MacOS – Yosemite Spotlight Calculator suddenly stopped working

macosspotlight

I use Spotlight's Calculator feature occasionally, but I've noticed that it has stopped working recently. Instead I get a "No Results" message:

Example calculation not working

I've verified that Calculator is enabled in Spotlight System Preferences. Restarting the computer does not help. I also tried disabling and re-enabling the Calculator setting in Spotlight.

Any other ideas?

Best Answer

Delete the spotlight preferences file:

~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Spotlight.plist

And then reboot. I was having the same problem and that fixed it for me.

Turn off spotlight:

sudo mdutil -a -i off

Unload it:

sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist

Load It:

sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist

Turn on spotlight again:

sudo mdutil -a -i on

Now everything is being reindexed as expected.

In newer versions of macOS, just turning indexing off then back on again resolves the issue.

MacOS – Spotlight constantly indexes MacBook Air (Lion). Takes up 50+% of cpu

Try to erase the Spotlight index by either running sudo mdutil -Ea or by temporarily adding your startup disk to the privacy tab in the Spotlight preference pane.

If that doesn't work, try to run:

sudo lsof|grep mdworker

sudo mdutil -Ea;opensnoop -n mdworker

to see if the indexing hangs on some specific files.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

MacOS – Applications Don’t Show Up in Spotlight

Turn off spotlight:

Unload it:

Load It:

Turn on spotlight again:

MacOS – Spotlight constantly indexes MacBook Air (Lion). Takes up 50+% of cpu

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