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mdctl status

Print the app version, the engine state and the group list.

mdctl status

What it prints

One field per line, ending with an `icloud:` line when the app has something to say about whether the library travels.

The first thing to run when something looks wrong, and the first thing to paste into a report. It changes nothing, so it is safe from a monitoring loop.

mdctl status
version: 1.6
state: active
active group: Home
groups: Home, Office, MacBook Air 13-inch (M1)
icloud: syncing, last synced 09:14
service: registered and allowed to run (macOS: enabled)

The fields

version is the running app’s, not the tool’s. state is the engine: idle when nothing is active, active when a group is applied. A field with no value prints (none) rather than an empty string, so a transcript never leaves you wondering whether the value was blank or the line was missing.

The icloud: line appears only when the app has something to say about sharing the library. Its absence means sharing is off; a sentence there means it is on, and either working or explaining why not.

The service: line is the privileged service for displays at the login window. It exists because that service is for a Mac with no monitor, reached over the network, where “have a look in System Settings” is advice nobody at the far end can take. The sentence weighs the registration against your answer, so not set up; you declined it reads as a choice and not set up, though it is switched on reads as a fault.

mdctl status | sed -n 's/^service: //p'
not set up; you declined it (macOS: notRegistered)

Where macOS has been asked but has not been answered, the line says so and names where to answer it: under Login Items in System Settings. The system’s own word for the state is repeated in brackets, unchanged, so a support transcript carries what macOS said rather than what the app made of it.

Reading it from a script

Labelled lines in a fixed order. Read them with sed, not a JSON parser, and branch on the exit code rather than on the text.

mdctl status | sed -n 's/^active group: //p'
Home

Exit codes

The same four across every command, so a script can branch on the number without knowing which command produced it.

Code Name When
0 ok The command succeeded.
1 commandFailed The app understood the command and refused or failed it. The reason is on stderr.
2 usage The arguments were wrong. Nothing was sent.
3 appNotRunning No app is listening on the socket.