Rebuild the Spotlight index on your Mac

Use these steps to manually rebuild the Spotlight index for a folder or disk.

1. Choose Apple  menu > System Preferences, then click Spotlight.

2. Click the Privacy tab.

3. Drag the folder or disk that you want to index again to the list of locations that Spotlight is prevented from searching. Click OK to confirm.

4. Select the folder or disk you just added, then click the Remove (–) button to remove it from the list.

5. Quit System Preferences. Spotlight will reindex the contents of the folder or disk.

6. To add an item to the Privacy tab of Spotlight preferences, you must have ownership permissions for that item. To learn about permissions, choose Help from the Finder menu bar, then search for “permissions.”

Last Modified: Apr 25, 2016