Frequently, when I try to open the (10.9) Finder's "Open With..." menu, I experience a delay that appears to be due to connected FireWire drives. This delay is very long when the drives need to spin up , but is also perceptible when the drives have not spun down. For me, this delay makes no sense: I have no applications that I use stored on my external drives, and I have disabled Spotlight searches of these drives (using Spotlight's "Privacy" setting ). Is there some way to prevent the "Open With..." menu examining external drives? --- Note that this is not a question about speeding up the OW menu in general (e.g., by pruning apps and file type associations), nor about keeping duplicate apps on external drives from appearing in the OW menu (I have none as my Spotlight settings noted above exclude them).

Search for a term from the Home Screen Scroll to the bottom You see “Search in Apps” which for me includes the entries “Search Maps” and “Search App Store” How do I disable this “Search in Apps section” in iOS 26?

I installed and removed Quicksilver and since that time the keyboard shortcut for Spotlight has not been working. I mean when I press cmd + space it should open spotlight search bar. I've been into Keyboard Settings > Shortcuts > Spotlight and it is correctly set to cmd + space. I've tried changing it to another setting and then back and also by pressing the 'Restore Defaults' button on the page but nothing has helped. I can access the spotlight search if I mouse click the magnifying glass in the menu bar so I know the spotlight search feature is still there and working. But pressing cmd + space right now does nothing. How can I get the shortcut working again? Maybe there's something I can type in the terminal that could help?

For some searches, Spotlight shows strange top hits. I often want to open the "Sound" System Preferences pane using Spotlight. But when I type sound it _always_ shows "DaftCloud for SoundCloud" from the App Store as the top hit. I have never intentionally chosen this item. I have probably hit it a couple of times by mistake, but the vast majority of the time, I navigate one step down using the keyboard and choose "Sound". I rarely listen to music, and never to "DaftCloud" and I never use "SoundCloud". This top hit is weird to me. (Is Apple selling top hits on Spotlight?) I have seen claims that Spotlight can "learn" from user behavior . This doesn't seem to be the case here. I have even intentionally opened "Sound" repeatedly using Spotlight, and it still shows "SoundCloud" first. Interestingly, typing soun (without the final d) shows the "Sound" preference pane first, but as soon as I complete the word sound, it switches to "SoundCloud". (Again, is Apple selling the "sound" keyword?) Anyway, I want the "Sound" preference pane to be the top hit for sound. Is there any way to achieve this? I have explored the Spotlight "Search Results" settings. But they don't seem to offer a way to remove App Store suggestions. I cannot remove "Applications" because that will remove the "Sound" preferences from the results. Some sources claim that I should be able to drag around the "Search Results" in settings , but they don't move for me. I can force "Sound" preferences to the top by using the search query kind:system preferences sound, but that is absurdly long to type.

After using mac for a while now, I am often find that I am missing a few features and I am wondering if I am missing something. Is there a way to open Chrome bookmarks from Spotlight? What I am looking for is a one stop tool to open my bookmarks from anywhere on my Mac.

System: macOS 11.6.1, MBP 2019 16in I am having a persistent issue with certain tags. I have a tag, call it "post", that I use as a toggle. I set it on files that I need to find to upload to a certain cloud site. I set it on files that I need to attach to an email. I set it on files that I need to deliver in a presentation. After I have done the action with the files, I unset the tag. The tag resides in my sidebar as a favorite. It is colored yellow. My problem is, the tag sometimes refuses to be unset. It refuses to be unset in a rather disturbing manner. It refuses to be unset to disappear from the favorite list *but it shows no tag in the Finder list view*. Here is a view with the ghost-tagged file and a valid-tagged file. I have tried these four options: * I have toggled the post tag on and off to the file using the favorites view. While I do this, I see the xattr com.apple.FinderInfo and com.apple.metadata:_kMDItemUserTags toggle on and off (see further below). * I added the folder containing the file to the Spotlight "do not search" preference pane (Privacy) to delete the Spotlight index. The ghost-tagged file disappeared from the favorites list. I rebooted. I removed the folder from the Spotlight do not index list. The ghost-tagged file reappears. * I used various approaches with xattr to view the meta attributes and remove them with -dr. I found that I could remove all xattr characteristics. The ghost-tagged file seemed to drop from the favorites. But when I clicked to a different favorite tag and returned to the post tag ... there was the ghost-tagged file again *and it had absolutely no meta-xattr settings*. * I have deleted the post tag entirely using the Finder preferences. I then created a new tag with the same name. The ghost-tagged file reappears. * I used OnyX to remove the Spotlight index file. A slight wrinkle perhaps. I have my internal hard drive partitioned into three volumes. Some of the above disaster happens with files that are on other volumes. Another slight wrinkle perhaps. I am using DevonThink to index portions of the external volume that contain the files. I looked at the DT database for the tag. It shows no file is contained in that tag. What puzzles me primarily is what else I should be doing to purge the ghost tag definitively. Should I boot into safe mode to purge something? Should I rinse the file through some secondary app to remove the tag (the files are primarily PDFs, and I have rw access to them as seen in the Finder info box)? My reading suggests this may a problem without an answer, or the answer is fairly deeply hidden. Any thoughts would be appreciated, even if only to confirm that this mystery is just one of those hidden gems in using macOS.

My Spotlight is stupidly broken, because it is searching for a non-existent contact. Rebuilding the index does not help at all, of course, I really need to erase all Spotlight data.

