Has anyone else experienced issues with Spotlight losing indexing of the Applications?
Spotlight no longer displays any applications in the results when typing in an application name.
Additionally it appears to be ignoring the settings of "Spotlight" set within the preferences. Example: I have "Websites" & "Siri Suggestions" turned off, however these still appear in the search results of spotlight.
On my MBP 16" (2023) Spotlight would only return results for my OneDrive folder and for Apple's core apps (Safari, Pages, etc.). It would NOT return results from files or non-Apple apps (Illustrator, Word, etc). In other forums, users have speculated that OneDrive could be at fault.
One other potentially important wrinkle for my computer - it was set up using Migration Assistant, transferring files, apps, and settings from another MBP 16" (~2020).
I tried all the tricks to fix Spotlight: adding/removing the drive from Settings > Siri & Spotlight indexing, and using Terminal to turn Spotlight off/on while clearing the index. Nothing worked, even after multiple tries, booting into safe mode, etc.
What ultimately worked was using root to erase/recreate the Spotlight index:
(1) turn on "root" access, which is not activated by default (2) Log out, then back in as root. (3) Use Terminal to turn spotlight off. [ sudo mdutil -i off / ] (4) Use Terminal to delete the .Spotlight-V100 file in System/Volumes/Data. This is a hidden file. (3) Run mdtutil commands to clear cache to be doubly sure [ sudo mdutil -E / ], then turn Spotlight back on [ sudo mdutil -i on / ]
After I completed these steps, I could see immediately that Spotlight was reindexing. I let it run overnight. In the morning, still as root, I confirmed that Spotlight was working. I then logged out/back into my regular account and voila - fixed.
I have not deactivated root yet to test whether logging out of Root will make the problem return. I can't imagine it would, but ... I'm going to enjoy Spotlight again for a few days before I try turnning root off.
Hoping this helps others!! What a mess.
I have the same issue. I tried sudo mdutil -E / sudo mdutil -i off and sudo mdutil -i on / and, but it is still not working.
I have also noticed that spotlight crashes after typing two characters.
Strangely, typing just one character does not cause spotlight to crash.
This definitely looks like a Sonoma bug. It only started happening recently to me and i'm currently on Sonoma 14.1.
In any case, I was able to quickly fix this issue by following the steps here: https://support.apple.com/en-us/102321
In short, you have to exclude your home folder and then remove it from the exclusion so that it is re-indexed:
This seems to have resolved for me after upgrading to 14.1.1. Anyone else?
... since upgrading to Sonoma, Spotlight search results are no longer drag-able. hope this gets resolved. thank you
... since upgrading to Sonoma, Spotlight search results (images) are no longer drag-able. hope this gets resolved. thank you
Apple did a really bad shitty of testing the upgrade to Sonoma.
I struggled with this issue for weeks and tried every workaround offered in these forms and elsewhere ( Reddit ) . Nothing worked.
Computer : MacBookPro with an Apple M1 Pro Chip runing Sonoma 14.1.1 Symptoms on my computer :
What all i tried unsuccessfully
What i discovered
What finally fixed the issue Did the following operation from a local admin account
logged back into my account . Everythign works !
Thank you Apple for killing my productivity and shame on you for not testing this workflow properly , to add ti this so many months after release you dont even have a fix !
I have the same problem with Spotlight, but only with mobile users, Spotlight works perfectly for local users.
If a local user is logged on to my MacBook in the background, Spotlight also works immediately for a mobile user.
Even if I am logged in as a mobile user and log in to the terminal with su- <user> with a local user, Spotlight works immediately.
It seems that something is not activated in MacOS when you are logged in as a mobile user. Maybe someone can do something with this information and find a solution to the problem.
So, Sonoma 14.3.1 and it is happening to me as well.
New fix: Toggle FileVault off and back on (or vice versa). For whatever reason, this seems to fix the Secure Token issue and seems to last weeks, if not months.
well first off, thanks for the insight. I've been dealing with this on an M2Max ever since upgrading to Sonoma. I wanted to add that in my case I believe it's my Yubikey as I've enabled it for login and I am NOT connected to an Enterprise AD account. I believe MacOS treats this similarly to an AD account. The Local admin account turn everything off and back on again fixes the issue. To my surprise if I do a Spotlight search and get no results but leave the search terms in spotlight and then kick the system using local Admin the search will AUTOMAGICALLY populate. Clearly it's an OS level issue, I'm just surprised more people haven't complained. TBH the lack of Spotlight makes the machine almost unusable.
I had the same problem on Sonoma 14.5 and the solution that worked for me was to force kill the corespotlightd process and then re-open the system settings app:
https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/468984/search-in-system-preferences-pane-stopped-working
Has caused issues for me in mail, notes and spotlight main search.
Its now August, 2 month shy of being a year since first reported, has Apple seriously still not fixed this yet?
Similar problem. For me it was easier.
opened Terminal, sudo mdutil -E /
Everything worked after that.
This issue continue to return because something is wrong with SecureToken. Turning off and on SecureToken on these AD accounts makes it working for a while but after a while it gets broken again.
Did anyone try on Sequoia or Sonoma 14.7?
I’m still experiencing the same issue with Spotlight on my Mac Mini M2 with macOS Sequoia 15.0. It only returns search results for applications, not files, settings, or emails.
Setup
Workaround
I found a temporary workaround that seems to help:
It seems that a local account needs to log in at least once after every reboot for Spotlight to work correctly. This workaround isn’t ideal, but it might help if you are facing the same issue.
I had the same indexing issues in Ventura - seemed to be after a Mac update. I could add/remove drives and it would reindex and work for a day or two then fail again. Updated to Sonoma thinking it may fix, worked for a day after update and now it fails again. Super frustrating and unproductive to not be able to search in Mail or Messages for things.
The very same problem started to manifest on a basically brand new MacBook Pro M3 on Sonoma and stil persists on Sequoia. It drives me nuts as I'm not able to efficiently work with e-mail. None of the solutions found so far worked for longer than a day or two. This seriously undermines my confidence in MacOS. I use Onedrive and Eset Endpoint Security (company policy), but I doubt all of the people reporting this do as well.
