[REPOST + Explanation] Finder not finding words
[TLDR]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4dUVdu6gJA&t=171s
[ORIGINAL QUESTION]
Finder used to be able to (when I did a search) find documents that had a certain word in it.
For instance, I'd search for the word 'interview' in my Documents folder and it'd pull up the files that had that word in it.
However, since upgrading to Sonoma (14.3) it isn't doing that anymore.
Why?
[EXPLANATION]:
For some reason Spotlight needs to re-build your index. The Spotlight index is like a card catalog at a library. Don't ask me why it needs to be re-indexed, but I will say that in my case, I upgraded my MacOS, so maybe it needs to be re-indexed as a result of that.
[STEPS] for MacOS 14.3 (Sonoma)
- Go to System Preferences
- Go to Siri & Spotlight
- Tap Spotlight Privacy in lower right corner
- Add your harddrive (i.e. "Macintosh HD") & tap Choose
- At the prompt "Are you sure you want to prevent Spotlight from searching in Macintosh HD?" Tap OK (all we are doing here is triggering Spotlight to delete the previous index)
- Wait about 1-2 minutes
- Remove the "Macintosh HD" from the Privacy window by selecting it & tapping the "-"
- That's it, give Spotlight about 5-10 minutes to build your new index and searching should work again
These exact steps worked for me which I found in the TLDR above.