My iMac running [macOS High Sierra] has two SSD drives: 256GB with the OS on it and 2TB for data. Spotlight returns zero results when doing a search on both drives. Also other apps using Spotlight for searching (for example the Calendar app and Outlook 2016) return no results when doing a search. However, searching an external connected USB drive works perfectly, and also searching a shared remote network drive gives perfect search results! I ran these commands to trigger a reindex:

sudo mdutil -a -i off 
sudo rm -rf /.Spotlight-v100

and restarted the computer, but that didn't solve my problem: Looking in Finder, I see the root .Spotlight-V100 folder with a red "forbidden" sign. Is this normal? ***Log generated by a Spotlight Search Test in Mints :***

I am coming from linux world, using plain gnome. In gnome there is a view very similar to mission control: The main difference is that gnome has a "search" field (which in essence is like Spotlight). I would like to have the same kind of view on my Mac. Is there an app which could replace mision control and provide something closer to gnome?

I tend to launch most apps using Spotlight. I can usually type just a couple of letters, and the app appears as the default choice - I can just hit enter to launch. For example, in the screenshot I typed ⌘ Command+Space, G, I. If I then press Return, Github Desktop will be launched: I recently installed FreeCAD , and this doesn't work. Unlike Single application not showing up in Spotlight , FreeCAD **does** appear in Spotlight results, it's just not the default choice, even if I type out the full name. It appears after a list of suggested web searches and some Finder hits: I'm running Ventura 13.1 How can I fix this?

This behavior has been consistent for months, maybe even years at this point, and I finally decided to make a screen recording of it just to have some verification that it's really happening. The steps are: 1. Command-space to open Spotlight search. 2. Type the letters C, H, R, O, M, E in order with pauses. 3. For CH, CHR, CHRO, and CHROM Spotlight thinks the best match is Google Chrome... 4. But as soon as I add the final E, Spotlight thinks the best match is Calendar. 5. Delete the final E and Chrome comes back to the top of the list... 6. Re-type the E, and it's Calendar again. Video evidence: https://youtu.be/nkWuhXLrN1I I just can't think of any rational text matching/lookup system in which this behavior makes sense. What on Earth is Spotlight doing?

Since my Macbook Pro (Big Sur 11.6) is burning through its battery power really quickly with mds_store clocking the most CPU usage, running the following command sudo fs_usage -w -f filesys mds_stores shows that /System/Volumes/VM/swapfile10 is commonly being used by mds_store. Running sudo fs_usage | grep /System/Volumes/VM/swapfile10 shows that this file is constantly being used by Brave Browser. However, when I tried to exclude /System/Volumes/VM/ from being indexed by Spotlight by going to System Preference > Spotlight > Privacy, I get a Privacy List Error, stating that > The item couldn't be added or removed because of an unknown error. How can we fix this and exclude the directory from Spotlight indexing?

I want to search only files created by Fl Studio but if I search in Spotlight for files with the .flp extension I get also the autosaved versions of the files. Is there any way to search only the .flp files and not the autosaved versions?

How can I get Spotlight to index a directory in the system's Library folder? I'm trying to get Spotlight running 10.10.3 to index some folders in the Macintosh HD/Library folder. I'm not getting any search results from these folders so it appears Spotlight is not searching/indexing them. The folder can be found at: Macintosh HD/Library/FileMaker Server/HTTPServer/htdocs/ I am getting search results for other Library folders, such as my web root folder at: /Library/WebServer/Documents/ Is there a way to force Spotlight to also index the Library/FileMaker Server/HTTPServer/htdocs folder as well? (I want to index FileMaker Server's web root folder that I referenced above. I will not be indexing the FileMaker Server database folders as I have excluded those from Spotlight)

Flash card is indicated mostly filled Simultaneously, I can't find any files of appropriate size % sudo du -ah 128K ./.fseventsd/fseventsd-uuid 256K ./.fseventsd 340M ./NORMAL/2022-08-05-19-08-17.MOV 1.8M ./NORMAL/2022-08-05-12-01-48.JPG 342M ./NORMAL du: ./.Spotlight-V100: Operation not permitted 460M ./EVENT/2022-08-05-16-56-54.MOV 460M ./EVENT du: ./.Trashes: Operation not permitted 803M . What are these files (.Spotlight-V100 and .Trashes) which are not accessible? Why aren't they accessible even with sudo? How to access them?

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.

I have an external volume (an SSD by Sandisk connected via a usb-c cable) rated at 1TB. Finder (macOS 14.5) says the disk is full (when I try to add a file it errors with: **No space left on device (28)** however when I look at the sizes of the directories on the external volume, of which there are two, one is called Movies and the other TV, the sizes do not add up at ALL: adding these two folder sizes adds up to a little over 700GB and nowhere near the 1000GB used as claimed by "Get Info" in Finder on the volume. Now I realize there could be hidden directories that are trouble so I looked at those using Cmd+Shift+. as you can see in the following screenshot: The only directory (of those hidden) that has more than 10MB is .Spotlight-V100 as can be seen here: Maybe the size on disk here is actually much larger than reported? To get to the bottom of things I also approached it from a different angle and ran the du and ncdu utilities in the terminal, the output of which is again attached here: These outputs lead me to believe the sizes of Movies and TV can be more or less trusted, however for .Spotlight-V100 and .Trashes unfortunately there seems to be no or wrong info for a permission issue. I am out of my knowledge here - maybe this is an exFAT specific problem? Should I try delete the Spotlight directory as a first step? Any help much appreciated! :) Also if anybody needs any more data, just comment. One last image of the info output from disk utility:

Spotlight search finds future events, but macOS Calendar search (top right corner search field) does not. How do I fix this?

I noticed that I would have insane CPU spikes (400%+) whenever I type in a math equation (even something simple like 1+2) into spotlight. The task that spikes is called mds_stores. Does anyone know if this is just an issue with my system/is there some sort of software fix coming? Attached = picture of the spike

I've noticed that when I type Corey Hart - Sunglasses At Night into the Finder search, I get no results but Corey Hart - Sunglasses At gives the desired results. What is going on?