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).

View in context

346 replies

May 13, 2025 10:16 AM in response to Mitch Stone

I would like to thank everyone who contributed to this listing, as it would have been impossible to resolve my sequoia/spotlight issue without all of your help. There appear to be two simple actions to eliminate the runaway spotlightd process.

- Empty the contents of the ~/Library/Metadata/Corespotlight folder
- Download the contents of the "pages" and "numbers" folders on iCloudDrive onto your computer

NOTE: It has only been two hours since the problem was resolved, but I am confident that it is gone.

I hope you find this useful.

Jun 3, 2025 3:57 PM in response to Mitch Stone

Mitch Stone wrote:

The wide variation of experience with this bug is vexing.

To put it mildly. In my case (which seems to be similar to some people's experiences and wildly dissimilar to others'), I can avoid issues with CPU overload and a host of other problems, including Spotlight search, smart folders in Apple Mail, Time Machine, just to list a few, by the simple expedient of emptying the ~/library/metadata/CoreSpotlight folder on a regular basis (at least on Intel systems; the two Apple Silicon systems I own seem to do their own trash collection, as it were).

But "regular" has seemed to become a shorter and shorter period of late. Example: I emptied the above folder around eight o'clock this morning on my iMac Pro, before going to work. It had been just short of 40 GB before I emptied it. I happened to stop home about two and a half hours later, and the folder had already grown to nearly 30 GB. That's with no iWork apps open at all: not Pages, not Numbers, not Keynote. Which you would think would falsify my own hypothesis about how heavily-edited Pages files, at least, contribute to exacerbating if not actually causing the problem.

And across the room, I've had a large (>55 MB), heavily-edited Pages file open for two days straight on my Mac Studio (while it was also being edited on other systems). At the beginning of that period, CoreSpotlight was at about 27 GB. But after a day, it was down to 9.7 GB (apparently some process is doing what it is likely supposed to do, which is to delete out-of-date metadata). In the day since then, it's grown all the way to 9.72 GB.

If nothing else, these observations support the contention that this issue is much more severe on Intel systems than on Apple Silicon systems. But others with M-series Macs have problems as or more severe than what I experience on my Intel systems, so…who knows?

It would be nice if Apple could ultimately resolve this issue, but given how exasperatingly difficult it has been to even diagnose what reliably causes the problem, I'm not optimistic.

LAWM0N

Level 1

38 points

Sep 2, 2025 1:03 PM in response to David MacVicar

[I have iMac 27-in Retina 5K display. 3.8GHz, 8-core, 10th gen, Intel Core i7]

Two points that work for me. NB: This CPU overload issue seems individualized for different folks/devices.

1. Delete Metadata – I am conservative about what I delete, because I don't know what I'm doing. I delete only the files which seem to accumulate large data in Metadata. [Highlite file/folder >Right click > "Info"]. I find only two folders with large data: CoreSpotlight and one of its larger sub-files SpotlightKnowledgeEvents. Other files seem negligible in size, and I can ignore them. They don't seem to change much, ever, or at all.

I highlight and delete the contents of CoreSpotlight all the way "down" to SpotlightKnowledgeEvents. Then, I delete the contents of SpotlightKnowledgeEvents. Those two folder contain all the accumulated data under Metadata that causes issues.

When I go to my Metadata folder*, I open Metadata folder and find other files and folders (number depends on time lapsed since last delete). Finder > Go > Press "Option" to reveal secret folder "Library" > Metadata >

2. "Duplicate" problematic large Pages files. – This seems to eliminate metadata on the duplicated file, and it's only the large Pages files that seem problematic. I have one very large file that I work with often. If I duplicate as needed, my CPU overload issues are not an issue.

I can go days and days with no growth in metadata. The issue seems resolved… until it's not. Issue seems revived when I open a new large Pages file, which I've not duplicated. So, I duplicate that file, and issue goes away.

I rename the duplicated file ending with the date copied, so I can track that. I send the old file to trash.

