Continued corespotlightd process CPU overload issues

In my case the issue was related to Docker Desktop that I installed on my Intel-based MacBook Pro running Sequoia 15.7.1. I found more than 40GB of data in my ~/Library/Containers/com.docker.docker/Data folder. After uninstalling Docker App and clearing docker Data folder the issue with corespotlightd using a lot of CPU went away within few seconds.

I am not certain that I installed and used Docker Desktop correctly, therefore this is not a judgement on Docker Desktop (I find Docker very useful). Also, I uninstalled Docker Desktop and cleared the Data folder at the same time, so I am not sure if the issue was not related to Docker Daemon activity. However, inspecting ~/Library folders may help in troubleshooting the problem discussed in this thread.

I ran into something very similar. If reindexing Spotlight and force-quitting corespotlightd only help temporarily, the issue may be caused by a corrupted Spotlight index or an app that's constantly triggering Spotlight to reindex.

A few things that are worth trying:

• Boot into Safe Mode and let the Mac sit for 15–30 minutes. This can clear caches and sometimes allows Spotlight indexing to complete properly.
• Check System Settings > Siri & Spotlight and temporarily disable indexing for large folders like cloud storage (Dropbox, OneDrive, Google Drive) or external drives to see if one of them is causing the loop.
• If you use third-party antivirus, file sync, or disk utility software, try disabling it temporarily since these apps can repeatedly trigger Spotlight indexing.
• Open Console and filter for corespotlightd to see if it's repeatedly reporting errors for a specific file or folder. That can help identify the culprit.
• If the problem started immediately after updating to Sequoia 15.2 and none of the above helps, it may be an OS bug rather than a configuration issue. Installing the latest macOS update (if available) or the next point release may resolve it.

Since you're even seeing display flickering and a kernel panic, I'd also recommend capturing a sysdiagnose while the CPU usage is high and reporting it through Apple's Feedback Assistant. The more reports Apple receives, the more likely they'll prioritize a fix.

Hopefully Apple addresses this in an upcoming update because this definitely isn't normal behavior.

Mitch,

I think you could be onto something here. My brand-new, maxed-out Mac Mini was working perfectly, then after a kernel panic, reboot, and relaunch of all my open apps, corespotlightd started dominating the CPU and causing cursor and data input freezes. Pages.app has an iCloud-resident, password-protected file of text and images that I add to daily and that relaunched as a part of the system reboot. That file is currently 29.5 MB.

After reading your post I closed the large Pages file and after a few minutes corespotlightd dropped off the top of the CPU list in Activity Monitor. I did not delete any SpotlightResources.plist files. When I reopened the large file, corespotlightd again started climbing to the top and intermittent cursor freezes reoccured.

I quit Pages.app and corespotlightd disappeared as did the freezes. Now I've relaunched the app and reopened the large file,. All is well, no cursor freezes and corespotlightd is at 0% of CPU.

Looking at Console.app, I see this in one of the diagnostic reports (date and time concurrent with the freezing issue).

Command:          corespotlightd
Path:             /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/Metadata.framework/Versions/A/Support/corespotlightd
Codesigning ID:   com.apple.corespotlightd
Resource Coalition: "com.apple.corespotlightd"(849)
On Behalf Of:     445 samples Pages [971] (445 samples originated by Pages [971])
Architecture:     arm64e
Parent:           launchd [1]
PID:              4063

I don't know if any of that is relevant. I speculate (wildly) that spotlight might have been trying to index an open, yet password-protected large Pages file and that was causing the system-wide issues.

The file has been open for 30 minutes and there are no issues and corespotlightd is not showing up on the CPU list.

I hope this helps.

Mitch, I can reliably reproduce the bug by opening a large (34 MB) Pages file, adding some text then letting the application sleep (TOP command in Terminal confirmed). After several minutes, corespotlightd takes over the CPU resulting in stuttered data input and spaces swaps, and cursor freezes. After quitting Pages the issue resolves after a few minutes. If you're going to open a bug report, I'm happy to submit configuration data and log files.

I'm not sure how many other people with this issue have seen degraded Spotlight results (including in Mail) as a result of corespotlightd's misbehavior, but I managed to at least temporarily resolve some of these issues by, on the advise (or at least consent) of Apple support, deleting the contents of the two folders, CoreSpotlight and SpotlightKnowledgeEvents, from ~/library/metadata/.

