Whatever I do, Spotlight won't search my internal drive. It has no problem searching into any of my externals, but there is no results at all coming from the internal. Wether I specify to look only within Macintosh HD, or don't specify a location to look into at all, none of my files located on my internal show up. I usually use a smart search to find the biggest files to do some cleanup, but it has been a lot harder without the ability to quickly search for those files...
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Spotlight searches limited to external drives
- Thread starter Martinpa
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It sounds like your internal drive is not being indexed. This could happen if you added that drive to Spotlight's "Privacy" pane in System Preferences (or System Settings depending upon the version of macOS you're running). Have you checked there?
This Terminal.app command will show you the indexing status of all connected drives:
This Terminal.app command will show you the indexing status of all connected drives:
mdutil -saI don’t have anything in the privacy pane of Spotlight’s system preferences…
Just ran the terminal command. Here’s what came out:
Code:
Last login: Sat Dec 24 05:59:22 on console
User@User-iMac ~ % mdutil -sa
/:
Indexing enabled.
/System/Volumes/Data:
Error: unknown indexing state.
/Volumes/Add. Work:
Indexing enabled.
/Volumes/BJF 5TB:
Error: unexpected indexing state. kMDConfigSearchLevelTransitioning
/Volumes/EOS_DIGITAL:
Indexing disabled.
/Volumes/LaCie:
Error: unexpected indexing state. kMDConfigSearchLevelTransitioning
/Volumes/Libraries:
Indexing enabled.
Last edited:
Something is wrong... my laptop (with only internal drive) looks like:
I've read that one way of forcing a re-indexing is to put the drive into the Spotlight privacy pane, wait a few moments (the index will be deleted), and then removing it from the pane. A new index should be created. Maybe that will fix the error on /Systems/Volumes/Data?
Can instead use the 'mdutil' command to erase and turn off/on indexing for specific drives. See 'man mdutil' for details if you're familiar with Terminal commands.
Code:
/:
Indexing enabled.
/System/Volumes/Data:
Indexing enabled.I've read that one way of forcing a re-indexing is to put the drive into the Spotlight privacy pane, wait a few moments (the index will be deleted), and then removing it from the pane. A new index should be created. Maybe that will fix the error on /Systems/Volumes/Data?
Can instead use the 'mdutil' command to erase and turn off/on indexing for specific drives. See 'man mdutil' for details if you're familiar with Terminal commands.
I remember trying to put the drive in the Spotlight's privacy pane in the past, and then, it wouldn't even let me. This time, I could do it, but it didn't help...
I then tried going the Terminal route and found a post on Apple's support forum with a bunch of terminal commands. Still doesn't work... mdutil -sa comes back with Error: unknown indexing status still. Tried Onyx re-indexing task also, and nothing.
Anywhere on my local drive. None of them show up. Desktop, Download folder, Music folder,…
I’m trying to find the larger files to do some clean up and I can’t make sense of it. My 1 TB is supposedly almost full, but my TM backup is only about 300GB and the largest file I can find manually is 33GB, after that only a few files around 3GB and the rest is way under. For the quantity of things stored locally it doesn’t add up, so a spotlight search to locate the large files would really help.
Did some manual searching for the bigger files and couldn’t see them at first, as my user folder weighted in at only around 300GB. Then I thought to look at the Library folder and found the culprit. Forgot the Adobe Cache files… deleted that and regained about 600GB. Don’t know if that was what did the trick but I reran some terminal commands I found on an Apple Support thread (including some mdutil ones as previously suggested) and on the second try, it finally worked and my internal drive is finally indexing.
Looking at finally upgrading my OS now, and debating whether I want to
1- clean install, and re-add and relocate my stuff manually, as to avoid putting back stuff that I don’t need anymore
2- clean install, then migrate stuff through my Time Machine backup
3- regular install from my current state, without whipping the drive first…
Looking at finally upgrading my OS now, and debating whether I want to
1- clean install, and re-add and relocate my stuff manually, as to avoid putting back stuff that I don’t need anymore
2- clean install, then migrate stuff through my Time Machine backup
3- regular install from my current state, without whipping the drive first…