Rebuild the Spotlight Index
Do you need to rebuild the entire Spotlight index on a Mac? It’s easy to do, but can take a while. This tutorial will show you how to start the reindexing process of an entire drive in Mac OS X, we’ll do this using the Spotlight control panel, and we’ll cover an alternative method as well just in case you want to take a different approach.
How to Rebuild the Spotlight Index in Mac OS X
- Launch System Preferences from the Apple menu
- Click on “Spotlight” and then click on the “Privacy” tab
- Drag Macintosh HD (and other drives if necessary) into this window
- Click “OK” when asked to confirm
- Now select the drive(s) you just added and click the “-” minus button to remove it from the list
This should immediately start the Spotlight indexing process for the drive in question.
If this doesn’t spur a reindexation of the drive, you may need to initiate it manually through the command line. Open Terminal and use the following command string to do so:
sudo mdutil -i on /
Rebuilding a drive index can take a long time, so be prepared to wait whether you do it through the System Preference panel or the command line.
Note: if an item is left under the “Privacy” list, it will exclude from Spotlight indexing completely.
Spotlight will immediately begin to reindex the drive(s) you added and then removed from the Privacy list. How long it takes to reindex the drive varies, ranging from 30 minutes to several hours, depending on the speed of the drive and it’s contents. At any point, you can pull down the Spotlight menu and check the progress:
The Mac will probably feel sluggish during reindexing as the mdworker and mds processes run and consume a lot of CPU and cause a lot of disk activity.
Rebuilding and reindexing Spotlight is an excellent troubleshooting technique when you encounter problems with the Mac search client. If you find Spotlight isn’t working at all, try some of these other troubleshooting tips too.
sudo mdutil -E / works as well
You sure that works for OS X Lion?
Yes. Just did it.
[…] the Spotlight index for one reason or another, you may need to reindex the drive manually. This is easy from the Spotlight control panel, and can also be achieved through the command line as we’ll […]
I receive this message when trying to reindex.
Privacy List Error:
The item couldn’t be added or removed because of an unknown error.
Brad, I had the same error message… The item couldn’t be added or removed because of an unknown error. I have nothing in the spotlight privacy box.
I am getting the same error message “The item couldn’t be added or removed because of an unknown error”. I am using a Macbook Air 1.7GHz core i5, 4GB with Outlook 2011.
I added and removed and literally nothing changed…
spotlight did not start to re-index at all
Same here. 10.8, didn’t do a thing.
I believe this used to work for me, but like others here, it now does nothing. Even with closing the entire System Preferences in between and then coming back in to removing Macintosh HD.
…and sudo mdutil -E / isn’t doing anything either :(
Okay, I got it working.
I did two things, so I’m not sure which made the difference.
1) Ran Disk Util to Fix Permissions, and I saw this:
Permissions differ on “System/Library/CoreServices/Search.bundle”; should be drwxr-xr-x ; they are dr-xr-xr-x .
2) Then I also ran:
sudo mdutil -i on /
Now it’s reindexing.
In addition to fixing permissions as Dave suggested, I also had to do the following:
% cd /System/Library/LaunchDaemons
% sudo launchctl load -w com.apple.metadata.mds.plist
. . . which I found on this page: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2760349?tstart=0
NOW it’s working for me, too. :)
[…] slow down a Mac. This is typically worse after reboots between major file system changes when the index is rebuilt, a major system update, or when another hard drive full of stuff is connected to the Mac. Typically […]
You have to add it to the list, close the window, come back to it and remove it. It will work at that time.
The method illustrated on the top of this page is also what I was told to do at genius bar, but am unable to drag hard drive into the privacy tab window. When I drag it to window, no icon appears, although the + sign appears when I drag it. Am I doing something wrong?
Make sure you drag the icon and then DROP it into the Privacy tab window, so that the + sign goes away and is replaced by the drive icon.
This didnt work…
thank you so much it work just perfect on os x 10.9.1
Man, this is frustrating. I’m getting the same message about ‘unknown reasons,’ as many got (above). I cannot add my external drives, nor can I add my Mac HD. And I can’t even find that!
I have 10.8.5 of OSX, a 2011 Macbook Pro. I’m wondering if the local Mac shop has played some fun on me–they’re known to be a bit mercenary, but I don’t think they’d do this, or if the fellow who recently helped me left some barrier up by mistake–such as permissions altered. I do know I’ve forgotten my admin password, yet the helper fellow said he didn’t need it in the end. My searchlight used to be so useful and fast, and now I must manually locate old files…
It’s indexing! Thank you! (MacBook Pro. OSX 10.8.3)
Had the motherboard replaced recently and I think that’s what caused the indexing problem.
For people who say it didn’t do anything: After adding and removing the drive(s) from the list, click on the magnifying glass in the upper right corner of your top menu (the spotlight search). A menu should drop down telling you it’s indexing.
Hope I’m not surprised later by the “unknown reasons” error some are getting. So far so good!
I added the hard disk to the privacy list but then got the error ‘Privacy List Error’ when trying to remove the HD from the list. I closed system preferences, went to Activity Monitor and killed the Spotlight process.
Spotlight starts back up again, but now I was able to remove the HD from the privacy list in System Preferences.