Good news. The importer is now working on my development system. Of course, I have no idea why. Hopefully, it will keep working. Also, I figured out the logging situation, which is not exactly as you described. First, the log messages show up on the main Console.app display, not the system.log display. Second, error messages are displayed but info messages are not, even if Action: Include Info Messages is enabled. (Is this a bug?) When I changed the basic log messages to error, they show up. Thank you for your assistance!

Regarding the problem on my development system, I ran the application from another account and Spotlight was successfully updated. So I guess that means the problem is tied to my user account. Slightly off topic, but I used fast user switching to run under the second account and found that my application would not start (*) under the second account unless I quit the application under my main account. Is that normal? *Actually, it started but immediately terminated with no logged error message.

Regarding the logging, I wrote a test app. Logging statements can be seen in the debug log under Xcode, but when run independently, nothing shows up in system.log (even looking at the file directly). #import "AppDelegate.h" #include <os/log.h> @interface AppDelegate () @end @implementation AppDelegate - (void)applicationDidFinishLaunching:(NSNotification *)aNotification {     os_log_t LOG = os_log_create("test.test.test", "testing");     os_log_info(LOG, "Testing OS Logging Info");     os_log_error(LOG, "Testing OS Logging Error");     os_log_info(OS_LOG_DEFAULT, "Testing OS Logging Info Default");     os_log_error(OS_LOG_DEFAULT, "Testing OS Logging Error Default");} @end

I have made some progress thanks to your suggestions. I installed the application in a clean 11.5.2 system on a VM. I waited until mdimport -L showed my importer, then saved a document. I then did a Spotlight search and the new document was successfully found! The remaining issues: Although I added logging using os_log as you suggested, I have yet to see any log messages in system.log. Any ideas on what might be going wrong? I double checked the importer binary to be sure that it contained my message strings, which it did. For example:     os_log_t LOG = os_log_create("org.violetlib.valerie", "metadata");     os_log_info(LOG, "Metadata requested for %{public}@", pathToFile); Should I expect to see this output in Console's system.log? I would really like this importer to work on my development system, but I have no desire to do a fresh OS install. Do you have any suggestions on how to get it working or how to find out which bit of persistent state is causing the problem? Thanks!

I was wondering whether it was related to the ability of my importer to write messages to the system log. I added logging to the importer but have seen no messages. What I do see is a fantastic number of messsages like this: Aug 13 06:31:00 2020 com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.apple.mdworker.shared.1B000000-0500-0000-0000-000000000000[7793]): Service exited due to SIGKILL | sent by mds[95] Aug 13 06:31:00 2020 com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.apple.mdworker.shared.11000000-0700-0000-0000-000000000000[7795]): Service exited due to SIGKILL | sent by mds[95] Aug 13 06:31:00 2020 com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.apple.mdworker.shared.1D000000-0200-0000-0000-000000000000[7784]): Service exited due to SIGKILL | sent by mds[95] Aug 13 06:31:00 2020 com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.apple.mdworker.shared.1F000000-0400-0000-0000-000000000000[7800]): Service exited due to SIGKILL | sent by mds[95]

What does this mean: Sandbox: logd_helper(614) deny(1) file-read-data /Applications/apps/Valerie.app/Contents/Library/Spotlight/ValerieSpotlightImporter.mdimporter/Contents/MacOS/ValerieSpotlightImporter

Thank you!

It might be useful to know what the real shortcut is when providing help to the user. It might also be useful to know what the real shortcut is in case it conflicts with some other use of the same key combination, in which case a different key combination can be used. An application that creates its own shortcut preferences would need to know this.

Calling validateVisibleColumns appears to fix the problem.

sudo /usr/libexec/configureLocalKDC did not work for me

I am encountering a similar problem. I believe that the panel is not treating your first filter specially, but rather it is caching the results returned by shouldEnableURL to avoid making multiple calls for the same URL. Sounds like a good idea, except for delegates that change their behavior as yours does. How clever of Apple to introduce this incompatible change without documenting it or providing a way to flush the cache.

I have the same experience, except File Sharing does not work in the other direction, either. The connection is made, the volumes are displayed, but trying to access a volume fails.