MacOS – How to enable missing tag search in Spotlight

finder-tagmacosspotlight

OS X Mavericks adds better support for tags. You can search tagged files using Spotlight with the query tag:tagname.

However, this stopped working for me a few days after upgrading form OS X Mountain Lion. Whatever I search for, no results. My tagged files are still tagged and I can use them via OS X’s “smart folders“ and third-party tools. It even works in Finder windows when entering only tagname and choosing the proposed tag. I use OS X 10.9 (13A603).

Is there any switch to enable it in the Spotlight dialogue again or could it just be a bug or even a known issue? I haven’t found anything so far.

Thank you for your help.

Best Answer

I don't know the definitive answer, but we could usually solve these issues by rebuilding the spotlight index. Takes a couple of hours, but most issues are fixed that way:

sudo mdutil -E / #deletes the spotlight index
sudo mdutil -i on / # starts the reindexing process

Additionally, you can use the commands here for an even more lowlevel approach

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done

It's probably easier to cut and paste this little script since there are some spaces that are easy to miss. (like the one after the arrow in the awk statement).

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