While working on my Mac’s Time Machine backup, I believe I disabled the Spotlight process. Spotlight was indexing my external Time Machine backup drive, which prevented me from resetting and cleaning up the drive.
After resolving my Time Machine backup issue, I realized that Spotlight was no longer working. I could no longer launch applications quickly using Command + Space. It was quite frustrating.
Checking Spotlight Settings
I went to System Settings -> Spotlight, but all the Spotlight settings appeared to be correct. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find an option there to restart Spotlight.
Restarting the Spotlight Process
Eventually, I figured out how to restart the process—the same process I had modified while troubleshooting my Time Machine backup issue. Here’s how you can do it:
Steps to Restart Spotlight
- Open Terminal from
Applications->Utilities->Terminal
. (Since Spotlight wasn’t working, I had to open it manually.) - Run the following command:
sudo mdutil -a -i on
The mdutil tool is used to manage Spotlight’s indexing process. I realized that I had previously disabled this service, and while I had restored my Time Machine backup, I had not re-enabled Spotlight indexing. That’s why Spotlight was not working.
After running this command, Spotlight started working within minutes. I could once again use Command + Space to launch my frequently used applications, such as Preview, Terminal, MacVim, and Safari.
Spotlight’s Background Process: mds_store
One interesting note about Spotlight’s indexing process is that it is managed by a background process called mds_store. However, when I checked Activity Monitor, I couldn’t find a process with that exact name. It’s possible that the process name has changed, but in any case, the steps above successfully restored Spotlight’s functionality.
If you have disabled this process, you will need to manually enable it using the steps above.
References
- My blog: Time Machine Backup Issue
- CleanMyMac blog: What does mds_stores on Mac mean?
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