Continued corespotlightd process CPU overload issues

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.

For those who have been following the entire thread, I have some new data. It doesn't solve anything, but I thought I'd share.

For me the problem was replicable on 3 different machines, with these CPUs: M2 Pro, M3, Intel i7.

A week ago I upgraded my Mac mini to an M4, and on this machine I cannot replicate the problem. I've had 3 large (for me) Pages documents open for the past 2 days, and during that time the corespotlight folder has gotten smaller. It's currently under 2 gigs. At one point while writing intensively for many hours, the folder got as large as 5 gigs. But then I left the machine alone for a few hours (with Pages documents left open) and the folder got smaller.

On my other machines I never recall the folder getting smaller if Pages docs were open.

I should add that I DID use migration assistant to set this machine up, so it seems less likely that the "fix" was avoiding a problematic setting or preference file.

The procedure for deleting the appropriate metadata can be found here: Continued corespotlightd process CPU over… - Apple Community. If that link doesn’t work, you’re looking for a post that ericmurphysf wrote Jan 28, 2025 9:46 AM in response to Mitch Stone.

This seems to be promising. Corespotlightd now at 0% while reindexing in progress .

1. Disable system integrity protection. Boot into recovery mode and access the terminal. Run csrutil disable
2. rm -rf ~/Library/Metadata/CoreSpotlight (the bloated files here contain the crux of the issue)
3. sudo mdutil -a -i off
4. Remove the spotlight index. rm -rf /System/Volumes/Data/.Spotlight*
5. sudo mdutil -a -i on
6. sudo mdutil -E
7. Follow step 1 but instead, run csrutil enable

AshkaTheMoltenFury wrote:

So in short: give the cleanup of the ~/Library/Caches folder a try. It might help and solve this high CPU usage of corespotlightd. Hope this helps anyone.

tl;dr — cleanup of the ~/Library/Caches folder did not work; trashing the contents of ~/Library/Metadata/CoreSpotlight and ~/Library/Metadata/CoreSpotlight/SpotlightKnowledgeEvents did work.

Folder/File Sizes Before "Fix"

• /System/Volumes/Data/.Spotlight-V100 at zero bytes
• ~/Library/Metadata/CoreSpotlight at 66.66 GB
• ~/Library/Metadata/CoreSpotlight/SpotlightKnowledgeEvents at 9.59 GB
• ~/Library/Caches at 1.9 GB

I do not believe “Optimize Storage” is turned on

Disk Writing:

• kernel_task had written 7.32 TB
• mds_stores had written 954.75 GB
• launchd had written 535.32 GB (https://www.technewstoday.com/mds-stores-on-mac-high-cpu-usage/ recommends disabling Spotlight—which is throwing the baby out with the bathwater in my opinion)
• backupd had written 82.42 GB
• corespotlightd had written 51.61 GB

"Fix" Attempts

Feb 11 6:18 PM — trashed ~/Library/Caches

• corespotlightd remained around ≥100 % CPU for 10 minutes
• No indication this did anything to improve my situation

Feb 11 6:28 PM — trashed the contents of ~/Library/Metadata/CoreSpotlight and ~/Library/Metadata/CoreSpotlight/SpotlightKnowledgeEvents which immediately resulted in:

• corespotlightd down to <25%
• Disk writing no longer happening constantly
• Every indication this has "fixed" my problems.

This was the 2nd time I've had to "fix" my sluggish, cursor freezing, beach-ball generating 2024 M4 Mac Mini running Sequoia 15.3. I put "fix" in quotes because this is only a temporary solution. The last time I had to implement this "fix" was 3 February, so it seems to last about a week for me. I was no longer keeping Pages documents open unless actively using them ; I think I'll go back to leaving my planner Pages document open like I used to and see how much it cuts down the time before my next "fix".

PS AshkaTheMoltenFury is an hilarious handle.

Two quick updates from me:

1. To everyone who has joined this thread late: the workaround (there is no solution) to this problem is NOT to make spotlight reindex, to turn off indexing, to turn off (or on) AI stuff, or to try to force the corespotlightd not to run. None of those things will work. The workaround is to delete the corespotlight folder in ~/Library/Metadata. When that folder is on the small side, the corespotlightd process does not cause problems.
2. I can now report back on my own experiment: I've got a script that runs every 2 or so days and automatically deletes the corespotlight folder. I've now been running for more than a week and (knock on wood) everything is fine. I never notice any issues deleting the folder, and by deleting it every couple of days it usually stays under 2 gigs in size (though I've seen it as high as 5 gigs). In my experience, the problems don't start until the folder gets north of 25 Gbs.

Was trying to solve this issue and happened to notice the setting below. Help Apple Improve Search in the Spotlight options.

I don't have any recollection of letting Apple improve search! Disabled. And found spotlightcored dropped to effectively zero CPU!

No idea if this will remain the case. But seems worth a go if it is selected on your machine.

Was trying to solve this issue and happened to notice the setting below. Help Apple Improve Search in the Spotlight options.

I don't have any recollection of letting Apple improve search! Disabled. And found spotlightcored dropped to effectively zero CPU!

No idea if this will remain the case. But seems worth a go if it is selected on your machine.

First - me too - started when I updated to Sequoia 15.2.

I'm on an M1 Mac mini. The problem started with pages - which I use extensively with very large docs. I have fiber internet, and consistently get 900+ kpbs up and down.

It began with lags on my mouse and keyboard - just in pages, and spread to all apple apps, and then all apps.

Force quitting corespotlightd and restart worked for a bit. Then it came back - quicker and quicker.

Tried deleting some, then all of the spotlight activities - which worked for a bit.

Additionally tried completely turning off Siri and Apple Intelligence.

It worked for about 30 minutes. And now it's back.

Has anyone found ANYTHING that actually works?

-- update - now this process has taken over the processing suck