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I commonly use the cmd-space shortcut to bring up the spotlight, but as of yesterday it no longer works. I did not knowingly update my software beforehand, I do not have any conflicts in the keyboard shortcuts (no yellow triangle), and I only have one input source.

I have done a pretty thorough search for solutions; here are some pages I have read: (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6). Below are the common solutions that have not worked for me:

  • Restarted the machine. No change.
  • Restored the defaults on all keyboard shortcuts. No Change.
  • Changed the desktop resolution. No change.
  • Changed the shortcut. Spotlight works with essentially any other shortcut, but I am used to cmd-space.
  • Reset the spotlight index (sudo mdutil -E / or killall Dock). This temporarily enables the shortcut but the problem surfaces after either closing the laptop's lid or changing the application window.
  • Remove the HIToolbox.plist and restart (rm ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.HIToolbox.plist). This enables the shortcut for a couple seconds immediately after startup but then the problem resumes.
  • Closing applications with potentially conflicting shortcuts. I can't say with 100% certainty that I have covered everything but I have combed through my app shortcuts and closed out of anything that might be the problem. To reiterate, this was working fine until yesterday.
  • First aid on the disk. No change. I assume this would fix permissions issues if there were any.

One last piece of odd behavior: I can change the shortcut from cmd+space to cmd+option+space (and everything works), but I cannot change it back to cmd+space without hitting "restore defaults". The shortcut window remains empty until I close it or hit another shortcut.

At my wits end here! Has anyone solved this before?

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  • There are many good suggestions. I landed here because I searched for the (cmd + space) no longer working. None of the solutions (up to 11/2023) offered herein worked. I finally went ahead and reset my SMC (and since the OP asked it in 2018, I assumed he was experiencing this issue on Intel Hardware as well). As unlogical as it may sound, it helped! Just in case others might hit this page from a web search.
    – ikaerom
    Commented Nov 23, 2023 at 20:03

11 Answers 11

Reset to default
61

Once in a long while, this happens to me with my external on. I think the shortcut is working, but it's showing up off-screen somewhere. Unplugging the external monitor gets it working again.

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  • 2
    Same here! Sometimes, I can make it work just by clicking on the actual laptop screen first, then retrying the shortcut.
    – Mike B
    Commented Jan 5, 2021 at 1:12
  • Same here. Can't work out why it stops working though.
    – Sam Dutton
    Commented Feb 1, 2021 at 17:51
  • I tried this to no effect. But connecting my ipad via sidecar and then disconnecting sidecar worked.
    – Jarle Tufto
    Commented Jul 7, 2021 at 13:05
  • This was the fix for me. Thank you.
    – Jay
    Commented Aug 17, 2021 at 5:37
  • 6
    To get it working I had to disconnect the external display, then press cmd-space, then move the search window a little. After that it works with the external display.
    – Tom Harrington
    Commented Jan 16, 2023 at 18:40
50

In my case, a display problem caused the spotlight input window to pop up off screen. Clicking and holding the spotlight icon in the system bar resets the location of the spotlight window and fixed my trouble.Spotlight icon

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  • 3
    Worked perfectly for me. I had the issue where the Search pop-up would show on my laptop but would not when I plugged in an external monitor. When I unplugged then replugged the monitor it will still didn't work. Only this solution worked. Thank you!
    – Troy Sandal
    Commented Jan 4, 2023 at 16:39
  • 1
    That's the only thing that actually worked for me.
    – Sandro
    Commented Oct 23, 2023 at 16:10
  • For those who don't have the spotlight icon in their menu bar, it's located in System Settings -> Control Center -> Menu Bar Only -> Spotlight. Then click the dropdown and select Show in Menu Bar. If its location in the settings changes in the future, you can always just search for Spotlight on the top left of settings.
    – Patrick
    Commented Mar 15 at 6:27
  • Worked immediately thanks!
    – Climax
    Commented May 29 at 11:48
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The issue may be caused by the SystemUIServer process hanging.

You can restart it by launching the command

killall SystemUIServer
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  • Just takes a couple of seconds for the system to restart the process. Thanks!!
    – mraxus
    Commented Jun 4, 2021 at 9:26
  • It isn't working anymore. There is no SystemUIServer process.
    – loc
    Commented Sep 14, 2021 at 11:51
  • Worked for me on Sonoma, 14.3.1
    – Niek
    Commented Apr 24 at 8:52
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Have you checked the system preferences -> Keyboards -> Shortcuts -> Spotlight and made sure it was checked?

Does it work in safemode? What about other user accounts?

If not then you may need to reinstall MacOS from recovery mode.

