MacOS – Single application not showing up in Spotlight

macosspotlight

I have a strange issue where Matlab stubbornly refuses to appear in Spotlight search results.

I'm not sure what information to provide besides the fact it clearly exists in Applications:

terminal showing matlab is there

It even appears in Launchpad just fine:

spotlight showing matlab is there

I don't have anything blocked from being indexed by Spotlight:

spotlight settings

And yet, even searching for the exact name in Spotlight only yields some crash log.

spotlight search

The Spotlight search also works just fine for anything else / any other apps, and it updates fine (for example, I just searched it for the screenshots I made, and it found them) so it is not just "stuck".

Any ideas?

Best Answer

Go to System Preferences --> Spotlight --> Privacy. While that's open, go to Finder --> Applications and drag Matlab from Applications into Privacy. Close out System Preferences then reopen it and remove Matlab from the same place.

This will force a reindex for Spotlight. I've seen this work for some people and not for others but it's worth a shot.

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