Review: OS X Lion – Part 3 ‘Spotlight broken’
So it's day 2 now of my Upgrade to Lion from my existing Snow Leopard install.
On the face of it it seemed all was well and working. It wasn't long either after the installation finished that Apple released the first update to 10.7.1 meaning I'd timed the install well.
It didn't take long though for me to spot something was up with Spotlight. Put simply, it wasn't working. Like many OS X users, I use Spotlight as my main way of launching Apps. So the first time I tried to open something quickly (Activity Monitor in this case to work out what was taking all my performance up) by typing Act into Spotlight I noticed the only returns to my search where an offer to search the Web or Wikipedia for it. Hardly much use for getting my own Apps open.
So I thought I'd give it the benefit of the doubt and presume that perhaps due to the upgrade that Lion would need to re-index my Hard Drive before it sprang into life. So I left it for the evening to see if the little dot would appear within its magnifying glass icon. Appear it didn't. Nor had it appeared when I returned to it this evening. So I rolled my sleeves up to try and fix it.
Having delved into Spotlight's settings in System Preferences I realised that Apple have removed the option there to force it to re-index. So I then did a quick Google search and ended up on the Apple Support forums. This post suggested using a Terminal (a throw back to Lion's UNIX roots) to essentially use a command line to switch Spotlight off then back on again, thus forcing it to re-index. However this didn't work either!
About to pull my hair out I went back to the Spotlight preferences and by chance clicked on the Privacy tab. This is not what you want to see:
Somehow my entire Macintosh HD had been added to the privacy list, meaning it would be excluded from any Spotlight searches!
Removing it from the list meant that Spotlight leapt back into life re-indexing my drive. As it stands I have 87 minutes until it is finished. At least thought it has already started returning results and I can quickly open Twitter without reaching for the Dock.
So a frustrating issue to sort out and one which would stump a normal user without a Genius Bar visit. Hopefully this is one of only few niggles.
Was there an upside? Well it did force me to use Launchpad, the new iOS style App launcher for Lion. This was simple as you'd expect, but would I use it over Spotlight? There's more chance of me buying a HP Touchpad...
