How I Fixed My Mac's Slow Spotlight and Recovered 30GB of Storage

Introduction

For a while, I noticed that my Mac's Spotlight search had become extremely slow and was unable to find certain folders. I also realized that my available storage was mysteriously shrinking, even though I hadn't installed large applications or downloaded massive files. After some troubleshooting, I managed to fix my Spotlight search issue and reclaim about 30GB of storage space. Here's a step-by-step guide on how I did it.

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Identifying the Problem

• Slow Spotlight Searches: Searching for files took much longer than usual, and some folders weren’t appearing in the search results.
• Mysterious Storage Consumption: My available disk space had shrunk to 220GB, with a significant portion occupied by 'System Data' in macOS storage settings.
• Large .Spotlight-V100 Index: After some investigation, I found that Spotlight's indexing folder was taking up a significant amount of space.

Step-by-Step Solution

1. Checking Disk Usage

Before making changes, I verified my disk usage:

• Opened Finder > Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility
• Selected my Macintosh HD and ran First Aid to check for any disk errors.
• Used About This Mac > Storage to identify large storage consumers.

2. Rebuilding Spotlight’s Index

Since the .Spotlight-V100 folder can grow excessively large or become corrupted, I decided to rebuild the Spotlight index.

Using System Settings

1. Went to System Settings (or Preferences in older macOS versions) > Spotlight > Privacy.
2. Clicked the + button and added Macintosh HD to the privacy list.
3. Removed Macintosh HD from the privacy list after a few seconds.
4. This triggered macOS to reindex my entire drive automatically.

Using Terminal (Alternative Method)

If the above method didn’t work, I had planned to use the following command in Terminal:

sudo mdutil -a -i off   # Turns off Spotlight indexing
sudo rm -rf /.Spotlight-V100   # Deletes old Spotlight index
sudo mdutil -a -i on    # Re-enables Spotlight indexing
sudo mdutil -aE         # Forces a reindex

Since the first method worked, I didn't need to run these commands, but they remain a solid alternative for advanced users.

3. Monitoring Storage Changes

After reindexing, I checked my storage usage again:

• Opened Finder and pressed Command + Shift + G to go to /System/Volumes/Data/.Spotlight-V100.
• The folder size had shrunk significantly, reclaiming around 30GB of storage space.
• My available storage increased from 220GB to 190GB, showing the effectiveness of the fix.

Final Thoughts

Rebuilding Spotlight’s index not only fixed my slow search issue but also freed up a significant amount of space that had been occupied by a bloated indexing database. If you're experiencing sluggish Spotlight searches or unexplained storage loss, I highly recommend trying this method.

Have you faced similar issues with Spotlight? Let me know your experience in the comments!