Continued corespotlightd process CPU overload issues

KWiPod wrote:

Since updating to MacOS Sequoia 15.4 (24E248) on Monday March 31st, all the spiking issues I described have stopped. Fingers crossed !

It's only been a few hours since I updated to 15.4, but so far the signs, at least on my Intel 27-inch iMac, are not encouraging. CoreSpotlightd isn't using much CPU time (7% on an 8-core system with hyperthreading turned on), but immediately after the update the (relocated) CoreSpotlight metadata was at around 2.6 GB (I'd deleted it all last night before the update to 15.4). It's now about two and a half hours later, and already metadata is up to 24.3 GB (with a large Pages file open). Before 15.4, after deleting metadata it would typically take closer to two days to get to 24 GB. If anything 15.4 seems to have worsened the problem of extremely rapid buildup of Spotlight metadata.

The next experiment will be to quit Pages for a while and see if metadata comes down in size. I've seen this many times on Apple Silicon systems, but the only way I've ever been able to reduce the size of Spotlight metadata on Intel systems is by manually deleting it.

ahernk1 wrote:

I totally disagree. There is a strong inverse correlation between the size of the metadata file and performance of the computer. Whether it is a cause or effect is unknown, but there is definitely a relationship.

It's possible there are a variety of things going on here, which manifest differently on different systems.

But at least on the 3 Macs in my household, I can say confidently that the out-of-control corespotlightd process is definitely not the cause of the large metadata folder. The only causality is the other way around: the metadata folder grows in size, and that is the (or a) root cause of corespotlightd running amok. I can say this because the corspotlightd process NEVER runs out of control when the metadata folder is under 25Gb.

This is also a very plausible hypothesis to work with: the larger that metadata database, the more work the corespotlightd process has to do.

Mitch Stone wrote

So my completely practical advice for those who want to get on with their work is to not assume you have a problem unless you have the problem. If you have the problem, then try the variously suggested solutions. Attacking this the other way around is not doing yourself any favors. Or to put this in a familiar way, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Again, I totally agree that there's no reason for individual end users to waste time solving this problem; users should do what they need to do to keep the corespotlightd process from going crazy.

However, something is broken here, and Apple should fix it.

I’ve had a few comments about other apps: in my experience, it is only Pages that causes the corespotlightd spike crisis. And It’s persistent and repeatable: 

• My Mac runs normally running all my other apps.

• I open a Pages document (even one isolated from Spotlight and that has been duplicated in the Finder) and corespotlightd spikes immediately.

• I quit Pages, and an after a time (seemingly dependent upon how long the Pages document was open), and corespotlightd calmes down . . . however, there is also a possibility (that's happened once since updating to 15.5) that quitting pages will not result in  corespotlightd calming down . . . and then the only way to calm down corespotlightd is to reinstall the OS.

I understand your frustration; this situation goes back at least to the earliest days of Sequoia, and there's anecdotal evidence that it might go all the way back to Ventura or earlier. But given the complexity of the issue, and the seemingly random nature of its symptoms and proposed fixes, I'm honestly not surprised Apple has been unable to resolve the issue. As my posts have noted, I have four Macs: two with Intel processors and two with Apple Silicon processors. In my experience the problem is much more pervasive and severe in the former.

I'm assuming you've read the posts on this thread, and have come across the proposed fix that seems to be reasonably successful: deleting CoreSpotlight metadata from the folder ~/library/metadata. I started removing this data on a regular basis more than six months ago, and almost immediately saw substantial performance gains on the various systems. Has that not been your experience?

Since I've kept Spotlight metadata below ~50 GB/system, I have not seen excessive CPU use by any of the various Spotlight-related processes: corespotlightd, mdworker, mds, etc. Nor I have I seen system freezes, unresponsiveness, or any similar symptoms. I've also seen improved performance in Spotlight search and even Time Machine.

Latest Update: major Improvements!

I’ve posted several times here about my progress following the instructions to delete the contents of the CoreSpotlight folder. I now keep the info screen for this folder open so I can easily track its size.

SINCE upgrading to the latest 15.5 recently I’m finding the folder to more easily reduce in size once Pages is closed. I have several large complex files that I am tentatively starting to use again. I do try to follow best practices described here - such as not editing older content but adding to the end. Saving frequently, etc. My current CoreSpotlight folder was created April 5, 2025. Most recently it was at 3GB prior to opening Pages. After leaving Pages open all day it was at 13GB. I closed Pages and the next morning it had returned to 5GB.

I recommend using the main strategy of emptying the CoreSpotlight folder when your performance declines and following best practices listed above and elsewhere in this article.

Thank you to those of you who have kept in touch and are working with APPLE 🍎.

For those frustrated and new to this thread I encourage you to follow both this post and the instructions. It really works! Let’s hope it gets permanently solved soon. 💕😁

Hello Fellow Frustrated Mac Users:

I had multiple calls with Apple Support with no resolution. As others have noted, the corespotlightd CPU overload can be triggered numerous ways. Currently, I have eliminated most of the triggers from my MacBook M4 16GB system, which included:

• • Mail App loaded with 300K messages trying to sync
  • WhatsApp indexing
  • iCloud Drive with 800+ GB of my 1 TB drive synced to it
  • Pages

I have found that when I reset my Mac to factory settings and then restore from Time Machine using a version from a couple days earlier, my system works perfectly for about 30 days. My last experience of corespotlightd CPU overload (300-400% usage) occurred a week ago and was specifically caused by my use of Pages (23.6 mb document). The cursor freezing would go away when I closed Pages doc, however I could still tell on Activity Monitor that my CPU load was still unhealthy (system % would idle at about 20%).

