Spotlight crashes when entering a specific query string

crashfinderspotlight

I have a folder on my mac which I access occasionally, let's say its name is FolderABC.
I usually hit CMD + Space to bring up Spotlight, then type the name into it and it will be the first result.
Recently, Spotlight crashes instead, as soon as I type Folder and before typing any more letters. If I type any other query, it works normally. I can tell it crashes since the Loupe icon briefly disappears from the menu bar (Spotlight restarts immediately) and looking in system.log in Console shows this, whenever the problem occurs:

Oct  4 18:27:21 my-macbook-pro com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.apple.Spotlight[16126]): Service exited due to signal: Illegal instruction: 4 sent by exc handler[0]

I'm currently having Spotlight rebuild its index, but what else could I try?
Specifically, are there any debugging tools available to get a more detailed stack trace of what's causing the app to crash?

My OS version is 10.12.6

Best Answer

Old answer:

My first solution was simply reindexing all folders by running

sudo mdutil -E /

This did not help. I then renamed the folder in question, reindexed again, named it back and reindexed another time. The problem has now disappeared.

Update:

The bug seems to have been introduced with the update to Safari 12. As discussed in the apple product forums, a workaround is to disable Bookmarks & History in the Spotlight system preferences.

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Changing OS X Spotlight priorities for specific applications

Have been running into this myself, and I decided to tweak a little. Here's what I ended up with...

Open the photoshop directory through applications. 'Get info' on the Photoshop executable. 'Cmd + i' or right click and choose) Top field is 'spotlight comments', type a text shortcut that suits you, I used 'phos' Close the info window. Open up spotlight and use the shortcut you chose.

MacOS – Auto switch input source to English when entering Spotlight, typing URL in Safari, etc

Using KeyRemap4MacBook, you could save something like this as private.xml:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<root>
<item>
<name>test1</name>
<identifier>test1</identifier>
<only>SAFARI</only>
<autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::L, VK_COMMAND | ModifierFlag::NONE, KeyCode::L, VK_COMMAND, KeyCode::VK_CHANGE_INPUTMODE_ENGLISH</autogen>
</item>
<item>
<name>test2</name>
<identifier>test2</identifier>
<autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::SPACE, VK_COMMAND | ModifierFlag::NONE, KeyCode::SPACE, VK_COMMAND, KeyCode::VK_CHANGE_INPUTMODE_ENGLISH</autogen>
</item>
</root>

It only works with those two shortcuts and it doesn't change the input source back later though. See the source for the key code values and predefined settings.

Alfred has an option to always switch to a specific input source:

Best Answer

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Changing OS X Spotlight priorities for specific applications

MacOS – Auto switch input source to English when entering Spotlight, typing URL in Safari, etc

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