Forcing Spotlight to index dot directories (& contents thereof)

I commonly need to find files hidden in dot directories of my computer. I am given to understand that Spotlight does not index hidden directories by default. I'd like to know if there is a way to force indexing of the +contents of hidden directories.+ According to an old doc I found online, the mdimport -f option used to this, but -f is obsoleted in Leopard. Is there another way?
If not, why? It's inconvenient enough to have to manually do it. It's atrocious if there's no way at all.

Actually you can search things that are simply hidden, such as /private. Just go there using the "Go To Folder" item in the Finder's Go menu, or use the open command in Terminal, or make aliases to all the ones you want to quickly open and double click the alias (this is what I have done). So open /private, and hit Command-F, then click "private" in the Search window toolbar, and set your seach. For instance, if I do that and select Name:contains:make, I instantly get two files listed
/private/var/yp/Makefile.main
/private/var/yp/Makefile.yp
The problem is that searching for content in pretty much any of those places is basically fruitless, because all, or nearly all, the files are things that do not have mdimporters (and why a perfectly ordinary plain text file isn't handled, just because it doesn't have a .txt extension, when Finder itself can identify the file as plain text, well, I'm at a loss to understand that). Whether the files would be indexed at to content if there were an mdimporter for them, I just don't know.
You can do the same sort of thing with dot folders: open it by "Go to" or with an open command, then hit Command-F to bring up the search window. But again you will be able to search by name, even date, but the content searches won't work. In this case I happen to know that the items are not actually handled by their mdimporters, even when there is an mdimporter. The only information available to spotlight is the basic file system information, name, extension, size and dates.
Francine
Francine
Schwieder

Similar Messages

Force Spotlight to Index a FW HDD

Hello!
Well, I recently aquired (as in 2 days ago) a Seagate 400GB FireWire/USB drive. I have it connected via FW.
Well, after formatting it to Mac Extended format, I partitioned it for a 60G section (intended for a secondary boot volume) and a 320 GB volume.
Yesterday, I coppied all 6 gig of data from our old G4's hard drive. Tonight, I want to look for a couple of files - but spotlight hasn't indexed anything - so not even find will find the files.
How do you force spotlight to index a hard drive?
-Dan

To force a volume to index just drag it into the privacy window for a moment and then drag it out.
-mj
[email protected]

Spotlight stopped indexing?!

I have recently upgraded firefox 3 (but just drag and drop and replacing the old one) and also Skype to the most update to date version. However, spotlight can not find these... I use bootcamp and parallels for windows XP system and the spotlight will only show the windows version of the software!!!
Help! Is there a way to force spotlight to index everything? I have checked everything in the preference panel. Is my spotlight somehow corrupted? If so, is there a way to fix it?
Thank you in advance for all your help!

Hello everyone! I am having the same problem with my Spotlight not indexing anymore. In fact, when I use Spotlight, putting in a term that I KNOW a file exists for, it returns the error "nothing found." I used the following tip found on the site to manually turn on indexing (or so it said) but still no indexing. Does anyone have any ideas on what I can do? It's really becoming a pain not having spotlight work. Thanks to everyone!! P DUB
(Here is the solution I tried that didn't seem to work--at least not for me---I will say this however:
AFTER I completed these steps, I did get a message in TERMINAL that said "indexing enabled." which was encouraging---but spotlight has still not indexed!! Again, any ideas??
This tip is useful, but a way too complicated way to do this. A better and simpler solution is as follows:
1. Login in to your server as an administrator.
2. Open the Terminal application (in your /Applications/Utilities folder)
3. Type the following exactly as written in to the Terminal:
sudo rm /.metadataneverindex
It will ask you for your password. I have never seen this file, so you may get a "file not found" error - in which case move on to step 4 anyway.
4. Type the following in to the Terminal:
sudo mdutil -i on / 
5. Spotlight in the right corner of your server login should indicate it is indexing, and before long will start working.
I don't believe editing of hostconfig is required at all, and you don't need to do all this stuff with making invisible files visible since you are already in the Terminal anyway.)
THANKS TO EVERYONE FOR YOUR HELP!! P DUB OKC

Spotlight is indexing, but no pulsing dot

Wonder if anyone has this issue. My MBP (2009 5,3, latest Mtn. Lion) seems to perform Spotlight indexing, but the pulsing dot only pulses for a few minutes.
The rest of the time when it's indexing, the dot is absent.
I have removed the main drive from Spotlight, and replaced it, but the same thing occurs.
Any thoughts would be appreciated.
Thanks!

I have rarely seen the pulsing dot in the magnifying glass during indexing. So I can't say whether the "no dot" is a new behavior in Mountain Lion - or whether I just simply never noticed the dot in the past.
I just forced a re-index of an external USB drive - by adding the volume to the list of locations not to be indexed - and then after a few minutes - removed the volume from the list. After removal - a fresh re-indexing process has started - and the only way that I am aware of the indexing being activie is by noting that the external drive is actively doing something - or by clicking on the magnifying glass - where I can then see the indexing progress bar.
I really only ever notice indexing activity after copying large folders to a volume or after a restore of some sort.

Spotlight keeps indexing external set to Privacy

After completing a SuperDuper backup Spotlight started indexing all of its contents ('30 hours remaining...'). To stop this I dragged the backup image into Spotlight's Privacy panel, but to no avail. To stop the indexing I had to do a force unmount of the external drive. Somewhere else I read that as soon as the drive is dragged into the Privacy folder Spotlight's indexing stops. Is this how it is supposed to work?
Thanks in advance

Well, this time immediately after SuperDuper started doing its backup operations I went to Spotlight's Privacy panel and added the SuperDuper image there, and Spotlight didn't index anything. So I suppose this is the way it should work.

Does Spotlight support search of AppleWorks content?

I seem to be having trouble finding content searches of years of AppleWorks documents when doing a search in Spotlight. I have all the Spotlight settings correct, but it does not find items that I know are there and can bring up via other methods of looking at my files. Any help?
Is there a way to reset Spotlight?
Message was edited by: Dlawn

Don wrote:
I have two computers, a PPC and an Intel.
I have the same file folders on both ...
On the PPC ... I can find info in the content of the AppleWorks files.
But ... the file content on the Intel Macmini is not visible ...
They both use ... 10.5.8.
Thanks for the info. It's a local problem with the Mac mini it seems. I obviously don't have a solution, but if it were me I'd:
1) Create a new User account for myself on the Mac mini and see if the problem occurs there. (You do this in System Preferences.) If this fixes problem then I'd delete my 'old' User account.
2) Do an Archive and Install of Mac OS X. This would keep my User account intact including network settings, etc. However, it's likely to leave the Spotlight index intact as well and not solve the problem.
3) Backup my documents, erase the Mac mini and reinstall Mac OS X. (A radical step which would gobble up my day.) This forces a fresh Spotlight index on all content.
Sorry I couldn't help more.
Dale

IPhoto/Spotlight not indexing SOLUTION

For those iPhoto 6 users whoose comments and keywords not being indexed by Spotlight, here is the solution to your problem!
If you are getting * Parsing file: '~/Pictures/iPhoto Library/AlbumData.xml'
ERROR: syntax error (<key>PhotoCount</key>) when you try to manually index your iPhoto library with mdimport, this will solve your problem!
You can only have single-line comments on your photos:
- Create a smart album: "Comments... contains... [option][return]"
Note: press option+return with your keyboard... the box will appear blank
- The smart album should become populated with photos where you entered a comment containing a character return
- Click the ( i ) in the bottom left-hand corner to draw up the info for each file, and manually remove the character break until your smart alum is empty OR go to Photos -> Batch Change and enter a new comment. Make sure that "append" is UNCHECKED -- This will overwrite all of the comments.
Now, you must also make sure you only have single-line comments on your rolls:
- From the iPhoto Library, go to View -> Sort Photos -> By Film Roll
- Hold the Apple (command) key, and click the drop down triangle once or twice (until all are collapsed)
- Manually examine each roll and make sure that the comments (if any) are all on one line.
Note: If the comments are all on one line, the whole line will be visible in the collapsed view under the Film Roll name
Quit iPhoto
Open Terminal (in the Utilities folder)
- Type mdimport -f ~/Pictures and hit return
- After some time, a message should come up saying:
* Parsing file: '~/Pictures/iPhoto Library/AlbumData.xml'
As long as there is not an error message underneath, this is good!
- When the command has finished running and you're at a blank prompt again, quit Terminal
Open iPhoto
- Click iPhoto in the menu bar, and go to Preferences
- Click the Keywords tab
- Click the "+" and create a new keyword called Spotlight
- Close out of iPhoto preferences
- From the iPhoto Library, select all of the photos (Edit -> Select All)
- Get info on the files (Photos -> Get Info)
- Select the Keywords tab
- CHECK the box that says [Spotlight] *THIS MIGHT TAKE A WHILE
- UNCHECK the box that says [Spotlight] * THIS MIGHT TAKE A WHILE
Note: This forces all of the pictures to be updated in the database
- Quit iPhoto
Search for your comments and keywords with Spotlight

Can I ask, does this need to be done every time you add photos to iPhoto, or is this a one-off trick to get Spotlight to look at iPhoto keywords in the first place?
My first experience with iPhoto is iPhoto6 so I don't have any baggage that I am bringing from earlier copies of iPhoto. I've imported in 1500 photos and am working my way through tagging them with keywords and am hoping that spotlight will index them. Is this bug related to keywords applied in older versions of iPhoto, or does the issue manifest itself even on a brand new library? Are Apple looking to patch iPhoto / Spotlight to resolve this?
Thanks.
Graham

IPhoto/Spotlight not indexing SOLUTION *edit

For those iPhoto 6 users whoose comments and keywords not being indexed by Spotlight, here is the solution to your problem!
If you are getting * Parsing file: '~/Pictures/iPhoto Library/AlbumData.xml'
ERROR: syntax error (<key>PhotoCount</key>) when you try to manually index your iPhoto library with mdimport, this will solve your problem!
You can only have single-line comments on your photos:
- Create a smart album: "Comments... contains... [option][return]"
Note: press option+return with your keyboard... the box will appear blank
- The smart album should become populated with photos where you entered a comment containing a character return
- Click the ( i ) in the bottom left-hand corner to draw up the info for each file, and manually remove the character break until your smart alum is empty OR go to Photos -> Batch Change and enter a new comment. Make sure that "append" is UNCHECKED -- This will overwrite all of the comments.
Now, you must also make sure you only have single-line comments on your rolls:
- From the iPhoto Library, go to View -> Sort Photos -> By Film Roll
- Hold the Apple (command) key, and click the drop down triangle once or twice (until all are collapsed)
- Manually examine each roll and make sure that the comments (if any) are all on one line.
Note: If the comments are all on one line, the whole line will be visible in the collapsed view under the Film Roll name
Quit iPhoto
Open Terminal (in the Utilities folder)
- Type mdimport -f ~/Pictures and hit return
- After some time, a message should come up saying:
* Parsing file: '~/Pictures/iPhoto Library/AlbumData.xml'
As long as there is not an error message underneath, this is good!
- When the command has finished running and you're at a blank prompt again, quit Terminal
Open iPhoto
- Click iPhoto in the menu bar, and go to Preferences
- Click the Keywords tab
- Click the "+" and create a new keyword called Spotlight
- Close out of iPhoto preferences
- From the iPhoto Library, select all of the photos (Edit -> Select All)
- Get info on the files (Photos -> Get Info)
- Select the Keywords tab
- CHECK the box that says [Spotlight] *THIS MIGHT TAKE A WHILE
- UNCHECK the box that says [Spotlight] * THIS MIGHT TAKE A WHILE
Note: This forces all of the pictures to be updated in the database
- Quit iPhoto
Search for your comments and keywords with Spotlight

Can I ask, does this need to be done every time you add photos to iPhoto, or is this a one-off trick to get Spotlight to look at iPhoto keywords in the first place?
My first experience with iPhoto is iPhoto6 so I don't have any baggage that I am bringing from earlier copies of iPhoto. I've imported in 1500 photos and am working my way through tagging them with keywords and am hoping that spotlight will index them. Is this bug related to keywords applied in older versions of iPhoto, or does the issue manifest itself even on a brand new library? Are Apple looking to patch iPhoto / Spotlight to resolve this?
Thanks.
Graham

Spotlight is indexing but what? And why does it want access to the web?

I can see Spotlight is indexing, it spends several hours a day doing this, every day.
Where can i find more details like previous OS X versions? Which drive, how much time left etc.
Console was no help, any suggestions welcome.
Also, with "Spotlight Suggestions" and "Bing Web Searches" disabled in the Spotlight Search Results references, why is the process "Spotlight Web Content" still trying to access the web several times a day? I am not using Spotlight when this happens nor am i trying to preview any files that have web content in them. Most commonly it tries to connect to static.amazon.com on the http port.

In System Preferences > Spotlight > Search Results, if you have "Bookmarks and History" checked, then the "Spotlight Web Content" background process will crawl any web page that you recently visited to index its keywords. Uncheck that to turn it off.

How to know when spotlight is indexing

hi,
in previous OS versions you could tell when spotlight is indexing by clicking the spotlight icon in the toolbar and the dropdown would tell you. now in yosemite how can we tell when spotlight is indexing? because i use mail.app a lot and search won't work properly until the indexing is done. thanks!
rc

Same way.
Re-index Spotlight: Spotlight: How to re-index folders or volumes - Apple Support
If that doesn't work, force it with this command in Terminal:
sudo mdutil -E /

Spotlight trouble indexing mail in Lion

Having a terrible time with Spotlight perpetually indexing mail.
system log shows
Jul 11 17:01:26 xxxxx com.apple.mdworker.lsb.0[2660]: [Assigning new unique identifiers to all messages]
Jul 11 17:01:26: --- last message repeated 249 times ---
and of course All messages shows every one of those.
also plenty of messages like
Jul 11 17:03:02 xxxxx com.apple.mdworker.lsb.0[2660]: %Unterminated mailbox: [email protected].
Jul 11 17:03:02 xxxxx com.apple.mdworker.lsb.0[2660]: %Unexpected characters at end of address: :;>
Jul 11 17:03:02 xxxxx com.apple.mdworker.lsb.0[2660]: %Unterminated mailbox: [email protected].
Jul 11 17:03:02 xxxxx com.apple.mdworker.lsb.0[2660]: %Unexpected characters at end of address: :;>
Jul 11 17:03:04 xxxxx com.apple.mdworker.lsb.0[2660]: %Missing parameter value: NAME
Jul 11 17:03:04 xxxxx com.apple.mdworker.lsb.0[2660]: %Missing parameter value: FILENAME
-- those seem to be ridiculous errors for Spotlight -- if it can't figure out how to parse some of the info, it should ignore that info.
This continues until the disk cache gets totally overloaded, and the machine slows down.
Only help is to reboot.
I have tried turning off spotlight indexing to delete the spotlight cache (and used Cocktail to delete the Spotlight index)
That was no help.
Also rebuilt all of the mailboxes within the Mail program.
Then turned indexing off and back on.
Still no help.
Just tried deleting a couple of old mailbox entries in ~/Library/Mail
There was an old Unix mailbox there from an early version of OS X, and another one that I could not identify, and should have been deleted long ago.
I know I can turn off the indexing for mail, but that is one area where I would like to keep it.
I haven't tried a reboot since the latest deletes, but seeing the same messages flowing in the logs does not give me much hope.
It may be possible that 1 or 2 bad emails are causing all the trouble, but I am at a loss to find them.
Have 18 different accounts that are active ( I do web work so have webmaster, and other accounts on a number of servers).
Those are a mix of IMAP and POP.
INBOX total is usually kept around 100 emails - almost never goes above 200 unless I am away for an extended time.
Most mail ends up in folders ON MY MAC.
Largest of those has about 1500 messages.
Do not have extra folders on the servers with any of the IMAP accounts.
It is about time I archive some of the older messages, and that may help, but it will take me a while to get to that, and then flush the messages.
Problem occurred after update to Lion.
Did not seem to have the problem with Snow Leopard
Anyone have any other ideas?

I thought I had posted a follow up to this posting, but I guess not.
Soooo, here it is.
The problem was not with Apple Mail.app as it seemed, but actually with Mailsmith.app.
I use it for a number of mail accounts that I want to handle separately from my other mail accounts.
Within that application there is a Spotlight helper/worker
-- /Applications/Mailsmith.app/Contents/Library/Spotlight/MailsmithImporter.mdimporter/ --
That is what was causing the problem for me.
Some users remove that section from the application, or do as I did -
Set the folders for Mailsmith mail for privacy in Spotlight.
Note: also set any backups of the Mailsmith mail for privacy also.
I filed a bug report with Mailsmith, but it is still open.
There appear to be a lot of issues with their Spotlight helper through the various versions of OS and Mailsmith.
see their discussion groups -
https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!searchin/mailsmith-talk/spotlight$ 20indexing
The problem may be with certain emails, attachments, or addresses, don't know.
I am happy excluding that mail from Spotlight, and now my logs don't overflow and crash, the machine goes into deep sleep, and runs much cooler.

