Friday, August 8, 2025

Highlight Gained’t Re-enable After Disabling through Terminal on macOS Sequoia

I’m utilizing a Mac Studio (32GB RAM) working macOS Sequoia, and I’ve run right into a Highlight problem that I can’t resolve.

🧩 How the issue began:

I observed that mds (Highlight indexing course of) was consuming plenty of reminiscence, so I requested ChatGPT the right way to briefly disable Highlight. It urged I run some Terminal instructions and delete a Highlight-related file (sadly I don’t keep in mind the precise file — presumably .Highlight-V100).

Now, Highlight is totally disabled, and I can’t flip it again on, it doesn’t matter what I attempt.

🧪 What I’ve tried to date:

🔓 Pre-steps:

  • Disabled System Integrity Safety (SIP) through csrutil disable
  • Disabled authenticated-root through csrutil authenticated-root disable
  • Granted Full Disk Entry to Terminal

⚙️ Instructions tried:

sudo mdutil -i on /     Indexing and looking disabled. 
sudo mdutil -i on /System/Volumes/Information     Indexing and looking disabled. 
sudo mdutil -E /     Indexing and looking disabled. 
mdutil -a -s /:     Indexing and looking disabled. /System/Volumes/Information:     Indexing and looking disabled. /System/Volumes/Preboot:     Indexing enabled. 
sudo mdutil -i on ~     Error: invalid operation.     Error: unknown indexing state. 
mdutil -s ~     Error: unknown indexing state. 
sudo rm -rf /.Highlight-V100 sudo rm -rf /System/Volumes/Information/.Highlight-V100 

Second one fails: “Operation not permitted”

Restarting the metadata server:

sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist     Error: Enter/output error 
sudo launchctl bootstrap system /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist     Bootstrap failed: 5: Enter/output error 

❗️ Present state:

  • Highlight nonetheless doesn’t work.
  • Terminal at all times says “Indexing and looking disabled”.
  • mds doesn’t seem in Exercise Monitor anymore.
  • The system behaves usually in any other case, however I can not seek for apps, recordsdata, or something through Highlight.

❓ What I need assistance with:

  • How can I absolutely restore Highlight performance?
  • Is there a method to recreate the deleted metadata/index recordsdata?
  • Would reinstalling macOS over the present system (with out wiping information) repair this?
  • Every other repair or workaround could be appreciated.

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