Continued corespotlightd process CPU overload issues

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

Good to know Apple is working on liquid glass instead of widespread app ruining bugs

I'm not sure how many other people with this issue have seen degraded Spotlight results (including in Mail) as a result of corespotlightd's misbehavior, but I managed to at least temporarily resolve some of these issues by, on the advise (or at least consent) of Apple support, deleting the contents of the two folders, CoreSpotlight and SpotlightKnowledgeEvents, from ~/library/metadata/.

Note that I deleted the contents of these two folders, not the folders themselves. Also note that on Apple Silicon systems the SpotlightKnowledgeEvents folder is inside the CoreSpotlight folder. On Intel systems, it's at the root of ~/library metadata.

However, deleting the contents of these folders (on my system those contents comprised over half a terabyte of data) did not permanently resolve the issue. In barely twelve hours Spotlight added 22 GB of new metadata to these two folders. But I think until Apple resolves this issue (I doubt it will be in 15.3), simply deleting the contents of these folders when they get over a couple of hundred GB will definitely improve system performance, especially search.

Also note that in my experience these issues are less serious on Apple Silicon Macs. On my M2 Max MBP and my M1 Ultra Mac Studio, these folders are large but not enormous; 40 GB on the first system and 18GB on the second one.

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).

Unfortunately for me none of the notable "fixes" listed in this thread have worked much for me. Multiple system processes in general are out of wack with this update, which I feel are related, and the only actual thing that works in keeping my SSD at any level of "normal" is not having Pages open at all. My document isn't nearly as large as what has been listed here, mine is only 1.3MB; a couple hundred pages with zero images and some hyperlinks, and yet opening it, even if I don't do anything with it, will spike disk reads up to ridiculous levels and cause the CPU to rise high enough to make the fans kick. If I were to make any edits, even just a few letters, disk write will multiply several times over compared to the idle. Feel pretty defeated on this especially since without this issue I'd otherwise be loving my new Mac that I just spent thousands on, and especially since this feels like one of those things Apple will never acknowledge.

luzggg wrote:

Currently trying this out to fix that bug myself, and I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing. So I just want to make extra sure I got what you're saying. Now when you said deleting the metadata out of Corespotlight and SpotlightKnowledgeEvents, can I just delete everything inside those folders? Not working with Terminal here. Or keep the folders inside intact and just delete the lists and whatever is in there? Thanks!

When I spoke to Apple Support last week, the advisor suggested I delete the contents of the two folders (the entire contents, files and any subfolders; you don't need to go through each subfolder and laboriously delete its contents individually), but not the folders themselves. You don't need to do this from Terminal; you can just trash the files/subfolders from the Finder the way you would normally do it (just make sure you're in the User library, not the System library, which you can make visible on the "Go" menu in the Finder by holding down the Option key).

Other users have said they've been successful deleting the entire folders, contents and all, without ill effects. But having removed the folder contents themselves without deleting the actual folders, I've obtained satisfactory results all three times I've done it, on two different systems (twice on one of them).

Also note that the folder structure in the ~/library/metadata/ folder differs from Intel systems compared to Apple Silicon systems. On Intel systems, the CoreSpotlight/ folder and the SpotlightKnowledgeEvents/ folder are both at the root of the Metadata/ folder. On Apple Silicon systems, the SpotlightKnowledgeEvents/ folder is inside the CoreSpotlight folder. I have yet to try this fix on an Apple Silicon system since it hasn't been necessary for me, but it sounds like you can delete the entire contents of the CoreSpotlight/ folder without any problems.

Thank you for this. I tried it and things were actually looking promising. After 25 minutes though I decided to make an edit on my 1.3MB Pages document just to see if it would continue behaving, and unfortunately it did not. After about a minute CPU usage spiked greatly and the disk began writing immense amounts again. When the document wasn't touched at all however after opening, the system behaved (like 99% so). Definitely the most effective thing listed so far but unfortunately it still goes downhill after the first edit.

fronesis47 wrote:

Unfortunately, I think that apple's default to "sort by rank" means that many people are MISSING the most important discoveries in this thread.

For anyone unaware, you can actually go to your profile, click Edit Profile & Preferences, scroll down, and change the default sorting option.

I'm chiming in to document very similar issues and use-case scenarios. Lots of Pages docs open through iCloud storage (grad school student). I started noticing the slow down occurrences in the fast 2 weeks, with growing regularity. I've been running 15.3 for most of that time I believe. The effects show up across every app. The most drastic occurrences seem to be in my Notes app. I've got tons of notes, a few collaborative, some small, some large. I often get a slow down while typing in notes, and regularly have the app freeze on me and require a forced quit of the Notes. Pages has had those slow blips, but never a full freeze and force quit.

I've disabled Apple Intelligence, and switched off the option of sharing Spotlight data with Apple. It seems that has kept the identical "corespotlightd" process from overloading my system constantly, although I am watching Activity Monitor spike with "corespotlightd" over 100% once in a while.

Just got off a 30 minute phone call with Apple Support. Their engineer team is aware of the issue and have been since February 8th, 2025. The person I spoke to added my case to the engineer team's file on the issue. They are also now aware of this thread. The person I spoke to read everything posted here. The thread itself is also now attached to their file.

I think everyone reading this with the same issue should contact Apple Support so they can have as much information as possible to fix this, in addition to making sure this gets resolved soon enough. They asked me to provide screenshots during the online chat portion, and over the phone they requested me to turn off my VPN (it didn't do anything), turn off and back on iCloud optimization (it didn't do anything), and boot into safe mode (it didn't do anything). They also wanted me to reinstall macOS but I made it clear that wasn't going to happen, and also that in another thread people already tried that in relation to corespotlightd to mixed results.

