Spotlight crashes after two letters have been entered

OS X 10.11 on an early 2015 MBP

I am trying to search for a document called Starfleet, but after entering the letters "ST", Spotlight crashes.

Relevant logs:

02/10/15 12:12:37,642 Spotlight[1566]: XPC connection was invalidated 02/10/15 12:12:37,824 spindump[769]: Got xpc error message in libspindump client connection: Connection invalid 02/10/15 12:12:37,825 com.apple.xpc.launchd[1]: (com.apple.Spotlight[1566]) Service exited due to signal: Segmentation fault: 11 02/10/15 12:12:37,845 com.apple.xpc.launchd[1]: (com.apple.ReportCrash[1723]) Endpoint has been activated through legacy launch(3) APIs. Please switch to XPC or bootstrap_check_in(): com.apple.ReportCrash 02/10/15 12:12:37,852 ReportCrash[1723]: platform_thread_get_unique_id matched 158875 02/10/15 12:12:37,852 ReportCrash[1723]: Activity ID for thread 0x26c9b - 0x73f7a 02/10/15 12:12:38,217 ReportCrash[1723]: Saved crash report for Spotlight[1566] version 1.0 (972.9) to /Users/user/Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/Spotlight_2015-10-02-121238_computer.crash

Report:

Process: Spotlight [1566] Path:
/System/Library/CoreServices/Spotlight.app/Contents/MacOS/Spotlight Identifier: com.apple.Spotlight Version: 1.0 (972.9) Build Info: SpotlightUI-972009000000000~1 Code Type: X86-64 (Native) Parent Process: ??? [1] Responsible: Spotlight [1566] User ID: 501

Date/Time: 2015-10-02 12:12:37.852 +0200 OS Version:
Mac OS X 10.11 (15A284) Report Version: 11 Anonymous UUID:
BF4F07CD-F3A3-3FE4-A07E-30BF365DFB58

Sleep/Wake UUID: EED97237-AF4B-48E7-9073-0F30A512606F

Time Awake Since Boot: 9100 seconds Time Since Wake: 7300 seconds

System Integrity Protection: enabled

Crashed Thread: 5 Dispatch queue: com.apple.root.user-interactive-qos.overcommit

Exception Type: EXC_BAD_ACCESS (SIGSEGV) Exception Codes:
KERN_INVALID_ADDRESS at 0x000000010c780000 Exception Note:
EXC_CORPSE_NOTIFY

VM Regions Near 0x10c780000: mapped file 000000010c70e000-000000010c780000 [ 456K] r--/r-x SM=ALI
--> CoreAnimation 000000010c7c6000-000000010c7dc000 [ 88K] rw-/rwx SM=PRV

[...]

Thread 5 Crashed:: Dispatch queue: com.apple.root.user-interactive-qos.overcommit 0
libsystem_platform.dylib 0x00007fff8df54f49 _platform_memmove$VARIANT$Haswell + 41 1 com.apple.DictionaryServices 0x00007fff928fc127 HeapAccessContext::getDataByID(unsigned long long, long, unsigned char*) + 477 2 com.apple.DictionaryServices 0x00007fff928ff0bc TrieAccessContext::getHeapData(unsigned long long, long*) + 226 3
com.apple.DictionaryServices 0x00007fff928fecf8 TrieAccessContext::getMatchDataCommon(long, unsigned char const**, long*, bool, CFRange*, unsigned char*, unsigned char*, long*) + 2062 4 com.apple.DictionaryServices 0x00007fff928fee75 TrieAccessContext::getMatchData(long, long, unsigned char*, CFRange**, long*) + 73 5 com.apple.DictionaryServices 0x00007fff928fa210 IDXGetMatchData + 53 6 com.apple.DictionaryServices 0x00007fff928efe2b DCSIDXDictionary::searchByString_internal(__CFString const*, long, long) + 793 7 com.apple.DictionaryServices 0x00007fff928ef917 DCSIDXDictionary::searchByString(__CFString const*, long, long) + 43 8 com.apple.DictionaryServices 0x00007fff928f3bcd DCSCopyRecordsForSearchString + 147 9 com.apple.ParsecUI
0x00007fff8896cfdb -[SPKDictionaryQuery start] + 773 10 com.apple.Spotlight 0x0000000107e6e076 0x107e40000 + 188534 11 libdispatch.dylib 0x00007fff942148ff _dispatch_call_block_and_release + 12 12 libdispatch.dylib 0x00007fff94209453 _dispatch_client_callout + 8 13 libdispatch.dylib 0x00007fff9420d2e3 _dispatch_root_queue_drain + 1890 14 libdispatch.dylib 0x00007fff9420cb48 _dispatch_worker_thread3 + 91 15 libsystem_pthread.dylib 0x00007fff8499e4f2 _pthread_wqthread + 1129 16 libsystem_pthread.dylib 0x00007fff8499c375 start_wqthread + 13

[...] Logical CPU: 0 Error Code: 0x00000004 Trap Number:
14

[...]

VM Region Summary: ReadOnly portion of Libraries: Total=318.4M resident=0K(0%) swapped_out_or_unallocated=318.4M(100%) Writable regions: Total=391.4M written=0K(0%) resident=0K(0%) swapped_out=0K(0%) unallocated=391.4M(100%)

                            VIRTUAL   REGION  REGION TYPE                        SIZE    COUNT (non-coalesced) 

=========== ======= ======= Accelerate.framework 128K 2 Activity Tracing 2048K 2 CG backing stores 16K 2 CG image
52K 6 CG shared images 208K 6 CoreAnimation 2172K 76 CoreUI image data
336K 11 CoreUI image file 224K 5 Dispatch continuations 8192K 2 Foundation
20K 3 Kernel Alloc Once 8K 3 MALLOC 175.8M 39 MALLOC guard page 32K 7 MALLOC_LARGE (reserved) 169.8M 2 reserved VM address space (unallocated) Memory Tag 241 8K
2 Memory Tag 242 12K 2 OpenCL
8K 2 Process Corpse Info 2048K 2 STACK GUARD 56.1M 16 Stack
14.7M 18 VM_ALLOCATE 736K 18 __DATA 35.2M 336 __IMAGE 528K 2 __LINKEDIT 88.0M 7 __TEXT 230.3M 344 __UNICODE 552K 2 mapped file 616.6M 65 shared memory 16.3M 8 =========== ======= ======= TOTAL 1.4G 962 TOTAL, minus reserved VM space 1.2G 962

Solution 1:

The solution above did not work for me: problem still occurred when re-indexing was over. I found a solution here: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8546951

You must uncheck the "Bookmarks & History" option in the Spotlight pane of System Preferences. It fixed instantly the problem for me.

Solution 2:

After a number of frustrating days, I have finally found a solution to this problem. I reindexed the volume for Spotlight, and that solved it.

The procedure goes as follows:

1. From the Apple () menu, choose System Preferences.
2. Click Spotlight.
3. Click the Privacy tab.
4. Drag a folder or an entire volume (your hard drive) to the list. If prompted for confirmation, click OK.
5. Remove the item or volume you just added to the list by clicking it and then clicking the minus ("-") button.
6. Close Spotlight preferences.

Spotlight will re-index the contents of the folder or volume.

Source: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201716