Level 2

306 points

Continued corespotlightd process CPU overload issues

I am wondering if anyone has discovered any new ideas for stopping the corespotlightd process from hogging the CPU. According to Activity Monitor, the corespotlightd process often occupies more than 100% of the CPU load, sometimes spiking as high as 400% on my M2 Ultra Mac Studio. This problem has become so severe that it often pinwheels under normally non-intensive tasks. It can cause the video to flicker on my Studio Display. In one case it caused my Mac to kernel panic (crash).

I encountered this bug only after installing Sequoia 15.2, but having researched this issue extensively, I find that Mac users have identified it since at least macOS Ventura. So here are some solutions we don't need to hear again:

Reindexing Spotlight by adding and removing volumes in Spotlight Privacy. This provides relief only temporarily. Within hours the process is again grinding the Mac to a halt.

Killing the corespotlightd in Activity Monitor. Again, this is at best only a temporary solution as the process will reinstate itself.

A "clean" install of macOS. First of all, no such process really exists. The OS recovery process simply reinstalls a new copy of the System files. Nobody reports this as a fix. An internal drive wipe and reformat, and restore from Time Machine is also unlikely to help, as it simply returns your Mac to its previous state. If the corespotlightd problem results from a corrupted file, the problem will likely simply be recreated in your reinstall. "Nuke and pave" might solve the problem if it caused by a format or directory issue on your startup volume. This does not seem to be the case, but if anyone has permanently cured the problem by this method, please report it.

What we do need to hear is from anyone who has spent time with Apple Support on this issue and been provided with solutions that actually work, or has new ideas about what causes it. Feels like we're on our own here, since Apple seems to be stumped.

Posted on Dec 19, 2024 11:21 AM

Top-ranking reply

ericmurphysf

Level 2

307 points

Posted on Jan 31, 2025 8:44 AM

Okay, I have a new hypothesis as to what's going on here with corespotlightd. This process is one of at least four that are responsible for macOS's Spotlight functionality. The three others are mds, mdworker, and md_stores. I cribbed the following descriptions of these three processes from the HowToGeek website:

The two processes [mds and mdworker] are part of Spotlight, the macOS search tool. The first, mds, stands for metadata server. This process manages the index used to give you quick search results. The second, mdworker, stands for metadata server worker. This does the hard work of actually indexing your files to make that quick searching possible.

And for md_stores, from the TechNewsToday site:

Mds_stores is the core indexing process of the macOS. On normal days, it usually takes up a noticeable [sic, probably should be un-noticeable] amount of CPU. However, when you reinstall your OS or add new files/directories, your system will automatically start to reindex these new databases, which sees the mds_stores CPU usage skyrocket.

The macOS Spotlight feature makes use of two processes for indexing the system database; mds and mds_stores. The mds (Metadata Server) process is responsible for tracking and recording files and folders in your operating system. md_stores then compiles and manages these mds metadata, which Spotlight later uses for searching certain documents within your OS.

So it may be that corespotlightd is in fact an unwitting victim of other processes' having gone awry. On my two Intel systems, by three months after installing macOS 15.0, metadata associated with Spotlight located at ~/library/metadata had reached half a terabyte on both systems. It sounds like this data was actually written out by either mdworker, mds_stores, or both. And then, corespotlightd has to wade through these gigabytes upon gigabytes of metadata to actually produce search results, and as that task gets harder and harder with more and more metadata being produced, eventually Spotlight search results (which includes search and smart folders through Mail) degrade to the point of uselessness.

While I haven't managed to halt the rapid growth of metadata on these two Intel systems (Apple Silicon Macs still have the issue but to a much milder degree), simply deleting the metadata out of the ~/library/metadata/Corespotlight and ~/library/metadata/SpotlightKnowledgeEvents (while leaving the folders themselves intact) resulted in a near-immediate improvement in three areas: greatly reduced use of storage space; vastly improved search results; and much lower processor utilization by corespotlightd.

As noted, this metadata still continues to pile up (especially if I have a large (>5 MB) Pages file open). But if I have to empty out these two folders once every few weeks until Apple resolves the issue, that's not the end of the world).

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346 replies

PolyRod

Level 1

32 points

Aug 26, 2025 12:48 AM in response to PolyRod

A few days ago, Apple contacted me and asked for some diagnostics - which I sent and got a thanks.

I think that the issue is having less impact than at one point. But still get beachballs regularly. And just maybe I automatically close Pages and Numbers when I'm not actively using them - sort-of habituated into doing so! Thus avoiding things like having the same documents open on two machines.

Aug 27, 2025 1:41 PM in response to Mitch Stone

I've just started having this problem on my M3 Max MacBook Pro. As others have reported, the problem is associated with Pages. I had several shorts Pages documents open at the same time and the problems may have started when I began inserting emoji characters in the text or when I started sharing the documents. The thing I find most peculiar (and disturbing) are the ~10 second keyboard and mouse freezes. That shouldn't happen just because of corespotlightd's CPU usage. A deeper I/O resource allocation issue must be at the core of this. I hope it doesn't mean we're all infected with the same key logger!

Sep 1, 2025 10:55 AM in response to David MacVicar

David MacVicar wrote:

I am curious. The recommendation is to trash everything from the Corespotlight folder. Does that mean everything? I saw here that someone said they 'left the folder structure' intact, or they deleted the spotlight knowledge events folder contents; however, that spotlight knowledge events folder IS a part of the core spotlight folder - so what can safely be deleted? Can someone confirm?

