Continued corespotlightd process CPU overload issues

Update: Slow upload data speeds appear to be causing lags/spinning wheels while working in my larger Pages documents on iCloud. I often work at remote locations using a VPN. I have no control over the upload speeds on these remote Wifi connections (community college Wifi, coffee shops, etc). So, I moved my large Pages files off iCloud drive to my computer drive. Since moving the files, I have not encountered any issues high CPU usage, lags, or spinning wheels while working on those documents. Emboldened, I turned on Apple Intelligence and so far, everything is working perfectly. No processes are hogging the CPU and there are no delays/spinning wheels while working within any app, including Pages.

ericmurphysf wrote:

I definitely don't know, but I think it's safe to assume that this folder (or these folders) definitely should not be more than a hundred GB.

Agreed. All of MacOS only takes up around 23Gb of space. This metadata folder simply shouldn't grow to more than a few Gbs.

I also think it's relevant that there seems to be, on my system, NO DOWNSIDE to deleting the metadata folder. Spotlight works just as well, maybe better than before. (And note that I am NOT reindexing, toggling the indexing status, or doing anything at all with spotlight – just deleting this folder.)

Mitch wrote:

My issues with this process hogging the CPU seem ridiculously random.

But have you ever had the corespotlightd CPU problem when the metadata folder was fewer than 10Gbs in size?

I can attest that I have not. Corespotlightd processes only become a problem for me when the metadata folder grows to around 30Gb or so. Before that, it's fine.

CaptainJoy wrote:

Feb 11 6:28 PM — trashed the contents• of ~/Library/Metadata/CoreSpotlight and ~/Library/Metadata/CoreSpotlight/SpotlightKnowledgeEvents which immediately resulted in:

corespotlightd down to <25%

• Disk writing no longer happening constantly

• Every indication this has "fixed" my problems.

This was the 2nd time I've had to "fix" my sluggish, cursor freezing, beach-ball generating 2024 M4 Mac Mini running Sequoia 15.3. I put "fix" in quotes because this is only a temporary solution. The last time I had to implement this "fix" was 3 February, so it seems to last about a week for me. I was no longer keeping Pages documents open unless actively using them ; I think I'll go back to leaving my planner Pages document open like I used to and see how much it cuts down the time before my next "fix".

PS AshkaTheMoltenFury is an hilarious handle.

I'm not certain how significant this is, but I have yet to need to remove the above-referenced folders on either of the two Apple Silicon systems I own: a M1 Ultra Mac Studio or an M2 Max MBP. Neither system's Spotlight metadata folders have ever exceeded 50 GB, and I have not seen serious performance degradations* on either one.

But I've had to remove Spotlight metadata twice each from my two Intel systems, a 27-inch iMac and an iMac Pro. I deleted this data once on each system when it had more than 500 GB of metadata in these folders, and then once again on both systems when metadata exceeded 100 GB a week or so later.

In all four cases, I saw immediate performance improvements, especially in Spotlight searches (which had been essentially inoperative once metadata exceeded about 250 GB), and Time Machine backups never starting let alone completing. And so far literally no downsides whatsoever to removing this data.

_______________________________

• I did for a short time see issues on the Mac Studio with 10-30-second freezes, especially during video playback, one or two of what looked like kernel panics (the system simply shut down entirely the first time, and then shut down and restarted the second time), along with some oddities with Time Machine. Either coincidentally or not, once I removed the excess metadata from the two Intel machines, these problems seemed to resolve on the Mac Studio via unknown and unguessable mechanisms. I should probably note that all four of these systems are under the same iCloud account.

Absolutely happening to me-- corespotlightd spilking CPU and system glitching

on brand-new MacBook Pro Apple M4 Pro running 15.3.1

started about 4 weeks after I migrated over. all problem solving failed. reset to factory settings- and no migration. same issue presented. brought back to apple- they did firmware reinstall and set back to factory settings. can now confirm this continues to happen when and only when I am running pages- generally my pages docs are re-edit of forms with numerous past editions. I quit pages and glitching and CPU spikes go away

ScottRichardson wrote:

I just experienced this issue and my ~/Library/Metadata/Corespotlight was 50GB when I first looked, and within an hour it was 60GB in size! I just deleted that, and my caches folder and it appears to have fixed the issue. Thanks for the wonderful folk in here who identified a way to fix it for now.

One thing I've noticed (and the actual figure may differ depending on your system architecture, memory, storage space, etc.) is that once Spotlight metadata gets to a certain size, its growth begins to snowball. On my system, and seemingly on yours, that size is ~50 GB. It might take one of my Intel systems eight or nine days from when I delete all the metadata until it gets to 50 GB, but from there it's rarely more than a few hours before it gets to 60.

I may have some good news regarding the corespotlightd issue. In Sequoia I had pretty much the same overload issue with corespotlightd that most of you have reported. To resolve it I moved the long Pages document that seemed to be causing the problem from iCloud to my home folder. That cleared up the problem for me.

