IPhone 4s search sometimes stays blank

iTunes doesn’t seem to exhibit any sort of smart searching built into the search box. Possibly, the best way to deal with these things is to use an external tool.

In my case, I have Coversutra (not free), that allows you to press “tab” (can be changed) to select different things:

I know there are free alternatives that can possibly do the same thing.

An additional alternative could be using an AppleScript and Automator to “ask” for the values… but that might be too much.

tell application "iTunes"
  activate
  set results to (every file track of playlist "Library" whose name contains “some track" and artist contains “some artist")
  repeat with t in results
    play t
  end repeat
end tell

Something like that, if you can make automator (or the script) to ask you for the two “some” values, you’re set.

My opinion: iTunes should support spotlight like search strings!

UPDATE Ok, you’re right about that one, Coversutra (and others) all use iTunes “syntax” which is… no syntax.

Spotlight, however, is a different beast.

In trying to replicate your scenario, I’ve found that I have two “artists” that are similar in name: Metallica and Metalium. They both contain “Meta” in their names.

So when I search for artist “meta” I get both, which is annoying, because I really don’t like Metalium that much…

So I have two solutions for you:

a. Use Launchbar (or quicksilver), to quickly find the artist (this is a nice way to do it and what I really use most of the time when I want to find a song or an artist, it works faster than anything else). I use Launchbar. Pressing enter there creates a temporary playlist (called Launchbar) that contains all the tracks in question, but you could have dig a little bit more if you wanted an album or song. Very easy.

b. Use Spotlight:

This brings both bands:

kind:mp3 author:meta

but this excludes the unwanted one:

kind:mp3 author:meta NOT author:metalium

Not the best but… what can we do :)

Other than your Finder having jaundice, this should be a simple fix. The following command will clear the volumes local store and rebuild it if necessary; Open up Terminal and type:

# sudo mdutil -E /

• You will be asked for your password, provide it, as this command requires administrator privileges to run.
• After confirming your Spotlight index will be re-built and your files should appear in the search. ( Depending on the size of your HDD it can take a while )

To check if all volumes have indexing enabled or disabled use:

# mdutil -s -a

To toggle (enable/disable) indexing on all volumes:

# mdutil -a -i

These commands are safe to use when/if you encounter similar issues as described in the question.

Complete options available:

 -p  Spotlight caches indexes of some network devices locally.  This option requests
     that a local caches be flushed to the appropriate network device.

 -E  This flag will cause each local store for the volumes indicated to be erased.
     The stores will be rebuilt if appropriate.

 -i on | off
     Sets the indexing status for the provided volumes to on or off.  Note that index-
     ing may be delayed due to low disk space or other conditions.

 -s  Display the indexing status of the listed volumes.

 -a  Apply command to all volumes.

 -v  Print verbose information when available.

• mdutil(1) Mac OS X Manual Page