Note that I deleted the contents of these two folders, not the folders themselves. Also note that on Apple Silicon systems the SpotlightKnowledgeEvents folder is inside the CoreSpotlight folder. On Intel systems, it's at the root of ~/library metadata.

However, deleting the contents of these folders (on my system those contents comprised over half a terabyte of data) did not permanently resolve the issue. In barely twelve hours Spotlight added 22 GB of new metadata to these two folders. But I think until Apple resolves this issue (I doubt it will be in 15.3), simply deleting the contents of these folders when they get over a couple of hundred GB will definitely improve system performance, especially search.

Also note that in my experience these issues are less serious on Apple Silicon Macs. On my M2 Max MBP and my M1 Ultra Mac Studio, these folders are large but not enormous; 40 GB on the first system and 18GB on the second one.

luzggg wrote:

Currently trying this out to fix that bug myself, and I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing. So I just want to make extra sure I got what you're saying. Now when you said deleting the metadata out of Corespotlight and SpotlightKnowledgeEvents, can I just delete everything inside those folders? Not working with Terminal here. Or keep the folders inside intact and just delete the lists and whatever is in there? Thanks!

When I spoke to Apple Support last week, the advisor suggested I delete the contents of the two folders (the entire contents, files and any subfolders; you don't need to go through each subfolder and laboriously delete its contents individually), but not the folders themselves. You don't need to do this from Terminal; you can just trash the files/subfolders from the Finder the way you would normally do it (just make sure you're in the User library, not the System library, which you can make visible on the "Go" menu in the Finder by holding down the Option key).

Other users have said they've been successful deleting the entire folders, contents and all, without ill effects. But having removed the folder contents themselves without deleting the actual folders, I've obtained satisfactory results all three times I've done it, on two different systems (twice on one of them).

Also note that the folder structure in the ~/library/metadata/ folder differs from Intel systems compared to Apple Silicon systems. On Intel systems, the CoreSpotlight/ folder and the SpotlightKnowledgeEvents/ folder are both at the root of the Metadata/ folder. On Apple Silicon systems, the SpotlightKnowledgeEvents/ folder is inside the CoreSpotlight folder. I have yet to try this fix on an Apple Silicon system since it hasn't been necessary for me, but it sounds like you can delete the entire contents of the CoreSpotlight/ folder without any problems.

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.

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.

Update: I agree the problem is primarily with Sequoia as I didn't have this at all until that update.

Since realizing the connection with Pages documents and the solution of emptying the ~/Library/Metadata/Corespotlight folder, I have only had to empty the folder twice. (about every 3 weeks of heavy use).

Key Points:

1. Turn OFF the Pages App when you are not using it. My Corespotlight folder WILL reduce in size when Pages is closed.
   1. Duplicate large/old Pages files in the finder and work with them. I've broken some documents into parts.
2. Empty the ~/Library/Metadata/Corespotlight folder when you notice slow down (on Activity Monitor or other).
3. Hope that Apple fixes the problem.

Thank you to those who gave safe solutions..

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.

I can confirm that this works for me (MacBook Pro M3 14", Nov. 2023 + Sequoia 15.5)

1) Work on local Pages documents (temporary folder in Downloads for example).

2) Copy from time to time to iCloud folder such as Documents.

After a couple of days the size of ~/Library/Metadata/CoreSpotlight folder went down from 50 Gb to 0.7 Gb (!!!)

I had similar problems and posted a while ago about sluggish programs and overload issues with an M4 iMac. Per instructions from Apple 'elevated' support, I deleted the entire large folders in ~/Library/Metadata/CoreSpotlight/. I found that they rebuilt later but were smaller. It was not necessary to go into the folders and delete their contents.

I had this exact issue, and Apple Support made me create a new account. The problem still persisted, and I took a look in Activity Monitor and found corespotlightd to be at more 100% CPU usage during the freezing sessions. I worked around this by going to System Settings -> Spotlight, and turning off all the checkboxes under Results from Apps, and Results from System. The repercussions of this action is that your spotlight search will be disabled, and you will have to look for files, apps, etc. in Finder. However, this has solved the freezing and the pinwheeling for me. The cause of this was from an extremely edited document in Apple Pages, and my theory is that the correspotlightd is indexing each version and minor edit of that Apple Pages document, thereby consuming a large amount of CPU.