User profile for user: Mitch Stone
Mitch Stone Author
User level: Level 2
223 points

Continued corespotlightd process CPU overload issues

I am wondering if anyone has discovered any new ideas for stopping the corespotlightd process from hogging the CPU. According to Activity Monitor, the corespotlightd process often occupies more than 100% of the CPU load, sometimes spiking as high as 400% on my M2 Ultra Mac Studio. This problem has become so severe that it often pinwheels under normally non-intensive tasks. It can cause the video to flicker on my Studio Display. In one case it caused my Mac to kernel panic (crash).


I encountered this bug only after installing Sequoia 15.2, but having researched this issue extensively, I find that Mac users have identified it since at least macOS Ventura. So here are some solutions we don't need to hear again:


Reindexing Spotlight by adding and removing volumes in Spotlight Privacy. This provides relief only temporarily. Within hours the process is again grinding the Mac to a halt.


Killing the corespotlightd in Activity Monitor. Again, this is at best only a temporary solution as the process will reinstate itself.


A "clean" install of macOS. First of all, no such process really exists. The OS recovery process simply reinstalls a new copy of the System files. Nobody reports this as a fix. An internal drive wipe and reformat, and restore from Time Machine is also unlikely to help, as it simply returns your Mac to its previous state. If the corespotlightd problem results from a corrupted file, the problem will likely simply be recreated in your reinstall. "Nuke and pave" might solve the problem if it caused by a format or directory issue on your startup volume. This does not seem to be the case, but if anyone has permanently cured the problem by this method, please report it.


What we do need to hear is from anyone who has spent time with Apple Support on this issue and been provided with solutions that actually work, or has new ideas about what causes it. Feels like we're on our own here, since Apple seems to be stumped.



Posted on Dec 19, 2024 11:21 AM

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User profile for user: fronesis47
fronesis47
User level: Level 2
173 points

Posted on Feb 9, 2025 10:26 AM

After the better part of another day thinking about and troubleshooting this issue, I am convinced that Eric Murphy's earlier hypothesis is correct. There's a bug in Sequoia, which anyone can replicate by following these 2 steps:

  1. Open a Pages file (and keep it open).
  2. Watch the size of this folder balloon: ~/Library/Metadata/Corespotlight


The larger that folder gets, the more likely it is that the corespotlightd process will start taking over the CPU and causing slowdowns for the Mac user. The corespotlightd process is what gets most people's attention, but it's only a symptom of the underlying problem whereby the spotlight processes (mdworker, etc.) write enormous amounts of data into the corespotlight subfolders.


The bigger the Pages file the quicker the folder grows in size; the more frequently one uses Pages, or leaves Pages files open, the worse the problem.


There is no fix until apple implements one, and the only viable workaround is to monitor the size of that folder and occasionally delete it.


One silver lining: it's not clear to me that there is any need to delete your spotlight index, to turn indexing off and on, etc. The problem stems from the size of that metadata folder, and you can alleviate the problem by deleting the folder. In my experience (having deleted the folder many dozen times), spotlight works just fine without rebooting, reindexing, or anything else.


I came up with my own way of dealing with this issue: I wrote a simple shell script that trashes the corespotlightfolder; then I added that as a service in launchd so that it can run regularly (maybe every 2 days).

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User profile for user: KWiPod
KWiPod
User level: Level 1
45 points

Mar 31, 2025 12:05 AM in response to fronesis47

I bought a new M4 MacBook Air [10c/24GB/1TB] Running MacOS 15.3.2] and did not use Migration Assistant. I did turn iCloud Drive on, but I did NOT turn on Desktop and Documents Folders. So I have no data on my SSD, just the OS. I opened large Pages (475 kB) and Numbers (35MB) files from my iCloud Drive that I update through the day and so they are open most of the time. In activity monitor, I noticed that Pages was spiking up to 50 to 70 % when running in the background (whereas the large Numbers file was at 0.4%). Next, I noticed the OS was laggy when command tabbing between apps and saw that corespotlightd and/or kernal_task were sitting at > 200%! (As I type this, corespotlightd is at 126.7%). I reported all issues via Apple's Feedback page. I have also had Numbers doing SBBoD and/or crashing and Apple News has crashed several times too. This behaviour is persistent since I set the Mac up on March 13th 2025.



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User profile for user: LAWM0N
LAWM0N
User level: Level 1
14 points

Apr 1, 2025 6:43 PM in response to Mitch Stone

I have experienced CPU Overload since year end. Grateful for this support thread. I have to move 20-25 GB to Trash from two Metadata folders EVERY DAY! Otherwise overload issues slow computer immensely and geometrically.


While I remain grateful for this bandage method, I want permanent fix. Apple Support had me delete hard drive at year-end, because they could not figure out problem (they should have seen this thread!). I'm still suffering from that unnecessary action.


We've had one Sequoia update since then, but NO improvement to CPU Overload issue. I want to hear status report FROM APPLE! This seems clearly to be software error and will need software fix. The seasons are passing. Time's up! Apple needs to fix this or upgrade my CPU to Apple Silicon, which seems immune to this problem


iMac > 3.8 GHz 8-Core Intel i7 > Sequoia 15.3.2 (24D81)

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User profile for user: PolyRod
PolyRod
User level: Level 1
26 points

Apr 3, 2025 6:29 AM in response to KWiPod

My M4 mini has been behaving perfectly since Sequoia 15.4. When I first got it, it was extremely fast for my purposes (mostly Pages and web) - and it got slower and slower. I am very pleased it is back to how it should have been all the way through.


My M1 MBP had never been as bad - and it too seems to be altogether somewhat faster.


Hoping this continues to be the case - and it fixes the issues for everyone else.

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User profile for user: ericmurphysf
ericmurphysf
User level: Level 2
214 points

Apr 3, 2025 10:55 AM in response to KWiPod

KWiPod wrote:

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

It's only been a few hours since I updated to 15.4, but so far the signs, at least on my Intel 27-inch iMac, are not encouraging. CoreSpotlightd isn't using much CPU time (7% on an 8-core system with hyperthreading turned on), but immediately after the update the (relocated) CoreSpotlight metadata was at around 2.6 GB (I'd deleted it all last night before the update to 15.4). It's now about two and a half hours later, and already metadata is up to 24.3 GB (with a large Pages file open). Before 15.4, after deleting metadata it would typically take closer to two days to get to 24 GB. If anything 15.4 seems to have worsened the problem of extremely rapid buildup of Spotlight metadata.


The next experiment will be to quit Pages for a while and see if metadata comes down in size. I've seen this many times on Apple Silicon systems, but the only way I've ever been able to reduce the size of Spotlight metadata on Intel systems is by manually deleting it.

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User profile for user: PolyRod
PolyRod
User level: Level 1
26 points

Apr 7, 2025 1:34 AM in response to PolyRod

Still generally good.


Pages has fallen over a few times.


One document was interesting - I had the ToC visible and, when I made changes to the text, I could see the consequent ToC changes rippling through for some time, maybe half a minute or more. I wonder if propagation of changes to ToC, in order, was one of the things that has been fixed?

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Continued corespotlightd process CPU overload issues

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