~/Library/Metadata/SpotlightKnowledgeEvents using a lot of disk space

My SpotlightKnowledgeEvents folder was last updated on 19 Sep 2024, which coincides with the date I updated to MacOS Sequoia. I am running two Macs, one is Intel based and the other is M2 based. Both systems are configured nearly the same, same software, same mail accounts, etc.. The M2 based Mac moved the SpotlightKnowledgeEvents folder under the CoreSpotlight folder, while the intel base Mac has the SpotlightKnowledgeEvents folder (last update 19 Sep 24) in the same folder as the CoreSpotlight folder. There is a new SpotlightKnowledge folder under CoreSpotlight. I'm not sure what these changes are all about, but it is clear that the SpotlightKnowledgeEvents folder (directly under Metadata) was created by the previous OS and is no longer being updated, so I backed up and deleted this folder, which was taking up 47 GB for some reason. So far no issues.

What is your Sequoia version? Is it "15.2 (24C101)"?

My problematic folder is: "~/Library/Metadata/SpotlightKnowledgeEvents/index.V2/journals/11/cs_default"

Folder "SpotlightKnowledgeEvents" under "CoreSpotlight", has only 8KB, and has not "journals" folder under "index.V2"

I did some further experimenting today, given the SpotlightKnowledgeEvents folders on my two Intel Macs continue to grow at as much as 10 GB/day (which will exhaust the free space on these systems in roughly two months).

This morning I explicitly excluded the folder where my large Pages files reside in the filesystem (Spotlight seems to spend most of its time indexing large Pages files). But even after excluding this folder, I still see .journal files in the cs_priority folder that make repeated references to the specific file from this folder I have open in Pages. It seems that even explicitly excluding a folder from Spotlight search does not prevent Spotlight from continuing to write .journal files to the SpotlightKnowledgeEvents folder.

I have an open ticket (actually, two of them, along with another ticket with what I believe to be a related issue with Time Machine) on this issue, and one question I would like answered is if I can simply delete all of this metadata. So far no one at Apple has been able to give me an unambiguous answer to this question. It seems unreasonable, to put it mildly, that Spotlight would produce five to ten gigabytes of metadata files mainly concerned with a single 12 MB Pages file.

I upgraded to 15.3 last night, but everything seems to be the same. The "~/Library/Metadata/SpotlightKnowledgeEvents" folder keeps growing. A couple of days ago I deleted files older than two days, and I will continue to do the same as long as this continues.

I have a 2018 Intel Mac Mini running Sequoia 15.3 with the same problem - 137 GB of my 1 TB internal SSD is used by Spotlight - specifically

/Users/<my account>/Library/Metadata/SpotlightKnowledgeEvents/index.V2/journals

In that folder, I have 2 subfolders, 10 and 11, and each of those has two subfolders, cs_default and cs_priority:

Under 10, cs_default is 5 GB and cs_priority is 127 GB, and the files modification dates run from 10/9/24 to 11/20/24.

Under 11, cs_default is 117 GB and cs_priority is 14 GB, and the files modification dates run from 11/20/24 to now.

10/9/24 is when I installed 15.0.1 (from 14.7); 11/20/24 is when I installed 15.1.1.

So, I am thinking perhaps the 10 folder is obsolete and now longer used and can just be deleted, anyone have any ideas about this?

ericmurphysf wrote:

The advisor said that Apple okays this approach, with the caveat that you should delete these two folders' contents, not the folders themselves.

Which two folders did Apple say were OK to delete the contents of? Was it CoreSpotlight and SpotlightKnowledgeEvents, or was it cs_default and cs_priority? If the latter, it would mean 4 folders to delete.

Also, which folders are regrowing, is it all 4 folders in the 10 and 11 folders?

I'm also thinking if it will just repopulate everything fairly quickly, then necessitating another manual pruning, this cycle would also decrease the SSD lifespan. I am hoping this is a bug and will be fixed, although as it seems exacerbated on Intel it may be low priority. I am moving to AS soon, but don't want to bring over 100 GB of possibly unnecessary cruft with me (too lazy to do a clean install, I admit it).

I have the same issue on 2018 15-inch MacBook Pro, with ~/library/metadata/SpotlightKnowledgeEvents and ~/library/metadata/CoreSpotlight growing in size by the day to 36GB in a month's time since upgrading to Mac OS Sequoia 15.3.

