Spotlight won’t work? Fix a broken Spotlight menu with these troubleshooting tips
How to, Mac OS X, Tips & Tricks, Troubleshooting - February 15th, 2007 - 65 Comments
Spotlight is probably the greatest feature to hit the Mac OS in years, once you get used to using it, going to a PC without it feels hopelessly inadequate. I use Spotlight for everything from launching applications, retrieving pictures, searching for old emails, literally just about everything. If you aren’t using Spotlight, you’re missing out. If you are using Spotlight, every now and again, the Spotlight menu mysteriously stops working (apparently this is more common since the 10.4.8 update), and we’re going to give you a few methods to troubleshoot Spotlight and get it back in full working order.
The Problems: Spotlight won’t work
There are several incarnations of Spotlight problems that I have personally run into, they are:
- Problem #1) Spotlight menu icon highlights, but no search form appears
- Problem #2) Spotlight search form appears, but no results are shown
- Problem #3) Spotlight search works, but results are poor and incomplete
While not entirely sure what causes any of these problems, try these troubleshooting methods that frequently work to repair Spotlight:
The Solutions: Troubleshooting Spotlight
Solution #1: Kill SystemUIServer
- Launch ‘Activity Monitor’ (located in /Applications/Utilities/)
- Locate the process ‘SystemUIServer’, highlight it, and click the red button “Quit Process”
- Within a few seconds the menubar will rebuild itself and often Spotlight will magically work
Solution #2: Rebuild the Spotlight Index manually
- Launch ‘Terminal’ (located in /Applications/Utilities/)
- At the command prompt, type this exactly:
sudo mdutil -E / - You will be asked for your password, provide it, as this command requires administrator privelages to run
- You will receive a confirmation message saying that index will be rebuilt
- Wait until index is finished rebuilding, this can take a while depending on the size of your hard drive, amount of files, etc.
- Note: You can also rebuild the Spotlight index with MainMenu, mentioned in Solution #4
Solution #3: Change Desktop Resolution
- This is a strange fix but it works everytime for me when my Spotlight menu icon highlights but the search form doesn’t appear
- Open “System Preferences” via the Apple Menu
- Click ‘Displays’ and select a resolution smaller than what you are currently using, 640×480 seems to always work
- Select your native resolution again, changing your screen resolution back to normal
- The Spotlight search tray will magically become available again
Solution #4: Clear caches and preferences
- Clear caches and preferences relating to Spotlight, this is best done through either the free tool OnyX, or the free tool MainMenu, we recommend MainMenu because it’s easier for novices
- Install MainMenu
- a little Hammer and Wrench icon will appear in your menubar
- navigate down to ‘Cleaning’ and clean out User Cache, System Cache, and Font Caches
- Note: Some users discover that just cleaning the Font caches is adequate to repair a screwy Spotlight, but it won’t hurt to clear them all
Solution #5: Reboot your Mac
- This should almost be listed as #1 just because sometimes a simple reboot will fix Spotlight, but if I can avoid a reboot I will, and often, a reboot isn’t good enough
Hopefully that covers it, and Spotlight should be working good as new again. If we missed something, feel free to contribute in the comments below.
Happy Spotlighting!
I have the problem that spotlight is simply not searching, and is not finding anything. It was working up until a couple of days ago, I cannot isolate what I have done differently. Possibly I installed a firmware update, would this cause the problem? I already rebuilt the index once and I am rebuilding it again.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Mike
Never mind…It seems that trying various combinations of these methods fixed the problem. Thanks
Mike
At work, I use Windows Desktop Search (WDS) constantly. I can’t imagine working without it. However, since I’ve purchased my MacBook Pro I’ve had continuous problems with Spotlight so shy away from it. It constantly hangs or freezes or cannot find what I’m looking for. I’ve never had a problem with WDS (or had to rebuild it). No offense to anyone but I wish my experience with Spotlight was as good or even better than WDS. Thanks for the tip as I will probably have to use it alot for Spotlight to work decently.
