mds_stores using 600% resources

Hi jasonflying,

Thanks for the clarification. So you're talking about a process in Activity Monitor.

The "mds_stores" process would be from Spotlight. Spotlight is the name of the search function on Mac (the magnifying glass on the right side of the menu bar at the top of the screen.

If this process is using a large amount of the CPU, you'll want to reindex Spotlight with these steps: Rebuild the Spotlight index on your Mac

Take care!

This just happened to me with Monterey update. Besides the other solutions, SMC, NVRAM; I disabled Spotlight from searching my mac drive. That helped, but then I did the same for a usb drive and Icloud that I always have connected, and then the mds_stores process went to 0.0 cpu and the fans finally stopped. You can try that if you don't want to rebuild your Spotlight index.

System Preferences > Spotlight > Privacy > +

(If it doesn't allow you to add the locations the first time, exit and try again. You may need Admin access)

Hi jasonflying,

We understand your computer is running slow, it's hot to the touch and the fan is running at full speed. We're happy to offer some guidance.

You'll first want to try doing a system "SMC" reset on the computer with these steps: How to reset the SMC of your Mac

If that doesn't help, you can try doing a NVRAM reset with these steps: Reset NVRAM or PRAM on your Mac

If it's still not working properly, you'll want to try reinstalling the software on it: How to reinstall macOS

If the computer is still slow, hot, and has a high fan speed we'd recommend contacting Apple for assistance: Get Support

Hope this helps. Cheers!

Mine is running mds_stores every half an hour and consuming most of my CPU. I asked for help by phone but none was given. I personally think that this is a Monterey issue because I downgraded to Big Sur last month and everything went well. Later I had to update it to Monterey because of job, and it came back. Hopefully apple engineers could notice this issue.

Hi jasonflying,

Thanks for the follow up post. We'd recommend providing some more specific details for a better understanding by the community. What is "mds_stores"? Is this some sort of message you're seeing on your computer? If so, where is it appearing? Is it showing in a certain application for example?

Cheers!

I'm having a similar problem on my MacBook Pro 16,1 (Intel). Now, where I diverge from the recommended action is this has manifested before. However, as 12.2.1 is an iterative release, I'd like to understand how this problem could manifest again, and how can this be better mitigated?

Thanks for sharing this. I also have Microsoft office suite installed on my Mac. So have you ever tried to uninstall it?

Another developer of iOS apps says they have witnessed memory management issues introduced with Monterey -- they are still attempting to track it down. Just something else to consider.