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Check Spotlight Indexing Status of Any Volume (mdutil -s)

Query whether Spotlight indexing is enabled, disabled or still building for the system disk or an external drive.

macOSmacossearchspotlightdiskLow risk
Run `mdutil -s /` (or `mdutil -s /Volumes/DriveName`) — output says whether indexing is enabled and, while rebuilding, shows progress.

01Command

Command
$ mdutil -s / && mdutil -s /Volumes/ExternalDisk

02What it does

mdutil -s reports the per-volume Spotlight state: 'Indexing enabled' means search should work, 'Indexing disabled' means mdfind and Spotlight will find nothing there, and a line about indexing in progress explains missing results right after enabling or plugging in a drive. This is the first diagnostic step before reindexing: if status is fine but results are wrong, the index may still be catching up. Turning indexing off and on again (mdutil -i off/on) or erasing it (mdutil -E) requires sudo and starts a fresh, time-consuming crawl.

03Risk

RiskLow risk

04Undo

✓No undo needed — this command does not change persistent state.

05Sources

  • mdutil - Manage Spotlight indexer store
    SS64 · technical · 2026-09-17
    Evidence: Documents `-s`: 'Display the indexing status of the listed volumes', with the volume (e.g. / or /Volumes/Name) as the argument.
  • mdutil(1) man page
    Xcode Man Pages (keith.github.io) · technical · 2026-09-17
    Evidence: Man page for mdutil listing the -s flag: show the indexing status of the given volume, including whether it is enabled or disabled.

Last verified: 2026-09-19 · Category: Files & Folders

06Related solutions

Query Spotlight's Raw Syntax with mdfind
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Use kMDItem attributes to search file metadata the Spotlight UI can't express, faster than find ever will.

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Map Your Disk with diskutil apfs list
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See the full APFS container layout: every volume, its capacity, used space, and mounted snapshots.

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Read a File's Spotlight Metadata with mdls
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Dump every indexed attribute of any file: EXIF, dimensions, duration, authors, content types.

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