I recently updated to Tahoe 26. Apple has made a number of important changes to the Spotlight.app. I was curious to see if the overload problem had been addressed. I moved the long pages document back to iCloud. The CoreSpotlight folder increased from about 1.5 GB to about 3.0 GB over a period of 8 hours or so and the Activity Monitor showed corespotlightd working under 10%. My Mac mini M4 remains cool to the touch. I'll report again in a day a two if anything changes, but for the moment I'm much encouraged.

I think it's worse on Tahoe 26.2. I left an iCloud Drive document open in Pages for 1 day and the ~/Library/Metadata/CoreSpotlight/ folder grew from 2GB to 46GB! Activity Monitor shows coresplotlightd 100% in 1 core and 30GB written, kernel 1.26TB, launchd 553GB. DriveDX shows 200TB written to a 500GB SSD in the MBP in only 4 months power on time.

I too can attest to this. Emptying the ~/Library/Metadata/CoreSpotlight alleviate the issue somewhat, but it was only after moving my large Pages documents to a Non-iCloud documents folder I have on my computer (which I previously created for other reasons), did the corespotlightd settle down and become an almost insignificant drain on the CPU. I have an M1 Pro Max that was bogging down due to that runaway process and that spinning wheel was becoming very annoying. Hopefully this issue will be addressed in Golden Gate and I can move the folder back where it belongs.

This fix worked for me. My CoreSpotlightd folder was 380GB and was running CPU% well over 200 constantly. Beach balls every minute. Had already tried several other "fixes" offered, but none had worked.

I had the old (yellow icon) Pages app still installed. Updated the new (red icon) Pages app; updated macOS; restart. Delete old Pages app and empty trash. Then followed these instructions with a restart after deleting CoreSpotlightOld.

Thank you Lightqube for sharing...

J'ai eu le même problème et après avoir désactivé apple intelligence (temps d'écran - contenu et confidentialité - Intelligence et Siri - tout désactiver) le problème est résolu pour le moment !!!

So … a couple of updates:

1). Talked to Apple Support yesterday. They took lots of notes, and have passed the issue on to MacOS engineering.

2). It’s been 3 days since I turned off Apple Intelligence on my iMac, and it has returned to normal operation - it took about 24 hours for things to settle down (I was seeing spikes in corespotlightd, but it would come down off them). Since then it’s been behaving itself.

3). Regarding the system CPU usage spikes, I was seeing some spikes of processes like kernel_task when things got into a really hairy state. I suspect this is related to resource allocation issues where corespotlightd may have been demanding exclusive access to particular resources and then getting into the weeds. (This would also explain the escalating stuck process count in top, now that I think about it).

I'm chiming in to document very similar issues and use-case scenarios. Lots of Pages docs open through iCloud storage (grad school student). I started noticing the slow down occurrences in the fast 2 weeks, with growing regularity. I've been running 15.3 for most of that time I believe. The effects show up across every app. The most drastic occurrences seem to be in my Notes app. I've got tons of notes, a few collaborative, some small, some large. I often get a slow down while typing in notes, and regularly have the app freeze on me and require a forced quit of the Notes. Pages has had those slow blips, but never a full freeze and force quit.

I've disabled Apple Intelligence, and switched off the option of sharing Spotlight data with Apple. It seems that has kept the identical "corespotlightd" process from overloading my system constantly, although I am watching Activity Monitor spike with "corespotlightd" over 100% once in a while.

Just got off a 30 minute phone call with Apple Support. Their engineer team is aware of the issue and have been since February 8th, 2025. The person I spoke to added my case to the engineer team's file on the issue. They are also now aware of this thread. The person I spoke to read everything posted here. The thread itself is also now attached to their file.

I think everyone reading this with the same issue should contact Apple Support so they can have as much information as possible to fix this, in addition to making sure this gets resolved soon enough. They asked me to provide screenshots during the online chat portion, and over the phone they requested me to turn off my VPN (it didn't do anything), turn off and back on iCloud optimization (it didn't do anything), and boot into safe mode (it didn't do anything). They also wanted me to reinstall macOS but I made it clear that wasn't going to happen, and also that in another thread people already tried that in relation to corespotlightd to mixed results.

To do exactly what I did, go to Apple's website. Click Support on the right side of the screen. Scroll down to the section that says "Get Support" (it's quite large with a black button stating "Start Now" and a Memoji underneath). Under "View your products" click "Choose a product". Select your Mac. Click More. Scroll down and click Storage. Click continue. It should give you an option for a call or a chat. I originally opened a chat and clarified immediately what my actual issue was. When she eventually asked me reinstall the OS, I made it clear that I didn't actually expect a fix for this over Support, I simply wanted to get this issue to reach the attention of the people at Apple that could actually get this patched. So she scheduled a phone call for me with her seniors for several hours later at my convenience. (I contacted Support at like 3AM, if you chat with them during normal waking hours you'll likely get a scheduled call much sooner I'm assuming.)

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.