I don't like having to do any of the above, but it seems to work for me, eliminating CPU overload issues. I'm hoping Apple some day makes the software fix for this issue, because it's very frustrating. I hope this group can pressure Apple. If/when I have sufficient time/energy, I will go on social media and creatively whine so loud, Apple might wish they have fixed this issue. Until then, the above bandage works.

I also check in System Settings (Apple logo top right > System Settings > Storage, which opens "System Data" at bottom. I get a larger figure, like 132.78 GB, which changes after a 1/2 minute to a smaller figure, like 102.34 GB. This provides less detailed info, but it's a good match with "Library" folder, and I find it satisfying, when I delete Metadata files and folders, to watch Trash line appear, and then disappear when I empty trash. I track that daily, so I can note when/whether the Metadata folder are large enough to need deletion.

Oct 9, 2025 6:33 PM in response to KWiPod

It was my issue, thank for pointing out the iCloud dependence of this issue. I moved the problematic file out of iCloud and now everything is back to normal. corespotlightd was creating 30 Gb of data per week!

PolyRod

Level 1

32 points

Dec 29, 2024 4:20 AM in response to Mitch Stone

Was trying to solve this issue and happened to notice the setting below. Help Apple Improve Search in the Spotlight options.

I don't have any recollection of letting Apple improve search! Disabled. And found spotlightcored dropped to effectively zero CPU!

No idea if this will remain the case. But seems worth a go if it is selected on your machine.

Mitch Stone Author

Level 2

306 points

Dec 31, 2024 11:38 PM in response to MgS_2012

MgS_2012 wrote:

I have a follow-up call with Apple Support tomorrow morning. (I started squawking about this with them last week when the problem resurfaced after a re-install of the OS).

Correlation? It seems concerningly probable that something to do with Apple Intelligence integration is related to this issue.

A connection to AI is a reasonable conjecture, given the timing of this problem for most of us, but I have seen reports of this issue going back several years. I am also not seeing it on my MBA, which is fully updated and with the AI features enabled on it as well. I'm not surprised that an OS reinstall did not help, for reasons I've previously described. Many will be interested in a report on your call with Apple Support.

Meanwhile, another observation: the spikes in CPU usage as shown in Activity Monitor seem to be in User rather than System. This suggests creating a new user on your Mac and seeing if it inherits the problem. My theory is that it won't, because the issue is with a corrupted plist in the user directory.

Mitch Stone Author

Level 2

306 points

Jan 1, 2025 9:11 AM in response to Rollwagen

It's almost certainly a user issue, as the CPU load graph shows. I'm sorry Apple put you through a reinstall. A world of hurt for no benefit. Support should know better. If you can get your problem escalated to Level II Support you can talk to someone more knowledgeable who won't take the blunderbuss approach. Ultimately this needs to be handed over to Engineering.

Rollwagen wrote:

Thanks for your posts! I have large Pages files on my M2 MB Air and Apple Intelligence turned on. Editing those docs is when I first noticed the problem that eventually led me to corespotlightd high CPU usage. I’m wondering if Writing Tools in Apple Intelligence is the culprit. I talked with Apple Support yesterday (NYE) and made it to the point in troubleshooting where we identified it as a User issue and not system wide. We progressed to a system re-install, which you already know doesn’t work. I’ll talk with Support again tomorrow, but in the meantime, I’ve turned off Apple Intelligence on my Mac to see if it will also calm down

Jan 3, 2025 9:02 AM in response to Mitch Stone

Turning off Apple Intelligence on my M2 MBA macOS 15.2 stopped corespotlightd from hogging the CPU, dropping the process from in excess of 250% of CPU to 0.0 % within 8 hours. However, when I went back into my Pages doc (currently 1.2 MB, stored on iCloud), I continued to experience the spinning rainbow wheel, although less frequently and for less time. I've also experienced hesitation in my other apps (including while typing this post!), but no spinning wheel. I've talked with a member of the Senior Support Team at Apple and have arranged for them to collect data for Engineering to evaluate. That happens this coming Tuesday (my schedule doesn't fit with theirs until then). As much as we all don't like it, it appears it's a problem we'll have to live with for a bit until Engineering can figure out what's happening

Mitch Stone Author

Level 2

306 points

May 19, 2025 9:02 AM in response to KWiPod

You are the first (to my recollection) to report that any file type other than Pages triggers an out-of-control process. When I was having this problem, it persisted for 10-15 minutes after opening the Pages file, and continued for that time period whether the file remained open or not. So this may be what you are seeing. This does seem to be a recursive error. The process peaking had a "beat" to it of around five seconds.

