Spotlight search / clipboard history not working in Tahoe MacOS 26

Hey, I had the exact same issue and was able to resolve it by turning on Settings > Spotlight > Results from System > Documents. You don't have to have any of the file types within Documents (hit the info icon) activated but it looks like Clipboard history is saved somewhere in Documents so turning it off cuts off Spotlight's access to it.

Turn OFF Adobe Creative Cloud and Adobe Inc. in System Settings > General > Login Items & Extensions > App Background Activity

I had the same problem with Spotlight not working. I tried rebuilding the index, turning off Apple Watch Unlock etc. but nothing worked. Eventually I found that Adobe Creative Cloud and/or Adobe Inc in App Background Activity were causing the problem. After I turned these OFF, and restarted my mac, Spotlight was working.

Luis Sequeira1 said in his post that he thought it was a third party app causing the problem, at least for some people. That's why I looked at login apps and background apps. I tried turning off a few different apps and restarting my Mac, but none made any difference, until I turned off the Adobe apps. Then spotlight was working perfectly.  

Maybe for other people it’s another app that’s causing the problem. 

The problem seems to vary. Some people have solved it by rebuilding the index, some solved it by turning off Apple Watch Login, for me it was Adobe running in the background.

Over the past week or so I’ve restarted my Mac many times as I’ve rebuilt the index (several times), turned off my Apple Watch login, and I’ve even reinstalled OS 26. But none of that worked for me.

If you’ve tried various things with no success, I think it’s worth looking at your login apps and background apps one by one to see if any of them are preventing Spotlight working.

Do you perhaps have another program installed that can record your clipboard?

For instance, I use iClip, and when that records the clipboard, then Spotlight's clipboard history is not working.

The same might be the case if you use other clipboard history recorders.

I have this issue as well.

Touch ID is the culprit.

After restarting MacBook, you need to type in password, so everything is fully unlocked and works correctly.

If I'll press Touch ID in order to lock the machine, let it go into sleep mode and wait 5 to 10 seconds, and then unlock it by using Touch ID, the spotlight clipboard history always stops working.

But if I'll unlock it by using password, it works correctly every single time.

I reported this to Apple during beta stages of macOS Tahoe, but nothing was done about it, sadly.

Are you using an Apple Watch or a Magic Keyboard with Touch ID to unlock your mac？Based on my observations in the past few days, unlocking using these methods will cause the spotlight issue. You can try logging in directly by entering your password, and then you will find that Spotlight is functioning properly.

TungDuongVN wrote:

The problem here is not that the "clipboard" only saves history for 8 hours but that it doesn't work, right after I just copied something to the clipboard

My best advice— >shutdown the computer than restart; and compare your results.

This seemed to sort the issue on my MacBook Pro.

or from the Terminal copy & paste:

sudo shutdown -h now

you would hope to hear the Spotlight index fire up as in re-indexes, you can see this working from Spotlight by entering most anything into the search field:

sholla wrote:

I'm also having this issue and others with the new Spotlight. It will not find any of my files, my shortcuts, my clipboard, etc. I've indexed, reindexed, restarted multiple times, turned off logging in with my Apple Watch, have killed Spotlight and associated processes in Activity Monitor, and have done the suggested Terminal commands. None of it works.

The only thing that got it to work for me was running my laptop in Safe Mode. After restarting into normal mode again the same issues reappeared immediately.

I read elsewhere that this is a known bug in Tahoe and hope there will be an update pushed soon. This is probably the marquee feature of the new OS and the one I was most interested in using. Kinda crummy that many of us are dealing with this on relatively new machines.

MBP 14" M1 Pro

The bold paragraph above tells you that some of your third party software modifications is causing the problem.

(perhaps you have an "antivirus" or "cleaner" or some old third party extension)

Please run Etrecheck and post its full report here. Use the "additional text" button and paste the report into the text box.

I'm also having this issue and others with the new Spotlight. It will not find any of my files, my shortcuts, my clipboard, etc. I've indexed, reindexed, restarted multiple times, turned off logging in with my Apple Watch, have killed Spotlight and associated processes in Activity Monitor, and have done the suggested Terminal commands. None of it works.

The only thing that got it to work for me was running my laptop in Safe Mode. After restarting into normal mode again the same issues reappeared immediately.

I read elsewhere that this is a known bug in Tahoe and hope there will be an update pushed soon. This is probably the marquee feature of the new OS and the one I was most interested in using. Kinda crummy that many of us are dealing with this on relatively new machines.

MBP 14" M1 Pro

I had the same issue and restarting resolved the problem.

dwoak wrote:

I've got all of that enabled. Still can't copy to the Spotlight clipboard from the Mail app. But Maccy can do it just fine!

For what it's worth, I expect that should be fixed in the next update of Tahoe.

Also see: Search your Clipboard history in Spotlight on Mac - Apple Support

tedawf wrote:

I'm not sure how to enable this feature or even use it.

1. Copy some text, a file, or an image to the Clipboard.
2. Then press Command+Space to open the Spotlight window.
3. Press Command+4 to see the clipboard history.
4. Right or control click on an item where you will see various options.

TungDuongVN wrote:

I tried restarting the machine, it solved the problem but it happened again the next day.

Going to Spotlight in settings it was still loading the page

Don't feel alone— I am seeing the same issue with no results on an Intel machine.

What you do not say is what exact Mac is this...Intel / M-series(?)

if it is not working as expected —

To be proactive you can file a bug report / submit your Apple Feedback here: Product Feedback - Apple