Search broken after Sequoia upgrade

The add/remove fix above didn't work for me (at least not right away, and it was impossible to know if it worked). Tech support was great though (chat). The problem for me arose when trying to access an iCloud folder. But perhaps this might help for other folders.

To fix, he had me open Terminal:

• sudo mdutil -Eai off 
• sudo mdutil -Eai on 
• mdutil -as

That's all it took to fix it. It started rebuilding immediately.

Spotlight is a typical Apple app in that when it works it's great but if it goes wrong it can be a pain. The steps you've taken are one way to fix it but as you're finding out it can take a long time. In the good old days Spotlight had a progress bar when it re-indexed and you used to be able to reindex from Terminal with a progress indicator but I don't know if 15 supports this - GIYF. I always have a backup search app on my Macs - Easyfind is what I've used for years. They're handy when spotlight goes titsup but they also find stuff that Spotlight doesn't find.

I'm having the same issue, the search function is completely broken. I tried "rebuilding the spotlight index" from that link you provided but it didn't work. Is there another method to reindex search?

I tried this but didn't fix the search in the System Preferences app. The index progress is in the spotlight search bar (CMD + Space).

This worked!

But after running it, it was still off for some reason, so I re-ran the "on" script

• sudo mdutil -Eai on 

and everything was good!

Edit: This actually worked, just took few hours to see any difference.

Game changer. I've seen lots of variations on the mdutil approach in terminal, but for some reason they've all gotten stuck for me. I've also tried the official help article that's been linked. None of them managed to get indexing to start back up. These 3 worked instantly. Thank you!

I had the same issue after Sequoia update. The privacy add/remove approach seems to have worked for me. Left macbook overnight on caffeinate after the remove. I saw mdworker running for a while. It seems it is finding some of the things that I noticed were not indexed. I dont know what i dont know if anything remains missing. It would really be helpful, if we had some status api, or something that shows how many things are indexed.

When I tried searching the folder again in Finder, I could see the files collecting (stacking under one another). Plus I could tell the folder was back to the way it used to be. This is actually kind of fun (helping others). :)

This worked immediately. Thanks!

Spoke to soon. It kind of worked. When I open the Finder and search it works. But when I open from another app (e.g. to upload a file), it doesn't.

This actually worked as of November 25th 2024 at 10:11am CST

How can you tell if it was rebuilding? I get no message to say whether it is doing anything.

Thanks

S/McAleese