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paulcristo

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Aug 24, 2010
18
1
Los Angeles, CA
I noticed after installing Safari 12 that my Spotlight searches would crash Spotlight. After typing in a few characters, the search field would disappear and the magnifying glass in the upper-right corner of the screen would disappear briefly then reappear. I discovered in System Preferences if I turned off the "Bookmarks and History" option under the Spotlight tab the problem went away.

I thought maybe a bookmark or history file had been corrupted locally, so to test my theory I created a brand new user account. The problem was absent and then after I associated the new account with my iCloud account it presented itself.

Is anyone else experiencing this problem?
 

lec0rsaire

macrumors 68000
Feb 23, 2017
1,525
1,450
Maybe try going to Safari preferences/advanced/show developer menu and then in the menu bar/developer/empty cache. Try this and see if it helps. Something may be corrupted.

Also try system preferences/spotlight/privacy and add Macintosh HD. Then after a few seconds remove Macintosh HD from the list and spotlight will reindex everything. This usually resolves some problems.
 

paulcristo

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Aug 24, 2010
18
1
Los Angeles, CA
Maybe try going to Safari preferences/advanced/show developer menu and then in the menu bar/developer/empty cache. Try this and see if it helps. Something may be corrupted.

Also try system preferences/spotlight/privacy and add Macintosh HD. Then after a few seconds remove Macintosh HD from the list and spotlight will reindex everything. This usually resolves some problems.

Thanks for your reply. I emptied the cache and also rebuilt the entire Spotlight database to no avail.

After some more troubleshooting, I tried turning off the "Bookmarks and History" option in the Spotlight preferences and that stopped Spotlight from crashing. I also notice if I drag a URL from the Safari URL window to the Desktop creating a webloc file, then do a "Get Info" on that file, it crashes the Finder. I'm not sure what's going on, but Safari is definitely the culprit.
 

lec0rsaire

macrumors 68000
Feb 23, 2017
1,525
1,450
Thanks for your reply. I emptied the cache and also rebuilt the entire Spotlight database to no avail.

After some more troubleshooting, I tried turning off the "Bookmarks and History" option in the Spotlight preferences and that stopped Spotlight from crashing. I also notice if I drag a URL from the Safari URL window to the Desktop creating a webloc file, then do a "Get Info" on that file, it crashes the Finder. I'm not sure what's going on, but Safari is definitely the culprit.

Yeah it must be if that is the only change you have made to your installation. Is it possible for you to go back to Safari 11.1.2 from a time machine backup? I'm not sure if it'll work but I guess it's worth a try.
 
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