Spotlight Acting Weird? Try Turning it Off and On Again

Are some apps not showing up in Spotlight? Is it acting weird?

Some help online would have you write complex incantations into the Terminal or would have you digging in to System Preferences and unchecking every box and placing your entire Mac’s drive into the excluded list.

And you should try those methods first.

In fact, the method described below is different to the official Apple-recommended way to do this, which is here by the way:

Rebuild the Spotlight index on your Mac

There is an easier way that worked for me. Your mileage may vary.

First, turn off Spotlight:

sudo mdutil -a -i off

Then, turn it back on:

sudo mdutil -a -i on

For me, this worked well.