Safari.app missing from Spotlight search - Ventura 13.2.1 (22D68)

[luckman212]

I rebuilt my Spotlight index the other day, and after it was rebuilt, I noticed Safari.app is no longer appearing when searching "Safari" in Spotlight.

The app is there in /Applications but I note that it's a symlink pointing to ../System/Cryptexes/App/System/Applications/Safari.app

Also strange, is mdls can't seem to "find" this app at all, even when directly targeting the Cryptexes version. I didn't know about Cryptexes, but after some research I now understand them (in the same sort of way that I understand Bitcoin or ChatGPT🤔)

Anyway...

$ mdls /Applications/Safari.app/
/Applications/Safari.app/: could not find /Applications/Safari.app/.
$ mdls /System/Cryptexes/App/System/Applications/Safari.app/
/System/Cryptexes/App/System/Applications/Safari.app/: could not find /System/Cryptexes/App/System/Applications/Safari.app/.

Can't find much about this, other than this thread over on the Apple forums. My M2 MacBook Air doesn't have this issue (same OS). But, I haven't rebuilt the spotlight index on that one... so maybe that's the difference? Anyone else?

update: this command fixed it for me, YMMV:

sudo mdutil -i on /System/Volumes/Preboot

 

[luckman212]

update: I compared the output of

mdimport -t -d2 /System/Cryptexes/App/System/Applications/Safari.app

On the working vs. non-working Macs and it's identical (with the exception of :MD:DeviceId which is expected)

 

[bogdanw]

Thread about Safaris https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/question-about-this-symlink.2375942/

 

[luckman212]

Thread about Safaris https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/question-about-this-symlink.2375942/

I saw that thread but there's literally nothing in there about Spotlight...

 

[bogdanw]

About Spotlight https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/spotlight-issue.2379453/

 

[luckman212]

Ok, it wasn't clear right away from your posts, but they were a good clue @bogdanw

This command fixed it for me:

sudo mdutil -i on /System/Volumes/Preboot

 

[brendantwhite]

sudo mdutil -i on /System/Volumes/Preboot worked for me too - thanks.

Ok, it wasn't clear right away from your posts, but they were a good clue @bogdanw

This command fixed it for me:

sudo mdutil -i on /System/Volumes/Preboot

Yep, I was having the same problem (Spotlight was finding everything EXCEPT Safari), and this command fixed it for me too.