Apple’s Spotlight technology automatically indexes all content on an OS X system to allow for instant search results from documents (including their content), pictures, music, applications, emails, calendar entries, system preferences, bookmarks, web history, etc.

Occasionally Spotlight’s metadata stores can become corrupted and cause searches to take much longer than necessary.

To reset the spotlight index, you should disable indexing of the root volume first:

sudo mdutil -i off

Then delete the Spotlight index:

sudo rm -R /.Spotlight-v100

Then reset the data cache for your Mac’s hard drive:

sudo mdutil -E /

To force Spotlight to immediately start re-indexing your hard drive (this might take a few hours and is probably best left to run overnight), enter this command:

sudo mdutil -i on /

Posted in Mac OS X, Macintosh Tips & Help