New Spotlight Apps search in macOS 26 doesn't show any results, no matter what I type in

Question

New Spotlight Apps search in macOS 26 doesn't show any results, no matter what I type in

Ever since upgrading to Tahoe, the Applications search has never worked right. No matter what I type in the search box, no results come up for Apps. Even typing something like "photo booth" or "safari" yields an empty results box.

I tried rebooting my Mac, after which an "Indexing..." message appears in Spotlight and the search started working!.... for about two hours. Then when I tried it just now, it's back to the same behavior as before.

Can we just.... have Launchpad back? At least that actually worked.

[Edited by Moderator]

MacBook Pro 16″

Posted on Sep 22, 2025 7:32 AM

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Answer 1

Barney-15E

Level 10

122,042 points

Sep 22, 2025 7:57 AM in response to VikingOSX

press cmd+1 and enter Photo Booth again. You should see that application icon highlighted.

I think that is how TwiceInEveryMoment got to that sheet. That's exactly what mine looks like if I start with Cmd-1.

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Answer 2

Barney-15E

Level 10

122,042 points

Nov 10, 2025 4:27 PM in response to Michael_907

Michael_907 wrote:

I would add that a system reboot is necessary to finalize the re-indexing.

I think they might have fixed that in 26.1, but it doesn’t hurt. They also changed the -X option to automatically re-enable indexing, so the -i on is no longer necessary.

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Answer 3

Aljora

Level 1

8 points

Dec 4, 2025 6:44 PM in response to bun-gee

Hi All..

My MacMini is also experiencing the same issue. I see I am not alone.

Apple support asked me to reinstall the OS from scratch and restore only my personal data due to an issue with kernel_task process writing a lot of data, then this issue started to happen.

I recreated the index 4 days ago then spotlight worked fine until yesterday.

This must be a bug.

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Answer 4

Sep 22, 2025 8:19 AM in response to VikingOSX

I never ran the Tahoe beta. I installed the release on the day it came out.

The list of apps shows up when I hit "Apps" on the dock or use cmd+1, but as soon as I start typing anything it, it goes blank like pictured. No results no matter what I type.

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Answer 5

Sep 22, 2025 8:28 AM in response to Barney-15E

I'm giving this a try. The second command ran for an awfully long time before erroring out:

Error: Index is already changing state.  Please try again in a moment.

It's weird because a restart did appear to fix the problem at first, but a few hours later the same problem reappeared. The only thing I can think of is that I plugged in an external SSD during that time, so maybe there's a bug with the new spotlight involving external volumes.

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Answer 6

tewmwm2

Level 1

12 points

Nov 3, 2025 3:24 PM in response to TwiceInEveryMoment

I have OS 26.0.1 on my Mac mini. Spotlight returns results from the Internet but no longer finds file names. How do I make it find files on my hard drives and iCloud?

I may be creating a duplicate entry in the community chat. I would like to know at the same fix provided by Barney–15E would work for my problem. I get some results from a spotlight search, just not files and folders. I have everything turned on in settings..

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Answer 7

Nov 10, 2025 4:24 PM in response to Barney-15E

I would add that a system reboot is necessary to finalize the re-indexing.

I was still unable to find files in Spotlight after entering those commands in Terminal. After a system reboot, all is well again.

Thank you.

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Answer 8

Owl-53

Level 10

102,193 points

Sep 22, 2025 7:41 AM in response to neuroanatomist

Dictionary malfunction - ouch

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Answer 9

Sep 22, 2025 11:12 AM in response to neuroanatomist

No luck there either. Attempting to add things to the exclusion list in system settings yields this:

[Edited by Moderator]

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Answer 10

dialabrain

Level 10

135,521 points

Oct 10, 2025 9:28 PM in response to Peter Albion

Good sleuthing. 👍

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Answer 11

yytbob

Level 1

26 points

Nov 1, 2025 2:31 AM in response to yytbob

Sorry, this solution only worked for a very short time after a new restart.

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Answer 12

tewmwm2

Level 1

12 points

Nov 3, 2025 12:01 AM in response to TwiceInEveryMoment

I have OS 26.0.1 on my Mac mini. Spotlight returns results from the Internet but no longer finds file names. How do I make it find files on my hard drives and iCloud?

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