Spotlight suddenly not working

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Spotlight suddenly not working

Spotlight suddently not working overnight - zero results today. Ditto in Calendar when I look for an event, which I am assuming is linked problem.

When I check using

sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist

am told "service is already loaded"

but Activity Monitor shows 0% for process 'mdworker' for User "_spotlight"

no entry for Privacy Tab for Spotlight and the ".Spotlight_V100" folder is 5kb.

have tried to force spotlight by moving laptop drive > privacy tab then removing an hour or so later, but no joy

any thoughts? MB Pro Mojave 14.6, 16GB ram, 250SSD

thanks

MacBook Pro 13″, macOS 10.14

Posted on Jul 8, 2021 3:51 PM

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Answer 1

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BDAqua

Level 10

245,459 points

Jul 8, 2021 7:50 PM in response to EJW Tas

Are you running in an admin account?

Safe Boot, (holding Shift key down at startup), does the problem occur in Safe Mode? Could take 10 minutes.

Safe mode attempts to repair Disks & clears lots of caches & loads safe Drivers, & prevents loading of 3rd party extensions, so if Safe Mode works try again in regular boot.

Open Terminal and run each of these...

sudo mdutil -E /

This basically asks for temporary super user status, which is why Terminal may ask you for your password (it may not if you’ve used a sudo command recently or are already logged in as a super user or root. The command asks the unix tool mdutil to reindex the spotlight database for everything on the computer, including external drives, mounted disk images, etc. To re-index only for a specific drive, use the /Volumes path. For example, for an external drive named “MiniMe,” the command would look like this:

sudo mdutil -i on /

Rebuilding a drive index can take a long time, so be prepared to wait whether you do it through the System Preference panel or the command line. A few minutes normally.

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