Spotlight indexing is freaked out by something

[retta283]

I did a fresh install of the OS at the end of August, and it's still indexing. It won't let me search Spotlight at all. So I saw something online about checking out a process called "mdworker" in Activity Monitor, and I proceeded to do so. I saw that it was stuck indexing a folder in Applications, which was unused so I deleted it.

Now it's just freaking out. It will seem okay and let me search for about 5 seconds, then it goes back to indexing, cutting off my search. It does this in a cycle, switching between indexing and cleared about every 5 seconds. I looked at the mdworkers again and they terminate when I look at them, so they are opening and closing with the flipping.

This is totally new to me, I've never had a problem like this before.

 

[DeltaMac]

It can often help if you reset the Spotlight database
Apple's tip: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201716

Or, from the terminal: enter the command

sudo mdutil -i on /

 

[Fishrrman]

My advice:
TURN OFF Spotlight with this terminal command:
sudo mdutil -a -i off

Then, REMOVE the spotlight index file with this command:
sudo rm -rf /.Spotlight-V100/*

Then, use both "EasyFind" and "Find Any File" if you need to do a search.

 

[retta283]

My advice:
TURN OFF Spotlight with this terminal command:
sudo mdutil -a -i off

Then, REMOVE the spotlight index file with this command:
sudo rm -rf /.Spotlight-V100/*

Then, use both "EasyFind" and "Find Any File" if you need to do a search.

That is probably the most roundabout way possible, other than removing Spotlight files from the OS entirely. FIle searching works fine in Finder itself, it's just that it doesn't have some of the more advanced features of spotlight. It's also no good on your system resources for it to be attempting index 24/7