Reindexing instructions for Alfred 4 & older

First, ensure you've followed all steps up to the reindexing stage in the Indexing Troubleshooting Guide.

How to rebuild your Mac's index in Alfred 4 & older

1. First, open System Settings > Security & Privacy > Privacy > Full Disk Access and add Terminal, checking the box next to it. (See full instructions on adding Terminal to Full Disk Access)
2. Go to the Advanced tab in Alfred's Preferences and click "Rebuild macOS Metadata".
3. Check the "Delete .Spotlight-V100 before reindex" box, ensuring the reindex is as thorough as possible.
4. Once Terminal appears, you'll need to type your password; Characters won't appear as you type, so just keep typing and press Return. The required password is the admin password on your Mac, which is likely the same password as your user account.

Keep a close eye for any error messages relating to your index. Indexing can take up to an hour on older Macs, during which time Spotlight and Alfred's search results may be incomplete, so time for a cup of tea?

Indexing Enabled

You should see the message "Indexing enabled" after typing your password. If you see the message "Spotlight server is disabled" or a similar message, you'll need to re-enable indexing on your Mac. Contact us from your Powerpack email address if you're not sure how to re-enable it.

You can check indexing progress by opening Spotlight and typing a few characters; If the process is still going, you'll see a progress bar.

Once macOS has finished reindexing, type "reload" into Alfred to refresh his cache of your Applications.

If you notice that Alfred appears to find an application that Spotlight doesn't see, this can be because Alfred has previously cached the application. Typing "reload" into Alfred will refresh the cache so the app will disappear. You'll then need to perform the indexing step above.

Further steps

Once you've rebuilt your Mac's index, take a look at the remaining instructions in the Indexing Troubleshooting Guide.