Spotlight: Finding files on your own computer or iCloud drive

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Level 1

12 points

Spotlight: Finding files on your own computer or iCloud drive

I am finding it totally impossible to easily locate files on my computer. I assumed Spotlight did this most basic of tasks. If it does, I'm completely lost as to how. I am on a Mac Mini desktop running Tahoe version 26.2 and all I want to do is be able to find what's on it. Even if I open Spotlight within Finder and restrict the search using the drop-downs on the upper left side to files, names or folders and to the Mac or iCloud, it still can not find even the most basic thing. I asked ChatGPT to help me figure out how to do this simple task and we went down a 60 minute rabbit hole of 'try this, it will definitely work' and everything was tried but nothing found the files. So how do you search just your computer or iCloud drive to find your own files quickly and accurately and return just those results and not a ton of gobbledy gook?

Mac mini, macOS 26.2

Posted on Dec 21, 2025 4:25 AM

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Answer 1

Barney-15E

Level 10

122,144 points

Dec 21, 2025 4:53 AM in response to skyreburn26

Have you tried reindexing Spotlight?

Rebuild the Spotlight index on your Mac - Apple Support

Some people find that method doesn’t work, but doing it in Terminal does:

sudo mdutil -X /

sudo temporarily elevates your privileges and the mdutil command erases the index completely. When prompted for your password, just type it in and hit return. You won’t see anything happen on the screen when you type it in.

It should not be necessary anymore, but you may need to log out and back in or restart to get it to start rebuilding the index.

It won’t search for content in files not downloaded from the cloud, just file names.

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Answer 2

skyreburn26 Author

Level 1

12 points

Dec 21, 2025 6:19 AM in response to Barney-15E

Will this work equally in Tahoe? Because one thing I'm noticing is that things have been moved around and changed. There is no longer any 'Siri and Spotlight' in Settings and when you open Spotlight there, you can't do some of the things you used to be able to do to restrict searches. I'll have a go at reindexing.

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