Actually, I’ll have to retract that last comment I left. I found out what was bugging my Spotlight through one of these methods above (not sure which one), and I agree: nothing can touch this function. Spotlight is amazing! My entire Mac is working better. I’m wondering if it was a corrupted font, because I got lost in repairing and ended up running some font software that found a bunch of bad fonts.
So anyway, yeah. Spotlight works better than WDS after all. Go figure.
hey there, i tried EVERYTHING, spotlight still wont work…
SystemUIServer did not work for me but changing the display resolution helped.
Thanks for the information post.
Thank you so muck for the tip. Solution #1 did it for me!
i’ve try all 5 and still it does not work, I’m actually getting fed you with apple, for every good thing that I discover there is another one thats annoying. Why wouldn’t the damn thing just work.
Thanks, I have trying to fix this for weeks with out success. No. 1 did it! thanks
Lonn
Only #3 worked for me. So strange!
just wanted to say thanks – the 1st option worked first time.
[...] http://osxdaily.com/2007/02/15/spotlight-wont-work-fix-a-broken-spotlight-menu-with-these-troubleshooting-tips/ [...]
My 3 year old did something to the home computer and Spotlight has been dead ever since. #1 worked immediately! THANK YOU!
WOW
this worked instantly, thanks so much
spotlight (i.e. the magnifying glass) has vanished from my menu bar a while ago. sofar nothing has helped to get that little loupe back into the menu bar.
neither have i found a simple way of reinstalling spotlight (since i wouldn’t want to reinstall os x upt to 10.4.11 all over again).
tx in advance for any suggestions!
[...] This page suggests rebuilding it with the following command: sudo mdutil -E / [...]
Thanks for these tips, however, they weren’t able to solve my problem. I just opted for turning off indexing in OS X. See:
http://yeago.net/works/easy-fix-for-os-x-spotlight-finder-problems
Also if you Spotlight magnifying glass fails to appear in the upper right hand corner of your mac, try repairing your permissions via Disk Utility.
If you installed something recently (especially that isn’t yet leopard compatible), that may be the culprit.
Well, I run Leopard on a new powerbook and Spotlight does not work at all. I have tried all the suggestions above, but the only files Spotlight returns are Entourage files. Which is totally useless for me. In 10.4, Spotlight seemed to work much better. It’s really frustrating to not be able to find anything now.
Solution 1 fixed the problem that I had in seconds. Thank you
my spotlight still wont work
just bought the laptop
when i click on anything like itunes, and all the programs on the menu
it says my spotlight is installed incorrectly
when i try reinstalling with my mac disk it says the same thing. no matter what i do it says mt spotlight is corrupted
on my IMAC 2ghz, 1gig ram, last years model, I can’t get spotlight to work yet.
I’ve reinstalled Leopard 2 times, last time complete clean install, still don’t work.
I’ve done all the above tries still don’t work. Even used macpilot, that didn’t work.
I can’t find another thing to try on the internet, exhausted all efforts.
HELP!!!!!
I updated my MacBook Pro 15″ 2.33 ghz, everything worked great.
on my IMAC 2ghz, 1gig ram, last years model, I can’t get spotlight to work yet.
I’ve reinstalled Leopard 2 times, last time complete clean install, still don’t work.
I’ve done all the above tries still don’t work. Even used macpilot, that didn’t work.
I can’t find another thing to try on the internet, exhausted all efforts.
HELP!!!!!
I updated my MacBook Pro 15″ 2.33 ghz, everything worked great.
I followed solution 2 but the sudo command didn’t rebuild the index it “turned searching and indexing off” and i have no idea how to turn it back on again.
Thanks for the tips! Solution #1 solved the problem–
I wish the apple website were as efficient as osxdaily.com
I have a fresh install of 10.5, and Spotlight has never worked, though it worked fine on 10.4. mdutil showed that indexing/searching is “disabled” for my hard disk. After poking around in the control panel, I discovered that in the “Privacy” tab, it has “Prevent Spotlight from searching these locations: Mac HD”.
I guess that’s the new default in 10.5. Weird. You’d think it would at least say that in the Spotlight menu. After it’s enabled, the Spotlight menu does say that it’s busy indexing, and even shows a little progress bar.