I deleted both folders (not just the contents), and re-claimed the lost disk space and now will see if it accumulates data again. Both folders are automatically re-created upon restart.

I see that some sites recommend deleting the following hidden file as well:

/System/Volumes/Data/.Spotlight-V100

References:

https://iboysoft.com/tips/macos-sequoia-spotlight-bug.html

https://www.spyhunter.com/shm/fix-macos-sequoia-spotlight-issues/

https://www.macobserver.com/tips/how-to/spotlight-using-lot-of-disk-space-mac/

Question: Is deleting .Spotlight-V100 necessary as well? Anyone has experience with deleting .Spotlight-V100?

Question: Is deleting .Spotlight-V100 necessary as well? Anyone has experience with deleting .Spotlight-V100?

I have no idea why it would help in this situation, but I've deleted it many times, once on an external to solve a problem with searching that drive, and several other times in the startup drive in order to be able to recommend it as a possible solution to some other Spotlight problems. You can also remove it in Terminal:

sudo mdutil -X /
sudo mdutil -i on /
sudo mdutil -E /

The first may disable indexing, so the other two are to kickstart the indexing process.

dialabrain wrote:

Sorry, Just noticed you did say you tried Safe Mode. Personally, I wouldn't touch anything in those folders without knowing exactly what the consequences are. Which I don't.

I know exactly what the consequences of deleting the contents of these folders: zero. Other than better performance, much lower CPU load by Spotlight processes, and better search results. I've deleted these folders multiple times on two different Macs, and the only real downside is that for about fifteen or twenty minutes after I've deleted them, Spotlight search results are unavailable.

I recommend deleting these folders just before you won't be using the computer for half an hour or so.

esf2141 wrote:

Has anyone else had an apple tech confirm that it's okay to delete the folder?

Yes. I have done it multiple times over the past month and a half and doing so has resolved multiple problems.

I should point out that Apple's support says you should delete the folder's contents, not the folder itself, and that's what I have done. Other users have said they've been fine with deleting the folder itself, but I can't confirm that. To be on the safe side, just open the folder, select all of its contents, and then drag them to the trash.

Depending on your circumstances, the folder will eventually start growing in size again, but I've deleted its contents multiple times without any noticeable side effects.

I didn't get any confirmation from Apple support (because I didn't contact them), but I didn't find any problems after deleting the files. Also, before deleting the files, I made a copy of the files I was deleting just in case. I also asked for advice from friends who have been working with Macs for a long time and have a lot of experience. Their answer was simple - just delete it and don't worry 😅🤷‍♂️

Yesterday I installed Sequoia 15.4 (24E248) (Intel MAC), and in this version the folder /Users/xxxxxxxx/Library/Metadata/SpotlightKnowledgeEvents has disappeared.

The SpotlightKnowledgeEvents folder only exists within the CoreSpotlight folder.

I will follow it in case any of these folders grow in the same way as the old folder.

The problem is not the size of a file, but the number of files, and their total size, that are created in the "/Users/xxxxxxxx/Library/Metadata/SpotlightKnowledgeEvents/index.V2/journals/11/cs_default" folder (Intel).

I don't know if the problem can be reproduced in any other folder.

I will follow it

I will chime in.

I have a 2018 intel mini and an M2 MacBook air. The folders in issue have grown massively (as large as 60 GB on the intel, and I have deleted their contents a couple of times. Yesterday, I deleted the contents of SpotlightKnowledgeEvents and CoreSpotlight and updated to Sequoia 15.4. SpotlightKnowledgeEvents is now inside CoreSpotlight and has already grown to 9.11 GB. Almost all of it (9.1 GB) is inside .../SpotlightKnowledgeEvents/index.V2/journals. The subfolder number, previously 10 and then 11, is now 12.

On the M2, there has been no problem and I have never touched it - the entire corespotlight folder is 6.5 GB. Most notably, however, .../SpotlightKnowledgeEvents/index.V2/journals is only 12k on the M2.

So, it looks like there is work being done on this problem, and evidently some progress, but this accumulation of journal files appears to remain out of control.

Just took a closer look. As you can see, I have no "10" folder or "cs_default" folder. And all my cs.*** folders are empty. I'm guessing to can delete the "10" folder and empty the .cs folders.