Continued corespotlightd process CPU overload issues

In any event, thank you for testing v15.2 and for reporting back - much appreciated!

I meant v15.1 ! Sorry !

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.

I've had similar problems with all four of my Macs (a Mac Studio with an M1 Ultra, a MacBook Pro with an M2 Max, an iMac Pro, and a 17-inch 2020 iMac with an 8-core Core i7). On all four systems, I noted sometime around when 15.1.1 came out that corespotlightd would frequently top the list of processes, using anything from 100% CPU all the way to 750%(!) of CPU (on the iMac), causing the fans to spin up on the Intel systems to annoying levels. Updating to 15.2 did not resolve the issue for me, and in fact may have worsened it.

I did notice that corespotlightd calmed down quite a bit simply by closing a large Pages doc (200+ MB), and even more reliably by simply closing Pages on systems where I wasn't actively editing documents (at least, documents that are synced to iCloud). Corespotlightd will still occasionally ramp up to 100+% of CPU, but it won't stay there indefinitely, and most of the time it will be under 50%.

But another more serious issue: I found that after I installed 15.1.1, I could no longer back up the Intel systems via Time Machine. If I tried, one or both situations would arise: (i) a Time Machine backup would be "preparing" for hours or even days; and (ii) attempting such backups would frequently lead to repeated kernel-panics. The only resolution for this latter issue I have found is to disable Time Machine backups entirely. Even starting a backup on a freshly-erased backup drive with no existing Time Machine backups would still lead to the same behavior vis à vis interminable "preparation" of backups and repeated kernel panics.

One thing occurred to me during all of this trouble-shooting: I believe that Time Machine relies on Spotlight to identify files which have been modified since the last backup. I think it may be there is some bug in corespotlightd that aside from consuming vast system resources, also leads to complete (albeit short-lived) system freezes where they don't cause a kernel panic, and also interferes with the proper operation of Time Machine.

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).

fronesis47 wrote:

I have just now again deleted the entire corespotlight folder in (in the library folder) and the preferences file you mentioned, but I think I see the corespotlight folder already growing again. We'll see.

This has been my experience too. An hour or so after deleting the contents of these folders, I'll see a few GB of metadata accumulating already. And if I have a Pages file open, that growth will continue. Just a week after deleting all of this metadata (on a computer that had a particular Pages file open and being edited more or less continuously), the CoreSpotlight folders had already grown to over 100 GB.

In my experience, having a Pages file open on a system, at least a large one, but even if you're not actually editing it, seems to accelerate the accumulation of metadata. On one of my systems I had a ~14 MB Pages file open, and metadata seemed to accumulate at 10-20 GB per day. Closing that one file when I wasn't actively editing it greatly slowed down the accumulation of metadata.

As noted elsewhere, my hypothesis is that when you have a Pages file open (especially if you're editing it), the various Spotlight processes don't just reindex the changes; they re-index the entire file, and not by replacing existing metadata but by adding to it. In my case, the Pages files in question are synced via iCloud and are being edited on multiple Macs. It seems that if you close the file, then edit it on another computer, and then later re-open it, Spotlight reindexes the entire file, but only that one time (until you edit it some more). If you leave it open while you're editing it on another system, the same thing happens: Spotlight seems to reindex the entire file with every edit. This can add tens of gigabytes a day of metadata on a file that might only be a few megabytes in size.

Until Apple releases a fix for this issue (which may or may not ever happen), I think the best way to avoid rapid accumulations of metadata is to close Pages files when you're not actively editing them. Even having them open on another system and editing them there (if they're synced via iCloud) will still lead to vast quantities of metadata creation, as much at 20 GB a day.

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.

Unfortunately, I think that apple's default to "sort by rank" means that many people are MISSING the most important discoveries in this thread. The above WILL make things better, but only temporarily – it's treating the symptom, not the cause.

The cause of all this, as ericmurphy has laid out and a number of us have replicated, has to do with a problem with spotlight indexing of Pages files. Even if you clean everything out, as above, if you then open Pages files (especially larger ones) and keep them open, you can literally watch as the various mdworker processes write MASSIVE amounts of data into the core spotlight metadata folders. Depending on other aspects of your system, at some point that folder will get so big that the corespotlightd process will slow your Mac down.