These great hints won’t work if Spotlight is completely disabled (which some people have tried and don’t know how to reverse).
If all else fails, follow this procedure:
Make hidden files visible (copy and paste the next line into Terminal:
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles -bool YES
Now in (previously hidden) /etc folder in your root/hard drive, find hostconfig, and open it with any text editor.
Does it include this line:
SPOTLIGHT=-YES-
(note the two dashes astride YES)?
If not, type this line at the bottom. Save the file as hostconfig in your root folder (etc folder won’t accept it from a text editor). Now drag and drop this new hostconfig to /etc. This requires your admin password to replace the existing hostconfig.
Reboot, and your spotlight is working. This may be a long way around, but it worked for me.
Now make invisibles invisible again with this line in Terminal:
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles -bool NO
To fire up Spotlight, you may need to type this into Terminal:
sudo mdutil -i on /
(the slash is important)
If Mail is still not searching inside Entire Message, type this into Terminal to index your old messages:
sudo mdimport /users/YOURNAME/library/mail [or whatever the path to your mailbox message folders.
Took me hours to piece this together from various forums, so I hope the next person who breaks Spotlight can find it fast.
Patrick
These great hints won’t work if Spotlight is completely disabled (which some people have tried and don’t know how to reverse).
If all else fails, follow this procedure:
Make hidden files visible (copy and paste the next line into Terminal:
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles -bool YES
Now in (previously hidden) /etc folder in your root/hard drive, find hostconfig, and open it with any text editor.
Does it include this line:
SPOTLIGHT=-YES-
(note the two dashes astride YES)?
If not, type this line at the bottom. Save the file as hostconfig in your root folder (etc folder won’t accept it from a text editor). Now drag and drop this new hostconfig to /etc. This requires your admin password to replace the existing hostconfig.
Reboot, and your spotlight is working. This may be a long way around, but it worked for me.
Now make invisibles invisible again with this line in Terminal:
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles -bool NO
To fire up Spotlight, you may need to type this into Terminal:
sudo mdutil -i on /
(the slash is important)
If Mail is still not searching inside Entire Message, type this into Terminal to index your old messages:
sudo mdimport /users/YOURNAME/library/mail [or whatever the path to your mailbox message folders.
Took me hours to piece this together from various forums, so I hope the next person who breaks Spotlight can find it fast.
Patrick
Sorry: you need to know that the visible/invisible switch works only after a relaunch of Finder (via Command-Alt-Esc).
Enjoy.
Patrick
Sorry: you need to know that the visible/invisible switch works only after a relaunch of Finder (via Command-Alt-Esc).
Enjoy.
Patrick
Spotlight is not indexing the text INSIDE my .ppt files (for Office 08). It is only indexing the filename.
I run Tiger, 10.4.11, Intel (core 2 duo) MBP.
It also would not index with Office 04… but I just learned that it indexes for other people and not me.
So I put the main HD in privacy not to index and then took it out again.
The blue thing came up after restart… it said it was going to take 2+ hours, but then it ended in like 30 minutes.
However, not everything was indexed. I’ve been checking activity monitor and mdimporter is working (not very quickly) but slowly in the background and appears to ever so slowly be indexing files.
14+ hours later, it is still not done indexing, and the .ppt that are currently showing up in spotlight searches are only searchable by the file name.
Any insight you have would be great.
the resetting of the screen resolution worked for me! thanks
Wow, great suggestions! MainMenu helped a lot. However, I still have this problem: When I search for a file that I know is on my system (as a test), it never shows up when I search the whole Mac – only when I am searching in sub-directories closer to the file’s location. I’ve made sure the Privacy setting is not excluding “Mac HD” and have tried everything else on this forum. I feel like I must be missing some very basic thing, because Spotlight is working “in the details” – it’s just this BIG thing that’s not right. Help!
I used technique number 3, but I get the message: Error, no index found for this volume.
NOW what?
Thanks very much. I had problem 1, now solved, 15 seconds to fix!! Brilliant.
Solution #4 did the trick for me!
