mds_stores spiking CPU every 30 seconds

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mds_stores spiking CPU every 30 seconds

Starting part way through today, apropos of nothing I can discern, mds_stores started spiking my CPU every 30 seconds, and it seems to be rapidly draining my battery:

I've tried killing the process, rebooting, booting in Safe Mode (mds_stores doesn't even run), booting in another user (problem doesn't occur), restarting with Login Items all removed, and updating to from macOS 12.4 to macOS 12.5. Nothing fixes the problem in my primary user.

And when I reboot, mds_stores eats even more CPU for the first 5 minutes or so. Every. Single. Time.

I can't for the life of me figure out what's causing it.

Desperately seeking ideas.

Posted on Jul 30, 2022 11:01 PM

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Answer 1

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100 Watt Walrus Author

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74 points

Aug 10, 2022 2:26 AM in response to 100 Watt Walrus

So, here's what was ultimately going on:

After realizing if mds_stores is spiking every 20 seconds, there must be a bunch of files being updated every 20 seconds, so I used Find Any File to search for files updated within the last minute, and found all the contacts mentioned above. Turns out it was just one of my Google accounts after all — which was somehow causing AddressBookSourceSync to read every contact in my computer as having been updated three times every minute. That, in turn, was causing mds_stores to re-index all those contacts every 20 seconds.

Disconnected that account from Contacts, problem solved.

At some point I may delete the account from my computer then hook it back up again, but I also moved the 20 or so contacts from that account into On My Mac, so it's not a priority.

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Answer 2

Aug 7, 2022 5:20 PM in response to PRP_53

I thought it might be a problem with Google sync too, but upon closer examination...

Library > Application Support > AddressBook > Metadata contains 586 .abcdp cards, all of which are being updated 3x per minute (and about 20 of them are groups, not individual cards)
Across all 3 of my Google accounts, there are only 174 — and almost all of those are duplicates (more on that below*)
There are a total of 651 cards in Contacts (no idea why 65 of them seem to be immune)
...and I don't sync my Mac contacts to iCloud

So what is AddressBookSourceSync doing every 20 seconds that re-writes 586 cards — when 412 of them aren't synced anywhere at all?

This sheds some light on another problem I've been having for a long time: In Contacts, *when I merge duplicate cards, they never stay merged. Now I know why.

Not sure what the best course of action is now. Export my entire address book, unsync the accounts, wipe out the data, then import all the cards again?

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Answer 3

Jul 31, 2022 1:09 AM in response to 100 Watt Walrus

mds_stores are Spotlight activities. Usually they calm down after everything is scanned. But sometimes it might get stuck in a loop and it might be necessary to temporarily turn of Spotlight off and then make a fresh start. I sometimes turn Spotlight off for selected external slow backup HDDs but there are Terminal commands for more options.

https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/162227/how-to-isolate-processes-that-evoke-insane-mds-stores-disk-read-activity

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Answer 4

Jul 31, 2022 4:16 PM in response to Matti Haveri

Lots of good options there. That's the kind of thing I was looking for, but Google failed me, and I came here. So thanks!

I've turned off spotlight for today (have a lot of work to make up for since I went down this rabbit hole yesterday), but will go through the options on that StackExchange thread tomorrow, and post back with results.

Thanks!

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Answer 5

Aug 7, 2022 1:29 AM in response to 100 Watt Walrus

Tried 100 things, nothing helped. Even after 2 hours on the phone with Apple, they had nothing more than "reinstall the OS."

But tonight I realized that AddressBookSourceSync always precedes mds_stores for a few seconds at the top of CPU list. I added ~/Library/Application Support/AddressBook to Spotlight > Privacy, and BINGO. mds_stores never again rose to the top.

So now I have to figure out WTF is going on with Contacts. It looks like it's syncing with Google 3x per minute, and seems to think there's new data there every time (tons of Contacts metadata is less than a minute old all the time), and therefore "updates" all those cards, which then have to get updated for Spotlight.

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