Rebuild the Spotlight index on your Mac
If you're receiving unexpected results when you're searching on your Mac, rebuilding the Spotlight index may help.
Before rebuilding the Spotlight index
Follow the steps for when Spotlight is returning unexpected results.
Find out what to do if you can't find email messages in Mail.
Rebuild the Spotlight index
To rebuild the Spotlight index for a disk or folder, turn Spotlight indexing off and back on for that item. Follow the appropriate steps, based on the version of macOS that you're using.
macOS Ventura or later
Choose Apple menu > System Settings.
Open Spotlight settings:
macOS Sequoia or later: Click Spotlight in the sidebar, then scroll down and click the Search Privacy button on the right.
macOS Sonoma or macOS Ventura: Click Siri & Spotlight in the sidebar, then scroll down and click the Spotlight Privacy button on the right.
Drag the disk or folder you want to re-index to the list of locations that Spotlight is prevented from searching in. Or click the add button (+) and select the disk or folder to add.*
From the same list of locations, select the disk or folder you've just added. Then click the remove button (–) to remove it from the list so that it can be reindexed.
Click Done, then close System Settings. Spotlight will re-index the contents of the disk or folder. This can take some time, depending on the amount of information that is being indexed.
Earlier versions of macOS
Choose Apple menu > System Preferences, then click Spotlight.
Click the Privacy tab.
Drag the disk or folder you want to re-index to the list of locations that Spotlight is prevented from searching in. Or click the add button (+) and select the disk or folder to add.*
From the same list of locations, select the disk or folder you've just added. Then click the remove button (–) to remove it from the list so that it can be reindexed.
Quit System Preferences. Spotlight will re-index the contents of the disk or folder. This can take some time, depending on the amount of information that is being indexed.
* You can only add an item if you have ownership permissions for that item. To find out more about permissions, choose Help from the Finder menu bar, then search for "permissions".
