Rebuilding your Spotlight index in macOS

Heads up! This post was written in 2017, so it may contain information that is no longer accurate. I keep posts like this around for historical purposes and to prevent link rot, so please keep this in mind as you're reading.

— Cory

I use Spotlight more than I like to admit, usually for launching apps. Recently, some of my apps and files stopped appearing — even ones I access frequently.

After sifting through numerous posts online, I finally discovered one that seems to work. Running this command in the terminal seems to do the trick:

sudo mdutil -E /

If you're having problem with just a certain disk, you can replace / with the appropriate device name (tip: drag the device into the terminal and let macOS input it for you).

Finally, my Spotlight is back to normal!