Rebuild the Spotlight index on your Mac

If unexpected results are being returned when searching on your Mac, rebuilding the Spotlight index may help.

Before rebuilding the Spotlight index

Rebuild the Spotlight index

Follow the appropriate steps, based on the version of macOS you're using.

macOS Ventura or later

  1. Choose Apple menu  > System Settings.

  2. Click Siri & Spotlight in the sidebar, then scroll down and click Spotlight Privacy on the right-hand side.

  3. 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.*

    Folder named Documents dragged into the Spotlight Privacy window
  4. 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.

  5. 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

  1. Choose Apple menu  > System Preferences, then click Spotlight.

  2. Click the Privacy tab.

  3. Folder named Documents dragged into the Spotlight Privacy tab

    Folder named Documents dragged into the Spotlight Privacy tab
  4. 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.

  5. Close 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 about permissions, choose Help from the Finder menu bar, then search for "permissions".

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