Apple fixes long-standing macOS Spotlight indexing bug

Apple has resolved a long-standing bug in the macOS Spotlight search function with the release of macOS Golden Gate 27.0. The issue, which appears to have originated with macOS Mojave approximately eight years ago, prevented certain plain text files from being indexed correctly.

The bug occurred when specific character sequences at the beginning of a file, such as ‘LG’, ‘HPA’, or ‘Draw’, caused the system to misidentify the file type. Using a method similar to the UNIX ‘file’ command and a ‘magic’ database, the system would incorrectly reclassify these text files as different formats, such as a binary vector graphics format used by the !Draw app for RISC OS 2. This misidentification led to decoding errors in mdwrite, meaning the contents of the files were not added to the Spotlight index, making them unsearchable by their text content.

Because third-party importers could not override this behavior, users had no practical workaround other than changing the opening characters of their files. The fix in Golden Gate 27.0 ensures that these files are correctly identified and indexed.