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  1. Serhat hocam thank you for your support. It worked for me. I am using M1 MacBook Air and it sometimes didnt searching well.

  2. Did not work for me either. Version 11.0.1 macOS Big Sur:

    When trying to remove the “Macintosh HD” from Spotlight > Privacy, I get an error reading:

    “Privacy List Error”
    “The item couldn’t be added or removed because of an unknown error.”

    Any suggestions?

  3. Perfect. The system preferences idea worked perfectly, so didn’t even need to try the activity monitor. Worked exactly as suggested, so thanks!

    1. Thank you! I did this, then went in and added and removed my harddrive from the Spotlight Privacy list and it finally worked.

    2. You the real MVP! This is what fixed it for me. Basically any process with “spotlight” in the name just Force Quit and it will start it back up automatically.

      My specific issue was that apple+space would no longer bring up the spotlight search box.

  4. I always got crazy with Spotligth on different MacBook and with different MacOS X.
    I think the problem is in Spotligth itself and in the way throuwitch it builds index. That is the reason for its speed.
    Finally I found “Find Any File” that’s an app really well conceived.

  5. Spotlight doesn’t find the scanned document. I rebuild the spotlight and it fits it. The next document I scan is not found until I rebuild the index again. So it’s not indexing on it’s own.

  6. I had a bad set of problems with Spotlight (plus Mail search) and tried every solution i could find on the web with no effect. In fact they made things worse as Spotlight results went from erratic to non-existent, so maybe something was stopping spotlight database being added to? Finally I looked at the output from Console and found strange messages which then lead me, via web search, to try rebuilding the LaunchServices database. This apparently provided a total cure. The command I used was:

    sudo /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Support/lsregister -kill -seed -lint -r -f -v -dump -domain local -domain system -domain user -domain network
    1. It didn’t work for me… buaaahhhhhhhh I’m on macOS 10.14.6
      I’ve tested creating a Clean install and then import all the mail and it work. But in my main machine I can’t figure out why I can’t search in the Mail app.
      I’ve tried “everything” I found with no luck.

    2. Wow exactly the same story, spotlight didn’t work anymore, then with your spotlight is back, thanks !!!

  7. I just restarted my MBPro2015 – Catalina, and it worked perfectly.
    happened many times -> same solution worked

  8. I’ve gone through the above steps. My Mac is Catalina 10.5.3. I cannot search for text and receive results at all. I believe Dino is correct. This is a bug in Spotlight.

  9. None of these worked unfortunately. I’m beginning to think there’s a bug in spotlight. I’ve rebuilt the Spotlight Index through System Preferences and through Terminal:

    nodename$ diskutil resetUserPermissions / `id -u` 

    Plus all the steps mentioned here. This is the second brand new Mac I am having this issue on, the first I returned as defective. No apps are found in spotlight with all set to index no mater what I do. I’ve even spent hours on the phone with Apples incompetent support who’s having me reinstall the OS like the horribly trained people they are. This is pathetic.

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