I'm interested in the results of your experiment keeping these working files in a separate folder excluded from Spotlight indexing. You might also try making a Finder copy of a document that causes the problem and working with it. One theory is the document version history saved by Pages is a culprit. It made a difference for me, anyway.

Sorry you went through the agony of a system reinstall. I'm surprised it helped even temporarily.

KWiPod wrote:

Hi Mitch. I always assumed the issue was related to Pages. But this latest spike persisted for hours even with all apps closed and my SSD and iCloud removed from indexing. [ChatGPT suggested that a corespotlightd spike of >200% (which is happening as I type this accompanied by the SBBoD!) is likely is an indexing loop or bad database, and advised deleting the index in Terminal with sudo mdutil -E /.

Jul 5, 2025 12:50 AM in response to Mitch Stone

There seem to be some new followers of this thread.

Again, my very simple and working solution is to work on Pages document saved in non-iCloud folders (Downloads for example).

Then, when you are done, you can copy the document in Documents folder or similar.

When you have to edit, do the reverse: copy in Downloads, open that document, save, and then copy back into Documents.

Oct 16, 2025 1:45 PM in response to Mitch Stone

Dear community, Sorry 4 my English language. I had lots of problems with corespotlightd. I tried a lot of your solutions. Nothing was successful. And then I pressed the bottom at spotlight in Systeeminstellingen: "delete history" / 'Wis geschiedenis". Problem solved. All day long up to now. RSVP, Hans de Bruin.

SBML

Level 1

48 points

Nov 18, 2025 11:18 PM in response to Mitch Stone

I've been following & occasionally contributing to this thread for almost a year. I wanted to report that I have had zero spinning beachballs or corespotlightd issues since I moved all of my daily-use Pages documents out of iCloud and into Dropbox.

I'm currently running a Mini M4 pro with 64GB of RAM with Sequoia 15.7.1 and Pages 14.4. I have a side screen displaying two Console windows running 'top' commands that show the running processes (stuck ones first*), along with an Activity monitor window with the %CPU column selected. My Metadata/CoreSpotlight folder is currently 13.5GB and I haven't bothered deleting any of its contents for over six months.

My personal theory is that this issue is linked to the unlimited undos that Pages offers when images are inserted into documents, resized, text wrapped settings altered, image processed, deleted, replaced etc. I think it tries to index every change going back to the document origination. I still duplicate my daily Pages files at the start of each month in order to reduce this massive over-indexing but I'm no longer sure I need to. Why this seems to be a bigger issue when the documents are in iCloud is baffling. Not all of my theories are backed up by empirical data (in truth, hardly any are), so I'd be interested to hear if anyone else tries this and gets a positive result. I think it took a couple of days to calm down after I'd moved everything, but I'm very glad I did because this issue was driving me crazy(er). I've been an Apple fan for thirty years (Ok, the Power Mac 7100 was a nightmare) but I can't understand why this issue hasn't been sorted yet.

I occasionally see a stuck searchpartyd process, but it doesn't seem to create any problems and it unsticks quickly

Nov 30, 2025 9:16 AM in response to Mitch Stone

Same problem here.

Pages file on in iCloud Drive/Documents. Pages file is open. CoreSpotlight folder has grown to 60GB. Mac hangs every 10 seconds, pausing the mouse pointer and audio glitches. In Activity Monitor, Pages and corespotlightd both unusually high CPU usage, over 50%.