Once again, I reset my Mac to factory settings and then restored it from a Time Machine using a version from a few days earlier. I only have Apple apps installed on my MacBook. My machine is running perfect - System CPU % idle's at 2.36%.

If Apple is reading this, I do hope you've made this serious performance bug a priority to resolve in the next OS.

Privacy86

Can anyone here confirm whether or not they had 'Content Caching' enabled under sharing? I've uninstalled all iWork apps (Pages, Numbers) due to this resource usage issue, but disabling Content Caching seems to have helped further.

Also recommend disabling any large external drives from being indexed in spotlight. Hopefully MacOS 26 fully resolves this issue.

This is driving me positively nuts! I had to buy a new laptop because my MacBook Air wasn't powerful enough to run all the programs I need to use for my business that I'm in the start-up phase of. I use Apple Pages for writing reports. Big or small it doesn't seem to matter - this corespotlight issue is incredibly time consuming. I was hopeful that the new MacBook Air with 25g of ram (if I've got the terminology right, it's not as fresh in my mind as it was a few weeks ago) - but point is - after all the trouble I'd been having with overloading my air, I got the one that could handle the most and given it's the MacDaddy of all rams etc that have ever been seen on the face of technology - Apple exceeding the expectations of the user beyond compare - I was pretty confident all my report writing woes would go away.

WRONG.

Today I am here to share, not exactly a strategy to FIX the problem that you would think they could spare a penny for given the thousands of dollars we invest in the corporate giant (makes my blood boil when I feel ripped off and trapped since the alternatives have their own blood boilers) - ready to jump ship if there are any takers to up the Ante! But I've come across something that might at least help build a case. And since the time this is taking out of my day is fairly substantial, I am starting to think pulling my finger out and getting onto Support - the often painful process of getting onto Support (although, I don't mean to complain - this is one of the stand out reasons I stay with Apple - it truly is an awesome service, just not how I like to spend my hours or days) - might be worth a shot.

So I thought I'd start taking some screen shots when the pin wheel happens, while I'm using Pages to write my reports. I have Activity Monitor open on a dual screen, so I can capture it pretty quickly using the command+shift+3 keyboard shortcut.

Something 'kind of' interesting happened. You will see in the screenshot of the screenshots that in the space of almost an hour I've taken 15 screenshots.

• x3 of those you will see were taken only seconds apart.
• So - what that means is (I'll explain more in the next bullet) you can take that number off the 15 and make that 12 times in almost an hour - that's 5 times in one hour that I've been forced to stop my work - this could get expensive for Apple if I start adding up how much that's costing me when my hourly rate is nearly $200.00 per hour. Deadset - lifting the boycott on Microsoft Office is starting to look like a fair call (also some other gripes with Pages tables and not being able to change to landscape in a new section, but that's another story).
• Now, the reason for the x3 screenshots that are seconds apart is that I noticed what was happening is, when you take the screenshot, it momentarily switches the %CPU from the high use back down below 100 (usually around 93%, down from 170 - 180%), and by the time the system has collected itself and takes the screenshot the image that it captures isn't showing the high %.
• My paranoid mind almost went down the rabbit hole that they've rigged it so we can't provide evidence 🤣, but then I realised it must somehow reset it for a moment because if you monitor it immediately after it jumps back up and that's when you need to take your screenshot again and capture the high %

I figure, if I have a hefty collection like that over a few hours surely Support would look into it - what if we all tried it and swamped them?!!!

I'm interested to hear how anyone else goes with it. I'm not sure when I'll get around to calling them. It depends if I give in and buy a Microsoft subscription, or maybe Google Docs will do the trick for the time being. It'll all come down to what seems the best investment of my time because writing this post alone has taken long enough!

I concur.

In Finder I use Go to Folder and type in ~/Library/Metadata and delete the entire folder CoreSpotlight. No issues experienced and all the CoreSpotlight folder simply rebuilds, going from 14GB in size to 143MB.

This immediately resolves the frozen cursor / beach ball for days …. Until suddenly corespotlightd is back on top of the % CPU list in Activity Monitor.

Apple Support?

Thank you for this work around. My son placed the ~/library/metadata/Corespotlight folder in my Finder favourites bar so I now can easily find and empty it. It had got up to 54GB, and the consequent freezing was intensely irritating ! I do hope Apple can fix this issue.

I did not have quite the same problem.

In my case Spotlight (mds_stores) was writing up to 100 GB per day and apparently deleting it instantly as nothing ever appeared on my SSD and there were no unpleasant symptoms.

However, it was causing massive unnecessary writes so I selected all my drives in System Settings/Spotlight/Search Privacy and the writing has completely ceased. Presumably all other Spotlight activity has stopped.

Luckily I can live without Spotlight.

"A "clean" install of macOS. First of all, no such process really exists."

Agreed in principle. Apple does offer Disk Utility on its recovery tool to erase the entire data drive, or the entire hard drive, and use internet recovery to restore the OS that came with the Mac, or in recovery, the last installed OS. Simple recovery keeps a partition with just the necessary tools to install the OS.

Use macOS Recovery on an Intel-based Mac - Apple Support - command-option-shift-R for Intel Macs.

Use macOS Recovery on a Mac with Apple silicon - Apple Support (these are Macs that were new starting November 2020 and later)

Either will give you a closer approximation of whether or not the issue is due to the storage issues, or issues with the computer. The Apple Hardware Diagnostics if they find something wrong could indicate something is wrong with hardware.

On my M4, tried

while true; do killall -9 corespotlightd 2>/dev/null && sleep 0.5; done &

this seemed to get rid of the process if run for a few seconds. But then opendirectoryd comes up and consistently uses about 20% of cpu.