It was driving me crazy!

Helped – thanks a lot!

Worked like a charm, :-)

Thank you.

That's it, solved the issue for me.

that did it! thanks for the solution.

Works for me too, thanks.