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Spotlight Server Keeps Disabling

5 votes
2 answers
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Yesterday Spotlight stopped returning results and sudo mdutil -s /returned Spotlight search is disabled. I tried all the different solutions found via search, but I could not re-enable Spotlight. I finally rebooted the computer, and that seems to fix the issue - Spotlight was indexing and running until I went to sleep. However, overnight, Spotlight is once again disabled. I confirmed this by running sudo mdutil -s / again. I do not know why this is happening. I'm running macOS Sequoia 15.1 Here are all the different solutions I tried:
`
sudo mdutil -i on
sudo mdutil -a -i on
sudo mdutil -E

The following commands in tandem:
sudo mdutil -X /System/Volumes/Data
sudo mdutil -X /System/Volumes/Preboot
sudo mdutil -X /Volumes/Macintosh \HD
sudo mdutil -a -Esvp -i on /Volumes
` Each one of these returned Spotlight server is disabled I ran locate .metadata_never_index and it returned
`
/Library/Apple/System/Library/InstallerSandboxes/.metadata_never_index
/Library/InstallerSandboxes/.metadata_never_index
` I also tried running `/Library/Apple/System/Library/InstallerSandboxes/.metadata_never_index /Library/InstallerSandboxes/.metadata_never_index` but it did not work because of SIP. Finally, when I go to System Settings and attempt to add a folder in Search Privacy, I get Privacy List Error. The item couldn't be added or removed because of an unknown error. I'm at a loss at what else to try.
Asked by RHPT (788 rep)
Dec 5, 2024, 03:48 PM
Last activity: May 23, 2025, 10:15 AM