To do exactly what I did, go to Apple's website. Click Support on the right side of the screen. Scroll down to the section that says "Get Support" (it's quite large with a black button stating "Start Now" and a Memoji underneath). Under "View your products" click "Choose a product". Select your Mac. Click More. Scroll down and click Storage. Click continue. It should give you an option for a call or a chat. I originally opened a chat and clarified immediately what my actual issue was. When she eventually asked me reinstall the OS, I made it clear that I didn't actually expect a fix for this over Support, I simply wanted to get this issue to reach the attention of the people at Apple that could actually get this patched. So she scheduled a phone call for me with her seniors for several hours later at my convenience. (I contacted Support at like 3AM, if you chat with them during normal waking hours you'll likely get a scheduled call much sooner I'm assuming.)

The person I spoke to wouldn't add my case to their file unless I tried booting in Safe Mode to see if the issue was still present, so be prepared for that, or potentially anything else disruptive for them to give your case validity. If you start with a chat that moves to the phone then also have your case number ready because the person on the phone won't have access to your chat log otherwise. The person I spoke to was fantastic so I wouldn't worry about dealing with typical poor customer service like you would from other companies. The call happened 5 minutes after the scheduled time and the chat representative showed up almost immediately.

roysch53 wrote:

Regarding the two large folders (NSFileProtectionCompleteUntilFirstUserAuthentication & Priority) under the ~Library/Metadata/CoreSpotlight folder; I don't have "Advanced Data Protection" turned on, so how is it that the NSFile... folders exist - is this part of Apple Intelligence? The NSFile... folders do not exist on my Intel iMac, only on the M2 laptop.

Has anybody removed (or renamed) these large directories, turned AI off and restarted - I just wondered if they get recreated.

Also, has Apple Support shed any light as yet?

The folder structure for Spotlight metadata under ~/library/metadata differs greatly between Intel and Apple Silicon systems. I have yet to delete metadata from either of the Apple Silicon systems I own, but based on postings by others, it sounds like it's safe to delete the entire CoreSpotlight/ folder. After you delete these folders, macOS will recreate them after five or ten minutes, and then they'll start to grow again. But so long as I don't leave Pages files open when I'm not editing them, they don't grow nearly as quickly.

As for Apple Support: I've been dealing with them on this issue for the better part of a month now, and while they've been helpful, the only concrete information they've been able to provide so far is that it is safe to delete the Spotlight metadata folders. I've done Capture Data sessions on an Intel Mac and an Apple Silicon Mac, and also sent them a detailed email describing my research and findings thus far. Unfortunately, the last senior advisor I spoke to, the weekend before last, was going on vacation for a week. I'll follow up with him tomorrow and see if he has anything to add, although what I'd really like to hear is that the Spotlight team is working on a fix to be added to a future system software update.

sugarskyline wrote:

The person I spoke to wouldn't add my case to their file unless I tried booting in Safe Mode to see if the issue was still present, so be prepared for that, or potentially anything else disruptive for them to give your case validity. If you start with a chat that moves to the phone then also have your case number ready because the person on the phone won't have access to your chat log otherwise. The person I spoke to was fantastic so I wouldn't worry about dealing with typical poor customer service like you would from other companies. The call happened 5 minutes after the scheduled time and the chat representative showed up almost immediately.

One of the first things I tried, after this issue escalated so severely on my iMac Pro that Time Machine ceased working entirely, was to reinstall macOS (since I know from past experience Apple Support will frequently recommend doing so and will be reluctant to proceed further until you've done so). Unsurprisingly that had no effect on the issue, but Apple Support at least were willing to progress once I've told them I already tried that. If anyone does get such a suggestion I'd recommend you refer the advisor to this very thread, where numerous posters have stated that doing so has no effect on the problem.

Also, given the complexity of this issue, I would recommend that as soon as you get a support advisor on the phone, you request the issue be immediately be escalated to a senior advisor. No offense to Apple support advisors (who are excellent by comparison to the rest of the industry), but this is not the kind of issue a level I tech, who is mainly helping people install printers or replacing application icons that have been inadvertently dragged out of the Dock, are likely to be able to advise on.

Given what posters on this thread have determined so far, it's almost impossible to believe restarting in Safe Mode would have an effect. Doing so generally just disables non-macOS processes, but since the culprits are almost certainly one or more of the various Spotlight-related processes which are core to macOS and would still run under Safe Mode, doing so would largely be a time-wasting exercise.

Also, creating a new user account and using that might eventually be able to reproduce the problem, but since it seems like the metadata folders need to grow to at least 50 GB or more in size to be problematic, one would likely need to create a new user account, and then create/open/edit one or more Pages files, and wait a week or more (although some people report metadata growth rates that might bring that down to just a few days) to try to reproduce the problem.

Honestly, at this point I think Apple's engineers need to focus on how Spotlight indexes Pages files, and possibly other types of data files. At least in my experience (which admittedly does not seem to be universal), the core of the problem appears to be that Spotlight indexing processes will repeatedly reindex entire Pages files over and over again, appending those results to existing metadata rather than overwriting that data.

As evidence of that, I will again point to my experience over this last weekend. I had deleted the metadata from my 27-inch iMac on January 28, at which point it was 597 GB. From the 28th until February 7th it grew from zero to about 62 GB, with no ill effects. But then after leaving a single 145 kB Pages file open (but not being edited) from Friday evening until Sunday evening on a system that was completely idle, the metadata folders ballooned to over 120 GB, nearly doubling in 48 hours.

By contrast, with no Pages files open, this system would add about two gigabytes of metadata over a weekend.