Continued corespotlightd process CPU overload issues

I believe I can now safely report that the issue is generically related to how Spotlight handles large Pages documents. I Finder duplicated the shared collaborated document in iCloud, and with collaboration off, roughly 10 minutes after opening the process begins to hog the CPU. Moving the document to a local volume, same results. The problem does resolve much more quickly, and seems less severe with the deletion of the Spotlight plist, so it is definitely worth trying, but obviously this is only part of the issue.

The variety of ways this bug can be triggered is a curiosity, and I'd think for Apple's troubleshooters, provides clues. I can reliably trigger it on my Mac by opening a large Pages file, but it crops up randomly too. I've read elsewhere that Spotlight indexing is triggered after each Time Machine backup session. My Mac had to be restarted this morning due to an overnight power failure, and right off the bat the corespotlightd process ran amok. A Time Machine backup was also initiated on restart. A few minutes after Time Machine was done, the process dropped into the background. So, perhaps something to this.

And those of us who now watch Activity Monitor like others watch Netflix have noticed from the graph that when this process goes nuts it can get into a beat, spiking about every five seconds. This can go on for quite a while before it gives up on whatever it is trying to do and settles down. Another clue, perhaps?

MgS_2012 wrote:

So … a couple of updates:

1). Talked to Apple Support yesterday. They took lots of notes, and have passed the issue on to MacOS engineering.

2). It’s been 3 days since I turned off Apple Intelligence on my iMac, and it has returned to normal operation - it took about 24 hours for things to settle down (I was seeing spikes in corespotlightd, but it would come down off them). Since then it’s been behaving itself.

3). Regarding the system CPU usage spikes, I was seeing some spikes of processes like kernel_task when things got into a really hairy state. I suspect this is related to resource allocation issues where corespotlightd may have been demanding exclusive access to particular resources and then getting into the weeds. (This would also explain the escalating stuck process count in top, now that I think about it).

This was a no-go for me, I'm afraid. Several hours after turning off AI, I opened the triggering Pages document and within 15 minutes or so was right back in beachball city.

Rollwagen wrote:

I checked Activity Monitor on my M2 MBA 8 hours after turning off Apple Intelligence and the CPU usage for corespotlightd was 0.0% !

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

Good to hear this update helped you, but I am running 15.2 on all of my Macs (3) and still have the issue on one of them.

SBML wrote:

After installing macOS 15.2 earlier today, I cannot reproduce the issue. Apart from a single Google Chrome Helper (Renderer) process massively hogging the CPU (which did not return after a force-quit), I've gone from having 27 stuck processes with corespotlightd hogging the CPU to zero stuck processes and corespotlightd very occasionally flashing up in the top-5 of the usage list then vanishing again. No more spinning beachballs. No data entry issues. Time Machine drive reconnected and working. Fingers crossed this has fixed the issue.

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.