macOS is seriously getting on my nerves now. But what else is new, right? Seemingly everything does these days.
But a serious question for once.
I’ve noticed an unusual problem. I use Spotlight as a quick application launcher. Hit Command + Space, type the application name, and hit Enter / Return.
But Spotlight, for whatever reason, can’t find any applications in the Applications folder.
Say I want to open Pixelmator, or Hex Fiend, or cotEditor, or whatever else. Pixelmator is a decent example. I type the application name, and it finds web search results for Pixelmator, any files containing the word “Pixelmator”, and even Pixelmator on the Mac App Store, but never Pixelmator.app in the Applications folder.
The strangest part is that this issue has persisted across a complete format, clean install, a fresh account and an individual reinstall of the applications on the machine. No migration, no restore from a Time Machine backup, a complete clean slate.
It feels like a macOS bug. Which is irritating, considering the last reinstall was because the Finder would crash and restart whenever a .webloc was highlighted, even after applying software updates. The reinstall fixed that issue, but this one stuck.
I’m considering attempting to regenerate the Spotlight index once more, checking file and folder permissions and ownership, and if that fails, then who knows what else. Get used to Launchpad, I suppose.
It’s an outside chance, but has anyone come across this problem before and managed to find a solution or a workaround for it?