Search not working-Sequoia 15.1 Update

Mac OS Sequoia 15.1.1 is the first OS I've installed in 25 years that completely broke my Spotlight Search. Finder is basically dead weight now. This is a basic core function of the Apple OS that stopped working one day. Please repair what was broken.

I have/had the same problem. I rebuilt the index per the directions here and that worked, but every few days it stops working. The only thing that works quickly to reset the search index is to reboot my computer. Is there a quicker more permanent solution? Needless to say, I use search constantly and this is a huge pain.

I keep rebuilding my index and sometimes it works, but only for a short while then it reverts back. This is driving me crazy. I can't get any work done. Help!

It always allows me to add the HD but most of the time it won't let me delete it until I restart my computer. I get this message until I restart it.

[Edited by Moderator]

Rebuild the Spotlight index on your Mac

Rebuild the Spotlight index on your Mac - Apple Support (CA)

I put the entire volume in the privacy list, then removed it. Nothing happened. There is no .Spotlight V-100 folder at the root of the volume.

I use a app called FAF (Find Any File) off of the App Store. I find it better than Spotlight.

I followed the same process and it worked for one day only. Seems to need these steps every day. Very time consuming!!

I will once again try to rebuild the spotlight index. Usually, that works.... This is something like the 8th time I've had to do so. I wish Apple would fix this really critical bug that leads to repeated failure of basic search functionality.

After two weeks going bananas because of this massive problem with the search function, your recommendation solved my problem in only few minutes. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

This one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAg8-0nx80I

:)

Once you have done that it with take Spotlight sometime to rebuild the index depending how mush data it has to index. If you want to see the progress open Spotlight a enter a letter in it. It should show you a progress bar.

I encountered the same issue with the search function when I installed Sequoia 15.1 today on my MacBook Pro. I've followed your suggestion to rebuild the Spotlight index and it appears to be working (thank you!). Fingers crossed...

15.2 doesn't fix the problem, or it doesn't retroactively fix the problem and I doubt it fixes future problems (i.e., where a volume stops indexing...again).

It's 3 jan 2025 and I'm debugging my issues with a 3-volume RAID, an external TB box with 6 drives (and 6 volumes), and the internal and external SSDs.

A couple minutes ago, I ran mdutil -as to see if the posted status would give me useful info. All volumes except /Preboot (and a network drive which we'll ignore) have the status of "read-only". But the man page doesn't say what this means, so it kind of looks okay? Nor does the man page tell you what you could get back, so I don't know what's normal.

One other thing that I have not seen in this thread IS from the man page, and that is "indexing will start/restart upon mounting a drive". So for those cases where the volume in questions is not your boot drive, you can unmount and remount to get indexing started. Like in my case.

To experiment with one of the suggestions, I went into Terminal and ran sudo mdutil -Ei off <volume> and picked one of my 6 drives. I also unchecked all "search results" boxes in the Spotlight System Settings. Then I entered sudo mdutil -Ei on <volume>. (Note that, yes, I did not need to include "E" again.) Then I hit cmd-spacebar to see if there was a progress bar: there was, but it was fully blue so I thought it was almost done--which I didn't believe. Then I remembered the System Settings and I checked all the things I wanted indexed. Ran mdutil -as and the one drive now had the status Indexing enabled. Checked the Spotlight results (cmd-spacebar) and now the progress bar was like 5%.

But like others, I have had volumes or even just folders stop indexing, and dragging into the Privacy box and out again doesn't seem to help, or be persistent. I have tons of bad aliases that are not easily removed because you have to click each one and select "Delete alias..." which it doesn't do immediately like you'd expect. Hopefully, running mdutil -E (etc) will, starting from scratch.

Finally, the man page says "indexing may be delayed due to low disk space or other conditions." But it doesn't say what other conditions could exist. It also doesn't inform you HOW to check if low disk space is the current condition. It should NOT be the case for all of my volumes...but might be on a 10TB drive with 6-9GB free?