Spotlight has stopped indexing/returning anything in /Applications

Solution 1:

To completely rebuild the index, run the following from Terminal.app:

sudo mdutil -E /

This works, although it takes some time.

Solution 2:

Did you make sure that in System Preferences - Spotlight, the Applications category is still checked ? If it still is, try unchecking and then rechecking it.

Solution 3:

I solved the same problem by adding /Applications to Spotlight's Privacy tab (this forces Spotlight to delete any index for the folder), waiting a few minutes, then removing /Applications from the Privacy settings. Spotlight should then reindex the folder.

Solution 4:

In my case, the 'Privacy settings' tricked failed, with an error message when trying to remove the hard drive from the privacy list, indicating my whole index was really messed up.

The solution was to type the following in the Terminal:

`sudo mv /.Spotlight-V100 /Spotlight-V100-old`

(you will need to type an admin password for that)

and then restart the computer. This will force a reindex of your data, since the above just removed all references to the spotlight index.

You can also then clean up the folder "Spotlight-V100-old" that will now appear on your hard drive.

This "nuclear" option requires admin privileges.