Spotlight disabled

Question

Level 1

67 points

Spotlight disabled

Spotlight indexing and searching is disabled on my M1 MacBookAir (2020) on Ventura (13.0, 13.1., and 13.2). I have tried the following suggested fixes, none of which work. When I run the command "sudo mdutil -s" on Terminal, the answer I get is always:

Indexing and searching disabled

None of the mdutil commands fix disabled.

I have tried the following fixes:

sudo mdutil -i on /

Indexing and searching disabled.

I'm also tried to reindex the "Macintosh HD" by adding it to Spotlight Privacy pane and then removing it, but that had no effect

Using TInkertoolSystem to stop and then restart spotlight indexing had no effect.

Deleting the file com.apple.spotlight.plist and restarting the computer did not fix spotlight

Force quiting corespotlightd via Activity Monitor did not fix spotlight

One thought I have is to back up the internal Data drive with Carbon Copy Cloner to external hard drive; restart in Recovery; erase the internal hard drive; reinstall fresh MacOS from recovery; restart Mac; reinstall Ventura. Then manually reinstall the applications I use in addition for the Apple Apps and use the external hard drive for my User Folder.

I can live without Spotlight, but I prefer to use Alfred for launching applications and files, etc. but it only works via Spotlight Index. I can use Launchbar instead, but prefer Alfred.

Does anyone have any other suggestions as to how to enable Spotlight?

MacBook Air 13″, macOS 13.2

Posted on Jan 25, 2023 4:51 PM

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Answer 1

Ronald Gold Author

Level 1

67 points

Jan 26, 2023 8:02 AM in response to Ronald Gold

P.S.

When I ran sudo mdutil -sa on terminal, this is the result:

/:

Indexing and searching disabled.

/System/Volumes/Data:

Indexing and searching disabled.

/System/Volumes/Preboot:

Error: unknown indexing state.

/Volumes/ronaldgold:

Server search enabled.

Still unable to enable indexing.

However, on my MacBook Air, with Ventura 13.2, I have never had this problem with Spotlight.

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Answer 2

Barney-15E

Level 10

121,454 points

Jan 26, 2023 8:35 AM in response to Ronald Gold

I have only seen this on an iPad xterm so drive, but may also be possible on the startup drive. I had to delete the hidden /.Spotlight-v100 folder. I think you have to do so from Terminal,

sudo rm -r /.Spotlight-v100

You can then try to enable it as you did before.

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Answer 3

Ronald Gold Author

Level 1

67 points

Jan 26, 2023 11:06 AM in response to Barney-15E

I agree and wish I could find it. I reinstalled Ventura from Recovery, but nothing changed in indexing disabled. The item

/System/Volumes/Preboot:

Error: unknown indexing state

is interesting because I have no clue what to do about it.

Next step is to try safe boo and see what happens to Spotlight.

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Answer 4

Ronald Gold Author

Level 1

67 points

Jan 26, 2023 12:41 PM in response to Old Toad

I use Mullvad VPN; Block-Block and Lulu from Objective-See; occasionally run Malwarebytes; but do not have any cleaning, optimizing or speed-up apps. I do have Tinkertool and TInkertoolSystem installed but use the latter only to check Spotlight indices (which are missing now).

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Answer 5

Old Toad

Level 10

214,584 points

Jan 26, 2023 1:25 PM in response to Ronald Gold

Unless you're using a true VPN tunnel, such as between you and your employer'a, school's or bank's servers, they are useless from a privacy standpoint. Read these two articles: Public VPN's are anything but private and Former Malware Distributor Kape Technologies Now Owns ExpressVPN, CyberGhost, Private Internet Access, Zenmate, and a Collection of VPN “Review” Websites.

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Answer 6

Ronald Gold Author

Level 1

67 points

Jan 26, 2023 4:29 PM in response to Old Toad

I realize this about VPNs which is why I only use it when contacting my bank. It does not matter whether or not the VPN is active or even installed, spotlight indexing remains disabled on the M1 MacMini since Ventura was installed. My MacBookAir (an Intel machine) is a clone of the MacMini and Spotlight works on it without any problems.

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Answer 7

Ronald Gold Author

Level 1

67 points

Jan 26, 2023 4:59 PM in response to oz-macnut

I did try T2M2 but it did not provide any answers that I could interpret.

Since spotlight remains disabled even after Safe Boot, I don't what the next step should be, other than erasing the internal hard drive, reinstalling Ventura and copy only the applications I use to the internal drive, leaving the Data on an external clone.

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Answer 8

Old Toad

Level 10

214,584 points

Jan 26, 2023 11:23 AM in response to Ronald Gold

Have you installed and run any "cleaning", "optimizing", "speed-up", anti-virus or VPN apps on your Mac?

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Answer 9

Ronald Gold Author

Level 1

67 points

Jan 26, 2023 8:50 AM in response to Barney-15E

.Spotlight-v100 has already been erased in the many steps I have tried.

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Answer 10

Barney-15E

Level 10

121,454 points

Jan 26, 2023 10:40 AM in response to Ronald Gold

And I really don’t know, I would suspect some third-party security, or other type of system modification interfering.

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Answer 11

Jan 26, 2023 4:41 PM in response to Ronald Gold

Ronald, have you tried TheTimeMachineMechanic? (T2M2) https://eclecticlight.co/consolation-t2m2-and-log-utilities/ It might give you more insight as to why the indexing is disabled...

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Spotlight disabled

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