Spotlight (accessed by pressing Command + Space) is the incredibly fast search engine built into macOS. It can instantly find a single word buried inside a 100-page PDF document. It achieves this speed by constantly running in the background, reading every file you create, and building a massive, hidden text index.
Sometimes, this index breaks. You might search for a file you know is sitting right on your Desktop, but Spotlight insists it doesn’t exist. Alternatively, Spotlight might show you files that you deleted weeks ago. To fix a broken search system, you must safely erase the corrupted index and force macOS to rebuild it from scratch.
How to Safely Erase the Mac Spotlight Search Index
You must use the macOS System Settings to temporarily block and then unblock your hard drive.
- Click the Apple Logo in the top-left corner of your screen and select System Settings (or System Preferences).
- Click on Siri & Spotlight in the left sidebar (or the Spotlight icon in older macOS versions).
- Scroll to the bottom of the Spotlight settings and click the Spotlight Privacy… button.
- A small window will appear listing locations that Spotlight is forbidden from searching.
- Drag your main hard drive (usually named “Macintosh HD”) from your Desktop directly into this Privacy list. (If you don’t see it on your desktop, open Finder and drag it from the sidebar).
- Click OK (or Done).
By forcing your entire hard drive into the “Privacy” list, macOS immediately deletes the entire hidden Spotlight index database. Now, to rebuild it, simply click the Spotlight Privacy… button again, highlight “Macintosh HD” in the list, and click the Minus (-) button to remove it. Mac will immediately begin a massive background operation to re-read every file on your computer, resulting in a perfectly accurate search index within a few hours.