Anyone any ideas as to what's disabled Spotlight (specifically the metadata utility process) - and how I enable it again...?

[AthenaNoctua]

Suddenly, for no obvious reason, searching Finder finds nothing. The reindexing Spotlight trick via SysPrefs didn't work, so I fired up Terminal and did the sudo mdutil -E / thing.

It shot back:

2023-10-28 22:57:46.674 mdutil[4052:215381] mdutil disabling Spotlight: / -> kMDConfigSearchLevelOff


Indexing and searching disabled.

Why...? Why's it disabled...? I've not knowingly disabled it and nobody else has access to this MBP. I've tried in both standard and safe mode - same result.

I then fired up Activity Monitor to see if 'mdutil' was a running process. It's not. There's no process by that name. Presumably 'mdutil' is the Spotlight indexing process (metadata utility, yes...?) - so why doesn't it exist...? I have 4 accounts - checked every single one - it's not there. At all.

Reentering the Terminal command simply produced the same response.

Has anyone any idea as to what might have disabled Spotlight - and how I go about reenabling it...? I'm autistic and like things simple so I'd rather not have to resort to using a 3rd party app.

I installed 14.1 when I got the notification that it was available, but I don't know if that's broken it because I didn't have a need to search for anything prior to installing it.

If I have to resort to a 3rd party app for now, then so be it, but it would need to be one which is integrated into Finder, so I can search for files within other apps.

But I'd really rather reenable Spotlight - so how do I get the metadata utility process running again...?

Thank you

Sarah

 

[gilby101]

Firstly, mdutil is the app for interacting with Spotlight indexing. Normally it is not running. What you should see is mds and mds_stores with lots of CPU usage. Also mdwrite, and multiple mdworker and mdworker_shared processes. And all those running under different usernames.

But I was having problems like you. Started under macOS 14.0 (just before upgrading to 14.1) and continued after update to 14.1. Over a short period of time, Spotlight would go from working, to not working and back to working.

I use mdutil -sav to observer state of indexes. An example of it stopping and getting going again (all within about 5 minutes):

% mdutil -sav /: Indexing enabled. Scan base time: 2023-10-27 21:57:04 +0000 (16969 seconds ago), reasoning: '(null)' /System/Volumes/Data: Indexing enabled. /System/Volumes/Preboot: Indexing enabled. /Volumes/Photos: Indexing enabled. Scan base time: 2023-10-28 02:39:34 +0000 (19 seconds ago), reasoning: '(null)' % mdutil -sav /: No index. /System/Volumes/Data: No index. /System/Volumes/Preboot: No index. /Volumes/Photos: No index. % mdutil -sav % mdutil -sav /: Indexing enabled. Scan base time: 2023-10-28 02:09:36 +0000 (2863 seconds ago), reasoning: '(null)' /System/Volumes/Data: Indexing enabled. /System/Volumes/Preboot: Indexing enabled. /Volumes/Photos: Indexing enabled. Scan base time: 2023-10-28 02:51:38 +0000 (341 seconds ago), reasoning: '(null)'

I had this sort of behaviour for about 3 days. Rebooting didn't obviously help.

But, without me doing anything, the indexing and searching are now working as expected. So perhaps patience is the answer.

 

[Sumleilmus]

I updated to 14.4.1 yesterday, and now Spotlight is almost useless. Instead of searching Finder, it uses Safari to search web. I hope in a couple of days it will be able to find directories in Finder, such as ~/Documents/Web Receipts.

Sigh. Oh Apple, wha' have ye done wi' yrself?

 

[q3anon]

Suddenly, for no obvious reason, searching Finder finds nothing. The reindexing Spotlight trick via SysPrefs didn't work, so I fired up Terminal and did the sudo mdutil -E / thing.

It shot back:

2023-10-28 22:57:46.674 mdutil[4052:215381] mdutil disabling Spotlight: / -> kMDConfigSearchLevelOff


Indexing and searching disabled.

Why...? Why's it disabled...? I've not knowingly disabled it and nobody else has access to this MBP. I've tried in both standard and safe mode - same result.

I then fired up Activity Monitor to see if 'mdutil' was a running process. It's not. There's no process by that name. Presumably 'mdutil' is the Spotlight indexing process (metadata utility, yes...?) - so why doesn't it exist...? I have 4 accounts - checked every single one - it's not there. At all.

Reentering the Terminal command simply produced the same response.

Has anyone any idea as to what might have disabled Spotlight - and how I go about reenabling it...? I'm autistic and like things simple so I'd rather not have to resort to using a 3rd party app.

I installed 14.1 when I got the notification that it was available, but I don't know if that's broken it because I didn't have a need to search for anything prior to installing it.

If I have to resort to a 3rd party app for now, then so be it, but it would need to be one which is integrated into Finder, so I can search for files within other apps.

But I'd really rather reenable Spotlight - so how do I get the metadata utility process running again...?

Thank you

Sarah

To disable indexing:

sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist