Spotlight doesn't do internet search

just installed the new os x and i find spotlight is great but i tried the web search like in wikipedia , google ,movies and maps it doesn't show in search , only the dictionary and apps ..
the internet works greatly. , any solution ?

US proxy connection, I guess?
It needs it for movie searches, places and other stuff. Not sure why doesn't show Wikipedia searches though.
And, even if you were located at the other end of the world and you were looking for a place or a restaurant or a movie that you know that should be in the US, it's still kinda stupid not to show that information to you, just because you can't watch that movie or actually go to that restaurant. Maybe you just want to see the movie poster. Or some reviews of that restaurant. It's like you wouldn't be able to access the menu of a Chinese restaurant cause you're not Chinese, or you're not in China. Maybe you want to plan your trip in advance and you need that information before you actually get on a plane to the US.
Stupid decisions.

Similar Messages

Spotlight doesn't search imdb or bing, why?

It was mentioned that spotlight would also search the web. Well, in my case it doesn't. I have all sources checked in System settings for spotlight.
But when I search for i.e. Mel Gibson I only recieve results from my harddrive and dictionary.
Yes, I am on WiFi and connected to Internet. Running Yosemite on my MBA. I live in Sweden, but that shouldn't matter.
Anyone else had this problem and found a sollution?

Same problem but only on one share out of three.
I just setup a OS X Server (10.5.2), standard (easy) configuration. Clients are 10.5.2 as well. Absolutely nothing out of the ordinary.
But spotlight searches are ONLY working on one out of the three shares! I tried deleting the Spotligt database (via Cocktail) and rebuilding but it didn't help.
The something strange happened! One folder on one of the non-indexed shares was indexed but nothing else. Almost as if Spotlight had done a little bit of work and then crashed. But the md-processes are still running. Strange...
I've tried looking for Spotlight log messages but haven't had any luck...
Amazing that such a central piece of OS X Server can be so hard to diagnose. After searching the forums I understand that I'm not the only one with problems.
Apple - how about user-friendly tool to verify and peek at Spotlight databases?

Spotlight doesn't search Word 2008 doc(x)s

Though Spotlight doesn't have any problems searching within older Word files (all with the .doc extension), it does not search within the new Word 2008 .docx files. It does include the file names of .docx files, but doesn't seem to be able to search within the docs themselves. Does anyone know how to fix this? Thank you so much!

Hello arnoota,
for me Spotlight's content search works for docx, too. Are the info in your signature correct? If so you should install the 10.5.4 update of Leopard! At least for 10.5.3 some changes concerning Spotlight are documented by Apple, so probably this issue got fixed as well with one of these two updates.
floba
(MN358)

Spotlight doesn't search Stickies

I've just realised today that Spotlight can't find entries in Stickies. I have all boxes ticked in Spotlight so you'd think that Stickies being an Apple app, that it would also search in Stickies. I keep my software up-to-date, so it's not that.
I have snother notes application called PadsX - and Spotlight doesn't search that either.
Any suggestions anyone on how to make Spotlight more efficient?

Hi Irena,
A few ways to do it...
http://guides.macrumors.com/Addingfiletypes_toSpotlight
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20060729190236629&mode=print
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=2005052015041510
SpiralBound is a note App that has a Search function bui;t in...
http://www.rivulus-sw.com/Rivulus/SpiralBound.html

How to fix spotlight doesn't search movies,places or bing web search?

spotlight doesn't search movies or anything bing web search, it only search file on my mac in yosemite. How can i fix this???

Hello arnoota,
for me Spotlight's content search works for docx, too. Are the info in your signature correct? If so you should install the 10.5.4 update of Leopard! At least for 10.5.3 some changes concerning Spotlight are documented by Apple, so probably this issue got fixed as well with one of these two updates.
floba
(MN358)

Leopard's Spotlight doesn't search...

Hi there!
I've got a problem with Leopard Server...
It's the first time that I run a server version.
Everything works great! But... Spotlight...
Spotlight doesn't search anything on my internal HD. On my external HD (connected with FireWire) it works!
I already deleted the .Spotlight Folder on my startup disk... But that doesn't help... I added my HD to the "privacy" Tab in Spotlight and deleted it after that... But that doesn't help, too...
Has anybody of you an idea how to make this work?
Thanks a lot!

I got to Spotlight to search and index my internal harddisk again.
I rebuilt the .Spotlight-V100 folder including the subfolder which I copied from a working (searchable external harddisk) which I initially deleted in my trial to get Spotlight working again.
After a lot of tinkering with mdutil, Cocktail (a superb OS X system utility) and the Spotlight preference panel the overal problem for Spotlight might have been that I have got the internal and the Windows partition named starting the same name "Aristoteles" then a "blank" and the "HD" on the OS X partition and "WinXP" on the Windows partition. Obviously that got Spotlight confused because when I specifically excluded the windows partition (using the Spotlight preferences panel) and reactivated the remaining OS X partition using the "sudo mdutil -i on /Volumes/Internal" command (I renamed the OS X disk partition from "Aristoteles" to "Internal") ... bang Spotlight kicked in ... but the strange thing is that Spotlight kicked in telling me it is searching the OS X partition "Aristoteles" instead of "Internal".
I cannot remember any technical comment (this is pure "trial and error" on my side) that Spotlight only takes the first part of a disk name. But if two partitions on the same disk start with the same name Spotlight may run in to troubles unless one is excluded from searching ... and even a later renaming of a partition doesn't help ...
Message was edited by: OlympusUser

Spotlight doesn't search in word documents

Hello,
I have a Question regarding Spotlight: If I look for any phrase which is in word documents, Spotlight doesn't find it. (I got some documents from a friend, each about 100 pages). When I use OpenOffice and export the documents to pdf: no problem, Spotlight works perfectly.
Is there a way to force Spotlight to index this folder? I thought, Spotlight would index word documents automatically...

I found out the reason:
The *.doc documents were rtf-documents with a doc at the end. Spotlight doesn't index rtf as it seems.
Saving them as word solved the problem.

Leopard's Spotlight doesn't search Mail messages

Leopard's Spotlight isn't searching email messages. I made a clean install of 10.5, and have two POP accounts. The message files are right there under ~/Library/Mail/... . I rebuilt the index for the system volume by adding and then removing the volume from the Privacy zone in Spotlight preferences. I also tried some of the command-line suggestions posted elsewhere for this problem. I recently added my backup volume to the privacy zone, but other than that the zone is empty.
But the problem remains. Outside Mail.app, Spotlight never comes back with search results that are mail messages. Inside Mail.app, searching "entire message" returns 0 results. Does anyone know how to diagnose this problem? Can I see if a particular file is included in the metadata index?

Hahaaaa! Solved it - at least for me...
Please read the whole explanation first before just gabbing any presented commands and executing them in the Terminal. The solution requires no Terminal.
I had exactly the same problem described by MikeW and JJ. I tried everything like you before at no avail, too. But I tried one more thing that did work and indexed all my mail. Here is what I did at the command line. Don't type the command right away. It will work, but this is not the root cause of your problem, I present it just to explain:
find ~/Library/Mail -name "*.emlx" -exec mdimport {} \;
This searches for the individual message (*.emlx) files themselves and throws them one by one onto the mdimporter which imports them just fine. Still, a plain mdimport ~/Library/Mail would not work which pointed me in the right direction: Spotlight did not "see" these individual message files. But Why?
I fiddled a bit with file/folder permissions since I also simply upgraded from Tiger and ended up with old Tiger permission based user accounts. No result. I discovered, that in Finder the mailboxes, say ~/Library/Mail/Mailboxes/INBOX.mbox etc. were displayed as package files instead of folders. Strange. So again I tried mdimport -d1 ~/Library/Mail now with a bit of debugging. Aha! Spotlight imports this folder as type 'dyn.ah62d4rv4ge81g45mr3wgn8a', or similar, a dynamic UTI, instead of with 'com.apple.mail.mbox' as what it should have been. Since this unknown dynamic UTI dosn't mean anything sensible to Spotlight, it would simply skip the folder, not scanning it's contents with the well known result that mails cannot be searched by content.
So, what is essentially overwriting these UTIs? Especially because this would not happen in another Leopard-created user account. I felt guilty as I added some custom UTIs in the past, but nothing to do with mail at all. So who carries UTIs for Mail.app? Well... Mail.app! Another Mail.app? YES! I remembered, that I had an older complete pre-Spotlight system backup on my current system, including all applications including Mail.app in version 1.3.something. AFAIK only with Mail 2.0 Apple changed the way Mail saves messages and they apparently also changed the UTI of .mbox to the new format. I simply deleted the old version of Mail.app. Immediately after that the icons of the .mbox changed and I could open these folders in Finder. I tried again mdimport ~/Library/Mail and - boom - Spotlight imported all my mails!
Long story to explain my thoughts, here are 5 steps for you to try:
1. Search your system to find out if you have multiple different copies of Mail.app. You can do that with Spotlight/Finder or enter in the terminal:
sudo find / -type d -name "Mail.app" -ls
(You need to be admin to sudo, type your password when prompted)
2. Locate and check the found versions of Mail.app in Finder via the get info window.
3. Delete all but the actual copy of Mail.app in /Applications from your system (empty trash!).
4. Enter the following line in the terminal to have Spotlight import your messages:
mdimport ~/Library/Mail
Should take much longer now, depending on the number of mails you have.
5. Check the result by searching mail content in Mail/Finder/Spotlight, enjoy!
Note: If you did find and delete old versions of Mail.app, but step 4 did not work, you might have to log out and in or you can even try to restart the machine. In my case the result was instant. If all of that did not work for you - sorry - but probably the above helps you to track your particular problem down.
ecke

Why is my internet search page gray? I am able to search a topic, but the 'results' part of the screen is a medium gray color and it won't respond. Any ideas?

Why is my internet search page gray? I am able to search a topic, but the 'results' part of the screen is a medium gray color and it won't respond. Any ideas?

Try clearing Safari's cache : Settings > Safari > Clear Cache (and Clear History)
If that doesn't work then try closing Safari completely and then re-open it : from the home screen (i.e. not with Safari 'open' on-screen) double-click the home button to bring up the taskbar, then press and hold any of the apps on the taskbar for a couple of seconds or so until they start shaking, then press the '-' in the top left of the Safari app to close it, and touch any part of the screen above the taskbar so as to stop the shaking and close the taskbar.
A third option is a reset : press and hold both the sleep and home buttons for about 10 to 15 seconds (ignore the red slider), after which the Apple logo should appear - you won't lose any content, it's the iPad equivalent of a reboot.

IPhone 3G ver 3.1 - spotlight doesn't work with accessory connected anymore

Hello,
I've been using iPhone 3G for quite a long time now and everything was fine until a recent update to OS ver. 3.1... I've noticed, that spotlight doesn't work now as it worked before... The thing is that I'm using iPhone as a phone and a source of music in my car. I connect it to Pioneer car audio system via USB. Before 3.1 update I was able to search for a song in spotlight and when I tapped it - it just played via car speakers. Now it doesn't do anything. I keep tapping, but nothing happens. The only way to play a song - disconnect iPhone from Pioneer, find song in spotlight, tap on a song to launch it and connect iPhone to Pioneer while the song is playing.
Well, I have a workaround, but it requires both of my hands... But it's kind of unsafe to do so while driving... Could someone confirm spotlight working while connected to any accessory?.. Maybe I'm the only one having this issue and iPhone restore would help?.. I just don't want to restore without any reason...
Thanks in advance for your answer.

Hi to the forum. This is my first post - ever!
It's taken me 25 years of Apple equipment purchase and enthusiastic advocation to get to this point.
And what has got me here? 'The GPS on my iPhone 3G has doesn't work'. If you Google this statement you get 12 million hits. It seems to me that's probably 12 million people who have a problem with an Apple product they've purchased.
I've read a lot of the solutions that other users have come up with - dozens of different ones. I've updated the iPhone software as soon as I can, I've been patient, I've given Apple chance to sort it out. I've even gone back to printing out Google maps onto paper (remember 'paper') and taken those out with me in the car to find my way around town.
However - the southern hemisphere summer is coming and I want to use the (totally brilliant) Navionics chart/GPS App on the boat. No chance. According to the iPhone we're in Africa not New Zealand.
So what to do? I can't find any 'official' info from Apple. I've no idea how the politics of these situations work - and I don't care! 12 million hits can't be wrong. Apple needs to tell it's users what is happening (even if they're still working on it), and when we can expect a fix.
Come on Apple, keep us in the loop - we love your products - and we want to keep advocating for you!
PS - this is the best place I could find to have ths little discusion - if anyone has a more direct line to God (err I mean Apple) please let me know!

Spotlight no longer showing "web search" feature

Hello all,
I just upgraded to Yosemite and everything looks great so far except for 1 thing that I used a lot in previous OS X versions.
I used to open spotlight and type my internet (google) search there and just click on web search. Ever since I upgraded I can no longer find that feature although Its marked as checked under system preferences, spotlight, bring web searches.
Any help?
Thanks

you have to include system files in a search. they are excluded by default. enter command+f in finder to start finder search. click on "kind", scroll and click on "other". in the resulting popup select "system files" and change the setting to include them in the search. if you want to make this default see this macosx hint
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20080229204517495&query=finder%2Bse arch
Message was edited by: V.K.

Spotlight indexing after each new search

I'm using Spotlight to launch apps, that's the fastest way for me. However, Snow Leopard's version of Spotlight doesn't stop indexing after I selected needed item from the list and the search box is closed.
Example: to launch World of Warcraft I open search menu and type "wor" at which point Spotlight conveniently selects application for me in the list. I hit enter and the program is launched. Meanwhile *Spotlight is still searching* for every file that might contain "wor" character sequence, despite the closed search menu. Hard drive thrashing and painfully slow load times telling me as much. If I open search bar at that moment I can see "wor" I typed along with results list, which is still being needlessly populated. And it will be for a looong time.
The only way to stop the search is to clear the search field and then close Spotlight menu. I believe people on forums reporting Spotlight never finishes indexing might be having the same issue.
Is there a way to automatically clear search string when selecting a search result?

I disagree, I think it was specially designed to quickly launch apps.
By default, the first category that appears in search results in the menu is applications. In Tiger the default highlighted item was "Show All", and if I wanted to run the application that was located I had to press down key to highlight it and then press enter. In Leopard highlighting changed switched to the application itself, so all that is needed is to press a keyboard shortcut to open spotlight, type 3-4 letters from the application name and press enter. This takes about 2-3 seconds. It works the same way on SL of course, only this time it looks like spotlight is trying to re-index everything when there's something typed in. I wonder if something wrong with my system. Don't have another SL machine to compare.

Spotlight doesn't find all files.

Hi guys,
i just installed Snow leopard on my old iMac that was running tiger before. With tiger i never had troubles like this and the same files im looking for now were always found. However spotlight doesn't seem to find them now. They are located in HD/library/.... anything in there cant be found and i didnt enable privacy for it.
After i moved one application out of there and dragged it on the desktop it was instantly found. Doesn't seem like a big deal since i know where the app is and i have it in the dock anyways, the problem just is that i am looking for other files that im not sure anymore if they are on the computer and if spotlight just doesnt find them it would take me a lot of time searching for them manually.
My question is, besides if you have a solution to fix this, if its due to snow leopard. Does it not look in the library anymore?
Thanks in advance folks,
P.S. i already re-indexed.

Spotlight does not search system folders by default. See,
Get Spotlight to search system files (and more)
Enter the search term in the Finder window's search field.
Click the [+] button in the search bar to add a search option.
In the first drop down menu choose Other.
Choose “System Files” from the list that pops up (and check the box to place in drop down menu to avoid this step later,) click on the OK button.
Now back in the Finder choose Include from the second drop down menu.

Spotlight doesn't work on iPhone 4 IOS5

spotlight doesn't work!!! It doesn't find contact using MAIL field or NOTES field or any other, expect NAME of contact!!!
Any sugestion???
iPhone 4 with IOS 5.0

No, changing the settings doesn't affect the problem. When it's working —for that one search you get after rebooting—it honors the settings and searches only checked items ... so I don't believe it's a settings issue.
But after that single search (if you get that) it simply shuts down and stops working. No results of any kind from any area.
Nada. Zilch. Zippo.
I do have many apps and used the search as a way to quickly jump to an app instead of swiping through numerous screens. This is killing me. Hoping the fix is released soon; having searched the web on the issue, I see that it affects a great many users of ios5.

Spotlight doesn't see libraries?

HI All,
Why does spotlight on my husband's computer not see libraries? On my computer if I type in iphoto library, it points me to it. but on my husband's macbook running 10.5.3 - if you type iphoto library into spotlight it doesn't come up with anything. But when I look in the picture folder, the library is right there.
Why doesn't it see it and how do I fix it so it can find libraries?
Thanks,
Katarina

Hello Katarina,
maybe rebuilding the Spotlight search index solves the issue. To do that type in a Terminal
sudo mdutil -E /
You'll be prompted for your admin password. When typing the password your input won't be echoed in any way on the screen, but don't worry, that's normal. Press Enter. After a few seconds Spotlight should start rebuilding the search index.
If that didn't work then try the following. Open System Preferences > Spotlight > tab "Privacy". Now open a Finder window and drag your hard drive to the list of locations you don't want Spotlight to search. By that you force Spotlight to erase the existing index. After a few seconds you can just remove the hard drive from the list again. Spotlight will automatically start to index it again.
floba

Spotlight doesn't do internet search

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