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    I did ensure it was checked! In the end there was a shortcut conflict with an app running in the background.
    – Nolan Conaway
    Commented Mar 14, 2018 at 13:06
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    mine was unchecked, not sure why but thanks for suggesting this!
    – Orlando
    Commented Oct 8, 2018 at 16:48
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    Toggling that checkbox fixed it for me. Used macOS for years and never had this issue before today.
    – christopherbalz
    Commented Nov 25, 2019 at 21:46
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I found out that BetterTouchTool was running in the background and somehow had cmd-space assigned as a shortcut with no action (I definitely do not remember doing this). For others with this issue, I would advise carefully considering apps running in the background when checking for conflicts.

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  • 2
    Thank you! I had the same problem and couldn't figure it out, but I ended up determining I had the same thing. My running theory would be that while interacting with BTT in another frame, pressing the ⌘-Space to bring up Spotlight inadvertently adds a shortcut with that command.
    – Stacks
    Commented Jun 17, 2019 at 14:59
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Tried some answers, only to find out I actually deactivated the shortcut by mistake somehow.

System Preferences > Keyboard > Spotlight, select Show Spotlight search ⌘+Space

Don't forget to check the basics!

Screenshot of the Shortcuts tab of the Keyboard preferences pane

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  • I never personally turned it off, but I realised the spotlight alternative I recently uninstalled had disabled it automatically. So definitely check this if you use Alfred, Raycast, or anything similar.
    – Parsa Yazdani
    Commented Sep 30, 2023 at 14:07
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This happens when you have manually moved the Spotlight results box. By doing that, Macbook seems to assign a kind of fixed position to the Spotlight box.

Which is fine so long as you don't change your screen setup. The problem only occurs when you work with different screen setups (like connecting to a second screen, but also working in laptop-only mode).

Then, apparently, the fixed position can end up putting the Spotlight box outside the screen, or right at the edge (I could see the shadow of the Spotlight box in my righthand margin). Or Mac can't make sense of the fixed position that it remembers.

Solution for me was to disconnect the secondary screen, manually move the Spotlight box (which was indeed off-center) to the middle of the laptop screen. It doesn't have to be perfect center.

Once you reconnect the second screen and make it the Main screen, you should see the Spotlight box in the approximate center.

Of course if the box got remembered in a way-out position, you might not be able to "find it back" in laptop-only mode. I don't know how to fix that.

Maybe another workaround in that case would be to press Cmd-Space, then enter a search term which you know would make the search box get really large. That would trigger the results box to be extra large, so it might come into your screen from the edge.

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AFTER SOME DIGGING: Click and hold the Spotlight icon on the menu bar, until the Spotlight window has returned to its original location.

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I have been in the mac field for several years now and have found the following command has not let me down so far.

Information
This involves disabling the System Integrity Protection briefly for the purpose of writing to an otherwise "locked" (during normal boot) directory. Disabling the System Integrity Protection is not recommended for long periods of time as it is possible to "damage" files that macOS typically prevents you from changing. However, this is the only solution I have found to work reliably.

Steps

  1. Boot into Recovery mode on your mac by restarting, holding CMD + R upon restart.
  2. From the menu bar of Recovery mode, choose Utilities, then Terminal.
  3. Type: csrutil disable to disable System Integrity Protection. You can use csrutil status to check its current state.
  4. Reboot the mac as advised (into normal mode, not recovery).
  5. Open Terminal (found in the Utilities folder under Applications)
  6. Type: sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist (all in one line), hit Return/Enter key.
  7. Relaunch the Mac
  8. Give Spotlight a try using the key combination(s).
  9. Repeat steps 1, 2, 3, 4; changing the command in step 3 to csrutil enable to re-enable the System Integrity Protection. Again, you may use csrutil status to check its current state.

What this does is actually does is re-initiate Spotlight's launch daemon (using the launchctl command). Anyway, what's important is that it works, although I am not sure what effect the key combination change had on the way it functions - this may have to be set back to its defaults.

Give it a go and report back on how you make out. I'd be happy to follow up with you on this.

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  • 1
    Hey, thanks for the detailed response! I am glad you posted this for others; but, as i answered above, in my case it was as simple as a background task hogging that shortcut without my knowledge. Still don't know how the shortcut was enabled, as i did not recently install/update and i certainly did not intentionally overwrite the shortcut.
    – Nolan Conaway
    Commented Mar 13, 2018 at 22:27
0

Just wanted to chime in and say that BetterTouchTool ended up being the culprit for me. Never would have checked there as I never intentionally set a command+space shortcut in the app.

Many thanks to @noland-conway above for the tip!

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0

Chris had the right answer for me! My system is struggling with the spontaneous rebooting graphics card problem.

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    This does not really answer the question. If you have a different question, you can ask it by clicking Ask Question. To get notified when this question gets new answers, you can follow this question. Once you have enough reputation, you can also add a bounty to draw more attention to this question. - From Review
    – agarza
    Commented Jun 18, 2022 at 4:55
  • Well, agarza, you cute little helpful bot, since I can’t vote or comment, I posted.
    – MrKoch1985usa
    Commented Jun 19, 2022 at 5:39

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