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> Spotlight search limitations

The Spotlight search is somewhat unreliable on my Mac, often missing files in iCloud and losing comments. Is this a bug in Ventura?

Spotlight only returns search results for files it has full access to on your Mac. It excludes any that have been removed from local storage and would need downloading again to be fully accessible. This can be a problem if you have enabled Optimize Mac Storage and macOS has decided to save space by removing the local copies of files, as shown by the blue cloud icon with a downward arrow on it. As it could take hours or days to download the whole of those files, the search ignores them.

Spotlight or Finder comments are also less reliable, as they’re stored not in files, but in a hidden .DS_Store file in their folder. If that is removed or separated from the file concerned, then the comment is lost. Because of that, Spotlight comments are among the least reliable ways of attaching information to a file. If you look at the search attributes in the pop–up menu in a Finder Find window, you’ll also see two different comments listed: the one named Comment isn’t the same as Spotlight Comment, and thus can increase confusion.