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 04:51 PM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Jan 26, 2023 08:02 AM

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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11 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Jan 26, 2023 08:02 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.

Jan 26, 2023 01:25 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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Spotlight disabled

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