Everything.

I have deleted the Corespotlight folder and all its sub-folders at least a dozen times over the past 6 months, never with any ill effects.

SteJav

Level 1

4 points

Oct 31, 2025 7:00 PM in response to Mitch Stone

I have the same high cpu load problem on my mac mini M4 usng pages editing a one page doc from icloud If I close pages or move the doc to local ssd (defeats my purpose of paying for icloud storage), the beach ball problem goes away. (Tahoe, base mac mini M4)

I’ll experiment and see if the problem can be eliminated by using my own NAS, or failing that, going back to MS Word and see if the problem goes away.

skipc56

Level 1

19 points

Nov 19, 2025 1:25 PM in response to fronesis47

This is what annoys me about Apple. What remaining updates to sequoia has left. They mainly focus on securities. We has users need to hammer them on fixing these high CPU issues. These macOSes are turning into Windows. I have problem with Backgroundshortcutrunner process. BTW you guys know about Onyx utility that cleans up Spotlight? It safely deletes indexes safely. You rebuild or delete the index.

Dec 2, 2025 10:26 AM in response to fronesis47

Just to add to the debate, in my experience it is also a problem on Tahoe 26.1, although I had not noticed it until recently. Accordingly I'm not sure if my issue, on an M3 14" MBP, arose after or before the latest update.

I'm currently sat in front of my laptop with no real activity ongoing and "corespotlightd" is consuming well in excess of 125% of CPU time.

My experience tells me that it's associated with Pages files regardless of whether they are stored in the cloud or locally.

I hope this helps.

Stephen

Feb 9, 2025 4:29 AM in response to Mitch Stone

I know this isn't ideal but in the meantime if anyone reading must use Pages, you could use iPhone Mirroring on your Mac and edit from there instead.

Zenith

Level 1

21 points

Mar 20, 2025 1:55 PM in response to Mitch Stone

I don't have a solution yet, but I recommend everybody use the feedback assistance early and often. Perhaps Apple's bugtracker will eventually flag it for an engineer who can help.

May 13, 2025 12:43 PM in response to LAWM0N

No - Using iCloudDrive is not the problem. You just need to make sure that these files have been downloaded to your computer and are not exclusively located in the cloud.

PolyRod

Level 1

32 points

Jul 23, 2025 4:22 AM in response to KWiPod

Have re-reported to Apple. And I encourage everyone affected to report/re-report.

Expressly offered screen sharing, etc.

JEA1968

Level 1

5 points

Nov 19, 2025 2:49 AM in response to ericmurphysf

This fixed it for me. The problem was something to do with Pages files being indexed, especially ones stored in iCloud.

Mitch Stone Author

Level 2

306 points

Dec 27, 2024 8:39 AM in response to SBML

Thanks for the response. It seems your experience is similar, if also different in interesting ways. I've since found that my large Pages document still causes the process to spike up, but not as quickly as before, and since deleting the plist file for Spotlight, it resolves more quickly when the document is closed. The document is not password protected, so I don't think this is the source of the problem (as least, not by itself). My next step is to make a copy of this document and see if it causes the issue when it is or isn't shared or stored in iCloud. I suspect this is the commonality.

I didn't save the kernel panic report my Mac sent to Apple, but it also ID'd the corespotlightd process. This is what sent me looking at Activity Monitor.

Mitch Stone Author

Level 2

306 points

Dec 27, 2024 1:36 PM in response to MgS_2012

I am seeing the issue being triggered with documents stored either locally or in iCloud, so it seems to me iCloud is off the top suspects list. You don't say if the large documents you have open are Pages documents or something else. It would he helpful if you could be more specific. Also, have you tried deleting the plist, as I suggested?

FWIW, I opened a very large TIFF file in Pixelmator and left it open for some time without any issues. Not a lot of surprise there since this file type is one that presumably Spotlight does not attempt to index.

PolyRod

Level 1

32 points

Dec 29, 2024 3:58 AM in response to Mitch Stone

I am using an M4 mini with 24GB. In the past few days, I've seen corespotlightd running at somewhere around 140% CPU. At best, it drops to about 80%. And I've just checked and seen it at 38.5% - which is the lowest I've seen in days - but moments later bounced back to 132% and remained high. CPU Time 1:07:06.22 despite restarting late last night.

And have started to get beachballs. And stutters - in Pages, in Numbers, in Excel, in Firefox, moving mouse, and other apps.

I have an M1 MBP which, so far, has not suffered this. Yet I edit the same files, which are in iCloud.

Dismounting all my external drives does not help noticeably.

My Pages documents vary from trivial to substantial. And the CPU usage persists even when I quit Pages, and Numbers, and Excel, and Word, almost everything.

It had been running fantastically. That makes it extremely disappointing.

All software is, to the best of my knowledge, bang up to date - and no beta versions/releases.

PolyRod

Level 1

32 points

Dec 29, 2024 12:33 PM in response to MgS_2012

I come from that far back as well!

The systems I worked on could originally be single or dual processor, later up to quad. And processor usage for a single process could almost reach 100%. With a maximum across all processes potentially approaching 400% on a quad. Which made sense.

But the precise meaning of 138% is far from obvious. Especially when we need to consider performance and efficiency cores. And how do GPU cores fit?

Continued corespotlightd process CPU overload issues