Continued corespotlightd process CPU overload issues

First - me too - started when I updated to Sequoia 15.2.

I'm on an M1 Mac mini. The problem started with pages - which I use extensively with very large docs. I have fiber internet, and consistently get 900+ kpbs up and down.

It began with lags on my mouse and keyboard - just in pages, and spread to all apple apps, and then all apps.

Force quitting corespotlightd and restart worked for a bit. Then it came back - quicker and quicker.

Tried deleting some, then all of the spotlight activities - which worked for a bit.

Additionally tried completely turning off Siri and Apple Intelligence.

It worked for about 30 minutes. And now it's back.

Has anyone found ANYTHING that actually works?

-- update - now this process has taken over the processing suck

Hi, I am new Reading this post and writing. I started having these kind of problems a couple of months ago. My MacBook Pro is from June this year, so less than one year old.

I have checket and I also have a store.db file of 17,51 Gb and another one of 1,91 Gb.

What soul I do about it? Can I just delete them?

Thank you ver much!

Currently trying this out to fix that bug myself, and I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing. So I just want to make extra sure I got what you're saying. Now when you said deleting the metadata out of Corespotlight and SpotlightKnowledgeEvents, can I just delete everything inside those folders? Not working with Terminal here. Or keep the folders inside intact and just delete the lists and whatever is in there? Thanks!

fronesis47 wrote:

But before I do that, I just have to say that Apple's "sort by rank" default option is a nightmare: it just makes the thread seem like meaningless nonsense, even though so many here are trying hard to solve the problem together.

With respect to this comment: yes, the "sort by rank" sorting isn't just useless; it's actively detrimental to actually following any kind of conversation. And to make matters worse, it's the default.

You can, however, sort by more useful orders, such as oldest first, newest first, etc. But the only place you can do that is on the first page of the thread, where the option is placed inconspicuously below the OP. It took me years of using Apple's community fora to even find this option.

yes - mac studio here, OS15.3.. i did follow this.. as well as turned off spotlight in terminal as instructed and computer is running lag free again. I hope for OS update soon and will turn spotlight back on... thank you.

[Edited by Moderator]

Thank you for this. I tried it and things were actually looking promising. After 25 minutes though I decided to make an edit on my 1.3MB Pages document just to see if it would continue behaving, and unfortunately it did not. After about a minute CPU usage spiked greatly and the disk began writing immense amounts again. When the document wasn't touched at all however after opening, the system behaved (like 99% so). Definitely the most effective thing listed so far but unfortunately it still goes downhill after the first edit.

fronesis47 wrote:

Unfortunately, I think that apple's default to "sort by rank" means that many people are MISSING the most important discoveries in this thread.

For anyone unaware, you can actually go to your profile, click Edit Profile & Preferences, scroll down, and change the default sorting option.

I agree with Mitch Stone: it would be good to know if other documents (such as Numbers files) cause the same problem, and to see what happens with a new user.

THANK YOU to sugarskyline for showing me how to change the default presentation of the message board.

During all my trials and tribulations with this issue I've had several Numbers files open on various computers (I almost never use Keynote). Most of the Numbers files are not very large (half a megabyte or so), but one is nearly a hundred megabytes. That's mostly embedded graphics though, and I'm not sure how much indexing gets done on graphics.

In any case, Numbers files do not appear to make either corespotlightd or Spotlight metadata spike. YMMV, naturally.

If the folder is the core problem, what would happen if someone locked it (Get Info > Locked) ? Not well versed on how the OS works so I don't want to attempt in case it breaks something, but theoretically, would be there any value in locking the folder/relevant innermost folder to prevent anything from being written?

ericmurphysf wrote:

I have another question: do people with Apple Silicon systems ever see the size of their Spotlight metadata folders decline? I've got two Intel systems and two AS systems, and while I never have seen these folders' sizes shrink (other than when I manually delete them) on Intel systems, I often see them get smaller on their own on AS systems, especially on my M2 Max MBP.

I can keep an eye out and report back! 🙂

Thank you for this clear summary. I have developed this problem. I AM using large Pages files. The problem developed after one of the fairly recent system updates. I'm on an M2 Air 8 mb memory running 15.3. I am a heavy but ordinary user who is NOT comfortable deleting random files or using Terminal. Can you give us some simple instructions until APPLE fixes this problem. As the computer is quite Unusable at this point. It also has started crashing with the same error (can't recall - but something about devices not loading upon reboot).

For those who can't find your Library file go to Finder, hold the option key while clicking GO - your Library folder will appear. Still concerned about just deleting the Corespotlightd file - but at least I've found it. Thanks for the discussion - I hope Apple does something about it. perhaps modify Pages somehow.

Alongside the spotlight issues, has anyone else been having problems with Pages itself falling over?

I have a few quite complex documents and have been finding two things have increased in parallel: all the beachballs/spotlight issues AND Pages falling over and reporting to Apple.

From my perspective, Pages seems to fail when, after making an edit which might itself be trivial, I scroll. Pages disappears, then I get the windows asking if I want the report to go to Apple (and I always do allow that), and if I want to let Pages restart.

Time after time, Pages only loses the tiniest bit of editing. (Hats off to Apple on that score.) But it takes an annoying time to be able to get back to editing the document again.

I'm adding in to this thread because my perception is that both issues have worsened which makes me wonder if they are intertwined?

Given the vast number of automatic reports from me alone, I'd have hoped Apple would notice and fix the Pages issue. And, if it is related, maybe fix the spotlight issue by so doing. Or vice versa.

I also want to appreciate the efforts put in to get the spotlight issue resolved.

That's what worries me about this problem. With the manifestation of it being so diverse and unpredictable despite the commonalities, it could make diagnosing and solving the issue much more complicated for Apple compared to standard bugs. Ironically, when Apple Support was asking me to provide a screenshot, that was the very first time since I bought this Mac that Pages behaved. I had to wait several minutes to get it to trigger again. Very bizarre.

Is it accurate to say though that everyone here was having a good time before Sequoia 15.2?

sugarskyline wrote:

Is it accurate to say though that everyone here was having a good time before Sequoia 15.2?

YES. I never had this problem prior to Sequoia, and I'm 99% sure it didn't show up on 15.0.x or on 15.1.x.