I had my MBAir HD replaced this week (for free!). I have time capsule, so I plugged it to the MBAir and loaded everything…..except my Spotlight. It was the one and only thing that did not work after I loaded the backup. I tried reboot first, did not solve it. Tried the “sudo” command and it did it for me. I have had the Air for a year and never had a Spotlight issue before. I can’t live without spotlight. I love using it “LIVE” while giving presentations to large audiences on BiG screens. You hear people going Wao! and then people come see me after the presentation. Not for the related subject matter, but for the Mac. Draws attention and crowds.
Solution #1 Worked for me.
But had to click “Force Quit” button rather than just regular “Quit” button as just selecting “Quit” did not fix the problem. “Force Quit” provided an instant fix.
(PS: You’ll have to quit/restart Activity Monitor to see SystemUIServer in the list again.)
thank you for see
J, have you used Google Desktop Search? I think it beats WDS hands-down.
Nothing seems to work for me. On the last suggestion, I received: Error: unable to perform operation. (-1)
No index.
I tried solution 3, the strange fix, and it totally worked. I don’t know what caused it but symptom #1(Spotlight menu icon highlights, but no search form appears) has occured to me a few times. The first time it happened I googled online and followed the instruction to rewrite some syntax in the terminal (different from the codes given in solution 2 above though). I’m so glad that i ran into your site today, to me it’s a much easier fix to remember than a bunch of codes
Thank you so much~
Comment from Patrick Kinsella
Time: April 1, 2008, 7:03 pm
QUOTE “Sorry: you need to know that the visible/invisible switch works only after a relaunch of Finder (via Command-Alt-Esc).
Enjoy.
Patrick”
Patrick – thanks ever so much couldn’t get it to work until I followed your instructions…nice one!!!
George
[...] How to Fix a Broken Spotlight Menu [...]
Megathanx! Solution #1 didn’t work for me but #2 fixed it.
[...] of years old now – but still good stuff here. __________________ Save a tree. Eat a beaver. If that thing under the porch ate your dog, [...]
After upgrading to snow leopard spotlight was broken.
I removed the istat menu app (http://www.islayer.com), and 10 seconds later spotlight works again. Hope this helps.
Martin
Solution #1 did it for me. Thanks!
[...] Reference: Spotlight won’t work? [...]
SystemUIServer is not showing at all in activity monitor for me, and NO search functions are working, not just spotlight.
aaaaaaaargh
… and tip 2 gives “error no index found for volume”
Wow, #1 did it for me. Incredible. I hope I don’t have to do this all the time (Spotlight has been broken for me a long time even though I reboot every day, so I don’t think killing that process just once will fix it forever).
I would like to spam you but i am not good at ait
thanks a lot, no 1 worked like a charm! Glad you shared that knowledge.
THANK YOU!!!
Thanks much!
I tell you if MM will help- So far thanks in ad.
solution 3 worked like a charm!
My problem is that the indexing never finishes (57 hours estimated time!!). The problem arose when I swapped out the HDD for a new model and used time machine to restore. Worked a charm apart from spotlight. I have used all the tips above, repaired permissions but no joy. When I repair disk I was getting a lot of ACL issues but according to apple I can ignore these BUT I still got rid of them using ACLr8 but still no improvement. I am at my wits end!!
Never mind…It seems that trying various combinations of these methods fixed the problem. Thanks
Des the command
sudo mdutil -E /
get Spotlight to work on all volumes when I have my hard disk partititioned into multiple volumes? Or should I ad an “*” somewhere to get the command to redo the Spotligt index on all volumes?
Has anyone seen this:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1210676
It is a way of reindexing spoltlight without having to use Terminal
Thanks for great advice 1-3 didn’t work for me but 4 worked perfect..Many Thanks for your advice!
note: after all sorts of problems (years of it running okay, but breaking & failing in the past week, and trying to find the culprit through all sorts of attempts, sys-arch-reinstall, breaking again, I now believe that eventually ifreemem breaks spotlight in 10.4.11 (Tiger on ppc imac) — and I have no idea how to resurrect/fix the problem. assistance/help would be appreciated. thanks
Thank You!! #4 worked!!!! I am so grateful! I had been doing without spotlight for 6 months! Wish I had seen this page then…
Thanks again!!!!!!