Continued corespotlightd process CPU overload issues

I agree with Mitch Stone. I have experienced the corespotlightd overload on my Mac mini M4 OS 15.5. However, as long as I turn off Pages when I’m not using it, especially when working on a very long document, and the Mail.app as well, I’ve seen the Core Spotlight folder diminish from 30 GB to as low as 4 GB. It tends to grow again but never beyond 30 GB, at least so far. I have not turned off Apple Intelligence. Along with Mitch, I would not mess around any more with deleting Core Spotlight files and the like. My Mac runs smoothly and no longer overheats as long as I follow these precautions.

Thanks so much for your work on this. My M2 Air has been heating up to a thousand degrees and pinwheeling for the last couple weeks (around when I installed a Sequoia update), and I was so confused because all that I was running was Pages (or occasionally Safari with a tab or two). But your explanation makes a lot of sense, since I constantly have several Pages docs open at a time for long periods of time. I checked that folder and sure enough: 102GB. I’m glad I finally thought to check the Activity Monitor which lead me here. Hopefully deleting the folder actually alleviates the issues.

Also, do you mind sharing the script you wrote? (In case this becomes a recurring need.)

It’s been a week since my last post (about corespotlightd spiking with Pages v14.4 documents open) on my M4 MacBook Air (Sequoia 15.5), and my temporary solution.

That temporary solution - opening all Pages documents from local (not iCloud) folders - continues to work successfully after more than a week: that is, corespotlightd has NOT spiked at all.

I can add some more colour:  with Activity Monitor open (with the corespotlightd process permanently tracked):

working on my numerous, (very large) local Pages documents, corespotlightd is inactive (i.e. 0%.);

if I then open very large Numbers files that ARE located in iCloud (iCloud/Documents), the corespotlightd process begins but does not spike. If I leave these Numbers documents in iCloud open in the background, corespotlightd ticks over at 0.2%.

So for me, on my M4 MacBookAir (Sequoia 15.5, Pages 14.4)  I have a repeatable, persistent, demonstrable bug:

Pages documents located in iCloud/Documents: starts the corespotlightd process which then spikes @ >100% (and only a Sequoia reinstall stops the process);

Pages documents located in local SSD: corespotlightd = 0%

More colour: As I have mentioned previously, Pages has form in process spiking: mdworker in 2013 and AppleSpell in 2019.

If others on this thread experience corespotlightd spiking under different circumstances, there may be more than one issue . . . but as I say, my particular issue is repeatable, demonstrable and [at least after one week] avoidable through a [hopefully] temporary workaround.

I hope Apple is working on this issue. (Pages was last updated to 14.4 on April 3, 2025.)

I agree - think that there is indeed an iCloud link.

In particular, I have more recently been much more careful about making sure I do not have the same documents open on both my macOS machines.

That, combined with changes I suspect fed through in updates in the past few months, has improved my actual experience. I can work on my machines without beachballs appearing repeatedly.

Nonetheless, I think the CoreSpotlight folder has grown excessively. Over 44 GB for 3646 items in my M4 mini. And about half that for twice as many document on my M1 MBP.

A pain because I keep jumping between machines - one upstairs, one downstairs. For no positive reason - I tend to just use whichever is closest when I decide to do something. But this means I have to think about things and make sure I close Pages and Numbers when I stop actively working. Otherwise I likely start again on the other machine...

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.

Does it make any difference whether the file, despite being in an iCloud folder, is In iCloud or Keep Downloaded?

And, for that matter, which state it is in on other machines if it is used on more than one device.

I am sick of this corespotlightd problem. I spent $5,349.00 for this new MacBook Pro. I have contacted Apple support numerous times, shared my screen and let them see the CPU issue. All they have told me to do is when the corespotlightd takes up that much CPU, click quit. That is all I do now repeatedly. So, I am going back to using MS Office instead which is not my first choice. A lot of Mac users are now doing the same thing. You spend this much money and they won't fix the problem. My daughter had an Apple Air and needed to upgrade. She bought an HP Envy instead. Apple is going to lose business from loyal customers if this is not fixed quickly. My friends who are Apple, have started using MS Office as well. I told my wife, my next purchase will be Dell if Apple does not fix this quickly. It seems this billion dollar company really does not care for its loyal customers.

Thank you Eric. I have gone to that and there is no folder listed as metadata. Am I looking in the wrong place? If I am, I would appreciate you telling me how to find this. I have gone to Settings, clicked Spotlight, Privacy and told it to rebuild, and have not have major success with that. I did this when an Apple Support person told me to this. Any help is greatly appreciated.

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. 💕😁

I agree. In my recent contributions, I have keet things simple and focussed on the temporary solution that works for me when using Pages on my M4 MacBook Air (with MacOS Sonoma 15.5, Pages 14.4) in the hope that it may work for others. 

However, yes, there are complications. At my end are: 

1. I never had the issue on my M1Max MacBook Pro (now dedicated to audio). 

2. When I have been working on a Pages document that is stored on my SSD, I have had the following error message when attempting to save changes: 

The document “” is on a volume that does not support permanent storage.”

The message is concerning because, of course, the whole point of the SSD is to be permeant storage.  I’ve had this message several times including just now.

3. A few weeks ago, apropos of nothing, iCloud Drive ‘Desktop & Document Folders’ just turned itself off. 

The resulting chaos led me to erase the internal drive and reinstall Sonoma on my MBA as a new device because otherwise, my MBA could see iCloud, but not the contents of the Documents folder, despite these contents being visible on my MBP, iPhone and iCloud.com.

Are these issues relevant ? I don't know, but now they are out there!

I'm SO hoping to see an update to Pages that lists this issue in the update description ! 

Last week, I called Apple Support and described the corespotlightd issue on my 4-months-old M4 MacBook Air [MacOS 15.5]. An appointment was made with the Genius Bar at my local Apple Store.

At this appointment, I explained our Pages [v14.4] corespotlightd issue to a lovely chap and we ran the hardware check which passed, ruling out my machine. I showed the Genius this forum, and he arranged for next-level-up Apple Support to call me the next day.

On that call, I shared my screen and showed the (also lovely) support chap this forum. After creating a New User (to rule out a user-specific problem), I opened Activity Monitor, highlighted corespotlightd, created a Pages document and saved it to iCloud. After a few edits, corespotlightd spiked. 

The support chap then consulted and I was put on to a new (equally lovely, even higher-up) support chap to whom I showed this forum. He wanted me to duplicate the problem whilst screen recording. Unfortunately, I was unable to duplicate the spiking so the he sent me an email that allows me to send him a screen recording of the issue, should I be able to get it to happen.

I have been trying each day to capture the problem, but have, so far, failed. I will keep trying every day.

So we know that several individuals in Apple’s support hierarchy are at least  aware our corespotlightd spiking issue. How high in that hierarchy, I cannot say.

Perhaps, if a few more of us follow the Apple Support approach, we may be able to get this issue acknowledged and then solved.

I had similar problems and posted a while ago about sluggish programs and overload issues with an M4 iMac. Per instructions from Apple 'elevated' support, I deleted the entire large folders in ~/Library/Metadata/CoreSpotlight/. I found that they rebuilt later but were smaller. It was not necessary to go into the folders and delete their contents.

[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.

I deleted the large folders only in ~/Library/Metadata/CoreSpotlight/. I sorted the folders by size and any folder that has grown in GBs from a previous check gets deleted. My problem happens soon after an update on my M4 iMac. Another indication of the problem is that my GB of used space (System Settings/General/Storage) jumps from what I know to be the used space for me of around 60 GB of space used. I keep an eye on the used space on a regular basis and keep pictures to a minimum.

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.