Spotlight constantly indexing and Time Machine endlessly preparing backup

Hi,
I have a Macbook Pro 5,5 and Mac OS X 10.8.4
Lately I noticed that Spotlight was pretty much constantly indexing, so I went to "System Preferences/Spotlight/Privacy" and I dragged my HD there to prevent Spotlight from indexing it. Then rebooted my laptop and removed my HD again, which caused my Spolight to start indexing again.
After a night of indexing, everything seemed to be working fine. Nevertheless, today Spotlight is once again constantly indexing my computer, and the bar just won't go beyond "Estimating Indexing Time". What could I do to solve this issue?
Related to this, I assume, is my inability to backup through Time Machine. I feel like Time Machine is waiting for Spotlight to complete its indexing in order to start its backup-job, is that correct?
Thanks for your help,
Sander

If you have more than one user account, these instructions must be carried out as an administrator.
Triple-click anywhere in the line below on this page to select it:
syslog -k Sender mdworker -o -k Sender mds | grep -v boxd | tail | open -f -a TextEdit
Copy the selected text to the Clipboard (command-C).
Launch the Terminal application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Terminal in the icon grid.
Paste into the Terminal window (command-V).
The command may take a noticeable amount of time to run. Wait for a new line ending in a dollar sign (“$”) to appear.
A TextEdit window will open with the output of the command. If the command produced no output, the window will be empty. Post the contents of the TextEdit window (not the Terminal window), if any — the text, please, not a screenshot. The title of the window doesn't matter, and you don't need to post that.

Spotlight random indexing?

Yesterday I was erasing an external 40 gb hard drive through disk utility and the program seemed to have froze since it never updated the time remaining (53 minutes). That drive may have some bad sectors. So I just forced my computer to shutdown and unplugged my hard drive (via usb). Today morning when I started the computer, Spotlight was indexing my computer. Did i mess something up because I pulled the hard drive out? Or is this due to me copying 4 gb worth of files from the drive before erasing it? Ive heard that this done if a drive is failing, is that true?

Hard to tell, but in Spotlight's Pref Pane>Privacy tab, add all your drives to that to stop Spotlight from doing it's thing until you get it figured out.
Try Erasing the drive again with the Security option of Zero Data once.

Spotlight always indexes mac on startup

I've read several reports on Spotlight rebuilding indexes on startup. I found this issue on both my macs (with TIme Machine either on or off).
Here's what I've done trying to solve the problem:
1) I removed all of the spotlight indexes from all the disks and forced a re-index;
2) Removed all the *.mdimporter files from /Library/Spotlight
3) Erased all the system and application's caches with Onyx.
Are there any other solutions?

I don't mean to presume that all your guys' issues are related to this, but I am having this problem as well, and am quite sure it's due to a faulty logic board, and/or the inability of the machine to properly access RAM and other key components. My MBP 2.16, 1 GB constantly makes helicopter sounds that are emitted from the right speaker area. Apple replaced the first logic board in this machine while it was under warranty, and apparently put another defective one in. Overall, Apple hasn't been to helpful since.

Spotlight and network home directories

I've run into a recurring problem in which Spotlight stops working--entirely or in part--for my network user accounts.
Often, I'll notice that the Mail.app search feature no longer works. Interestingly, the most recent failure was that the "entire message" option would produce no results while "subject", "to", and "from" would search my mail successfully.
This has occured on other user accounts hosted by the same machine. Some users have found that their entire spotlight system (menu bar search, etc) fails to function.
Last time I just went into the server and chown/chgrp all the user accounts. For some reason, this forced spotlight to re-index and the spotlight issues went away for about a month. Now they are beginning to return.
I'm a bit confused by this. Any suggestions?

iPhoto was never designed for a network environment. It's low end user application. If you want an image management application this is designed from networks and multi users you'll need a DAM (digital asset management) application like Media Expression.
You can learn about EM and other DAM apps at The DAM Forum where those applications are discussed and evaluated by professional photographers.
You can request adding a new feature to iPhoto via http://www.apple.com/feedback/iphoto.html.
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Forcing Spotlight to index dot directories (& contents thereof)

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