Spotlight shortcut (cmd+space) no longer working

I commonly use the cmd-space shortcut to bring up the spotlight, but as of yesterday it no longer works. I did not knowingly update my software beforehand, I do not have any conflicts in the keyboard shortcuts (no yellow triangle), and I only have one input source.

I have done a pretty thorough search for solutions; here are some pages I have read: (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6). Below are the common solutions that have not worked for me:

• Restarted the machine. No change.
• Restored the defaults on all keyboard shortcuts. No Change.
• Changed the desktop resolution. No change.
• Changed the shortcut. Spotlight works with essentially any other shortcut, but I am used to cmd-space.
• Reset the spotlight index (sudo mdutil -E / or killall Dock). This temporarily enables the shortcut but the problem surfaces after either closing the laptop's lid or changing the application window.
• Remove the HIToolbox.plist and restart (rm ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.HIToolbox.plist). This enables the shortcut for a couple seconds immediately after startup but then the problem resumes.
• Closing applications with potentially conflicting shortcuts. I can't say with 100% certainty that I have covered everything but I have combed through my app shortcuts and closed out of anything that might be the problem. To reiterate, this was working fine until yesterday.
• First aid on the disk. No change. I assume this would fix permissions issues if there were any.

One last piece of odd behavior: I can change the shortcut from cmd+space to cmd+option+space (and everything works), but I cannot change it back to cmd+space without hitting "restore defaults". The shortcut window remains empty until I close it or hit another shortcut.

At my wits end here! Has anyone solved this before?

Solution 1:

The issue may be caused by the SystemUIServer process hanging.

You can restart it by launching the command

killall SystemUIServer

Solution 2:

Once in a long while, this happens to me with my external on. I think the shortcut is working, but it's showing up off-screen somewhere. Unplugging the external monitor gets it working again.

Solution 3:

I found out that BetterTouchTool was running in the background and somehow had cmd-space assigned as a shortcut with no action (I definitely do not remember doing this). For others with this issue, I would advise carefully considering apps running in the background when checking for conflicts.