Quit Pages, move file to local disk. Open document. Issue doesn't happen.

macOS 26.1 (25B78)

Pages version 14.4 (7043.0.93)

Mitch Stone Author

Level 2

306 points

Jan 3, 2025 9:31 AM in response to Rollwagen

I've found a couple of ways to reduce the process load, but it's always temporary. Deleting the plist as I first suggested does it for me, but perhaps because this plist is modified by the OS every night, the issue comes back the next day. Possibly any large processor demand is the trigger. For me, the process always falls back into a tolerable range 10-15 minutes after closing the triggering Pages document. Thanks for being our emissary to Apple Support. I know how time consuming this can be. Looking forward to your report!

Rollwagen wrote:

Turning off Apple Intelligence on my M2 MBA macOS 15.2 stopped corespotlightd from hogging the CPU, dropping the process from in excess of 250% of CPU to 0.0 % within 8 hours. However, when I went back into my Pages doc (currently 1.2 MB, stored on iCloud), I continued to experience the spinning rainbow wheel, although less frequently and for less time. I've also experienced hesitation in my other apps (including while typing this post!), but no spinning wheel. I've talked with a member of the Senior Support Team at Apple and have arranged for them to collect data for Engineering to evaluate. That happens this coming Tuesday (my schedule doesn't fit with theirs until then). As much as we all don't like it, it appears it's a problem we'll have to live with for a bit until Engineering can figure out what's happening

Mitch Stone Author

Level 2

306 points

Jan 6, 2025 11:36 PM in response to ericmurphysf

I don't believe this issue is exclusive to Pages, as I have seen it elsewhere, but it seems to be triggered most reliably by opening large documents in this app. Close the document and the process falls back to a normal range in a few minutes, usually. Time Machine is working properly for me, though it could still be implicated in the way you suggest.

Maybe off-topic, but perhaps helpful for your Time Machine issue: TM maintains a library of backup images on the backed up volume, so it might not address an issue with a corrupted TM backup by starting with a new backup drive. You might try forcing TM to verify the existing backup. Control-click on the backup drive in System Settings/General/Time Machine and select "verify" from the popup menu. If it can't be verified you will have the option to delete and backup from scratch. Worth a try.

ericmurphysf wrote:

I've had similar problems with all four of my Macs (a Mac Studio with an M1 Ultra, a MacBook Pro with an M2 Max, an iMac Pro, and a 17-inch 2020 iMac with an 8-core Core i7). On all four systems, I noted sometime around when 15.1.1 came out that corespotlightd would frequently top the list of processes, using anything from 100% CPU all the way to 750%(!) of CPU (on the iMac), causing the fans to spin up on the Intel systems to annoying levels. Updating to 15.2 did not resolve the issue for me, and in fact may have worsened it.

I did notice that corespotlightd calmed down quite a bit simply by closing a large Pages doc (200+ MB), and even more reliably by simply closing Pages on systems where I wasn't actively editing documents (at least, documents that are synced to iCloud). Corespotlightd will still occasionally ramp up to 100+% of CPU, but it won't stay there indefinitely, and most of the time it will be under 50%.

But another more serious issue: I found that after I installed 15.1.1, I could no longer back up the Intel systems via Time Machine. If I tried, one or both situations would arise: (i) a Time Machine backup would be "preparing" for hours or even days; and (ii) attempting such backups would frequently lead to repeated kernel-panics. The only resolution for this latter issue I have found is to disable Time Machine backups entirely. Even starting a backup on a freshly-erased backup drive with no existing Time Machine backups would still lead to the same behavior vis à vis interminable "preparation" of backups and repeated kernel panics.

One thing occurred to me during all of this trouble-shooting: I believe that Time Machine relies on Spotlight to identify files which have been modified since the last backup. I think it may be there is some bug in corespotlightd that aside from consuming vast system resources, also leads to complete (albeit short-lived) system freezes where they don't cause a kernel panic, and also interferes with the proper operation of Time Machine.

Continued corespotlightd process CPU overload issues