• The temporary workaround is to regularly delete the metadata folders.
• The temporary and still very much less than ideal "fix" is to TURN OFF spotlight indexing.
• Any real solution here will require Apple to make some tweak to spotlight or Pages.

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).

I’ve been troubleshooting a recurring issue with corespotlightd (CPS) spiking CPU usage — often over 200% — when using Pages. It renders my otherwise fast, brand-new M4 MacBook Air nearly unusable.

I’m trying to determine if this is:

• Processor or Mac model specific

• Related specifically to iCloud Drive

1. Is CPS Processor or Mac-Specific?

I never experienced this issue on my MacBook Pro M1 Max, running Sequoia or earlier versions (Monterey, Ventura, Sonoma). Since March 13, 2025, I’ve used my M4 MacBook Air for all my daily writing in Pages — and this is where CPS began.

Has anyone else seen corespotlightd spikes on an M1 Max MacBook Pro? That would help rule out a hardware-specific trigger.

2. Is CPS iCloud Drive Dependent?

In my experience: yes.

Here’s what I did:

• My last major CPS spike occurred even after quitting Pages for over two days.

• I reinstalled Sequoia 15.5, and after file indexing completed, CPS calmed down.

• Before reopening Pages, I duplicated all my current Pages documents and placed them in a local folder:

Macintosh HD > Users > [MyName] > InProgressNoCloud

• iCloud Drive is still active, with Optimize Mac Storage ON.

For three days now:

• I’ve been editing these local Pages files, keeping them open alongside other apps like Mail, Messages, and large Numbers spreadsheets (still stored in iCloud).

• There have been no corespotlightd spikes.

• In fact, the corespotlightd process doesn’t appear at all in Activity Monitor when working outside of iCloud.

• In contrast, with Pages files stored in iCloud/Documents or iCloud/Desktop, corespotlightd is always active.

This suggests a strong link between Pages auto-saving to iCloud Drive and Spotlight re-indexing, which seems to trigger runaway CPS activity.

A Temporary Solution

So far, keeping active Pages files out of iCloud Drive and stored locally appears to solve the problem.

But this isn’t ideal:

• I rely on my 2TB iCloud Drive to sync and protect files — I don’t want to back up Pages manually.

• I prefer not to split screen space with Activity Monitor just to monitor CPU usage.

• Most importantly, I want confidence that my M4 MBA won’t grind to a halt mid-session due to runaway corespotlightd.

As a side note: I do use SuperDuper to back up my MBP (for Logic Pro files, which must be stored locally), but for documents, iCloud Drive has been excellent — until this. Another side note: I've had two other process spike issues and BOTH were triggered by Pages: mdworker in 2013 and AppleSpell in 2019.

Next Steps

I’ll continue testing my temporary solution and will update this post immediately if CPS returns.

What I meant was that the problems I experienced stopped. My problems were the beach ball spinning and programs momentarily stopping, then starting. That started me looking for the cause. My goal is always to have the computers run smoothly. If I keep using them and these two problem happen again, the culprit is always large folders in ~/Library/Metadata/CoreSpotlight/. After I delete the specific folders that are ~ 2 GB or larger, the beach ball spinning and momentary program stopping does not happen.

The folders so far continue to balloon. Another indicator of the issue if the amount of disk space used. This increases with the above problems and the CoreSpotlight folders increasing in size. This disk space issue is also solved by deleting the folders. The space used always drops after deleting the folders - no surprise.

I spent hours reloading the OS and speaking with several levels of Apple support up to their highest level. One tech from the highest level suggested deleting the largest folders in ~/Library/Metadata/CoreSpotlight/ and it was the only suggestion that worked.

My M1 MBA had this problem with the Sequoia upgrade but it isn't nearly as bad with Tahoe. I haven't had to delete folders after doing it once or twice. My M4 iMac folders still ballon.

I hope this answers your question.

This is what annoys me about Apple. What remaining updates to sequoia has left. They mainly focus on securities. We has users need to hammer them on fixing these high CPU issues. These macOSes are turning into Windows. I have problem with Backgroundshortcutrunner process. BTW you guys know about Onyx utility that cleans up Spotlight? It safely deletes indexes safely. You rebuild or delete the index.