Cannot click spotlight magnifying glass.

Ncascone · Sep 28, 2013

Hi. I'm running OSX 10.8. Recently I have run into some trouble with spotlight. I can click my username (on the top right), as well as the "app store" icon, both of which are on each side of the spotlight magnifying glass. But when I click the magnifying glass, I get no response.

After clicking around a bit, Ill get it to open, but when I search for something and try to click that which I searched for, no response. Nothing happens. It freezes the spotlight menu and I get the error sound every time I click.

Any thoughts on how to fix this?

osxx · Sep 28, 2013

> System Preferences > Spotlight > Search Results > check all that apply then try it or restart and try it.

Ncascone · Sep 28, 2013

osxx said:
> System Preferences > Spotlight > Search Results > check all that apply then try it or restart and try it.

This did not work. I tried that earlier and nothing. Just after reading this I gave it another shot, I even tried to uncheck all of the options and try it then. Still nothing.

It seems like this is some kind a of weird glitch. I've searched everywhere on the web and haven't run into a similar case, so I figured I'd give it a shot that someone on this forum might have an idea.

Thanks for your reply.

osxx · Sep 29, 2013

Try this. Fix Your Spotlight Search Results By Forcing Spotlight To Re-index [OS X Tips] | Cult of Mac

Ncascone · Sep 29, 2013

osxx said:
Try this. Fix Your Spotlight Search Results By Forcing Spotlight To Re-index [OS X Tips] | Cult of Mac

Trying this now. It's currently indexing. Will reply back after indexing is complete. Thanks!

Ncascone · Oct 4, 2013

Tried all of this. I can get the spotlight menu to come down when I click enough times, but when I try to click on the items displayed, I am unable. I am met with an error sound each click. I feel like I'm going to have to end up reinstalling OSX to resolve this issue.

osxx · Oct 4, 2013

How old is your Hard Drive also how full meaning how much free space do you have and what size is the drive?

Ncascone · Oct 6, 2013

osxx said:
How old is your Hard Drive also how full meaning how much free space do you have and what size is the drive?

My HD is 1 TB with 705 GB free. It's probably about a year old. I had to replace the original one because it just stopped working one day.

The spotlight didn't have this problem when I first replaced my HD though. This is a recent thing. Maybe a month or 2 now. I avoided doing anything about it for a while because I could find no articles online relating to my issue.

I'm just looking for a way to resolve this without erasing the whole HD and starting fresh.

5665150 · Feb 15, 2014

I was having the same problem but when I went to settings I saw a keyboard shortcut to open spotlight. command and spacebar. I tried it and spotlight popped up. I closed spotlight and tried clicking on the magnifying glass like normal and voila, no more angry non-compliant sound. I'm not sure how it helped but it was also a really good shortcut for me to learn. Thanks.