Continued corespotlightd process CPU overload issues

I was one of the folks on this thread who started troubleshooting the issue early on, over a year ago. Over the last 6 months I have mitigated the problem by always quitting Pages when I'm not actively using it, closely monitoring the size of ~/Library/Metadata, and deleting that folder whenever it gets much larger than 30Gb.

I have not yet upgraded to 15.1, because I'm not at all pleased that Apple is pushing users toward the creative studio subscription, and including "AI" features that they are constantly advertising to users, in-app. In response, I've been switching to a new workflow that leaves out the Pages app entirely, and as a side effect of that I've not had to deal with the core spotlight issue much at all recently.

I will probably install 15.1 just to see if I notice a difference. It would be nice to be free of this bug, even if I'm not using Pages any longer. I do still use Numbers frequently, and there's reason to believe the problem is there too (though not nearly as bad).

I just installed smartmontools on my mac and ran

smartctl -a disk3

It reports 105TB of writes and my Mac is about 13 months old. I don't think 8TB/month is high usage.

hank you so much for taking the time to post this. I have an M4 MacBook Air and have been dealing with almost the exact same issue—corespotlightd constantly running at 100–300% CPU, my Mac slowing to a crawl, and endless troubleshooting that never actually fixed it. I had already tried restarting, reindexing Spotlight, disabling indexing, killing the process, updating macOS, Safe Mode—you name it. Nothing worked. I’ve lost so much time troubleshooting this and have actually fallen behind in my university studying because my computer became so difficult to use. I followed your solution and renamed the CoreSpotlight folder to CoreSpotlightOld, restarted, and it worked immediately. My CPU went from corespotlightd consuming well over 100% to my Mac sitting at about 98% CPU idle. It finally feels like my M4 MacBook again. I genuinely cannot thank you enough for posting this. After all the time and frustration I’ve spent trying to solve it, your comment was what finally fixed it. Hopefully adding my experience here will also help the next person who runs into this problem.

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, too, have been suffering with this issue on 4 different Macs, and I've been testing a million different things. I've also read this entire thread. Just trying to add a few summaries here that specify what we know and don't know.

But before I do that, I just have to say that Apple's "sort by rank" default option is a nightmare: it just makes the thread seem like meaningless nonsense, even though so many here are trying hard to solve the problem together.

1. I think Eric Murphy has shown that the corespotlightd problem (cpu usage spiking) is itself an effect of the metadata folder blowing up.
2. This means that if you delete the metadata folder, you will receive temporary relief. Same thing goes for having spotlight reindex, and perhaps even turning off AI – these things are all temporary.
3. CaptainJoy raises a very important question: how many people having problems are working on systems with migrated data?
4. Second question: is anyone having problems with optimize iCloud Drive turned ON?

I have 2 M2 Pros that are having exactly the problems described here, both had migrated data at one point in the past, and both have optimize iCloud Drive turned OFF.

But I have an M3 MacBook Air that was set up this summer from scratch. It downloaded iCloud Drive data, but I migrated nothing. It has optimize iCloud Drive turned ON. That computer is the only one not having problems. The metadata folder is less than 5Gbs and while it's growing, it's very very slow.

My guess is that optimize iCloud Drive is not the underlying cause, it's just that with that turned on, spotlight has less to index and therefore makes less of a mess.

But I really wonder if anyone out there can replicate this problem on a brand new Mac without any migrated data???

fronesis47 wrote:

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.

Replying to my own post to amend it: It looks to me like the temporary fix is NOT a fix at all. I just turned spotlight indexing OFF, then opened a pages file and watched the corespotlight metadata folder grow over 5Gb in less than an hour. Whatever process is writing to the metadata folder is not turned off when you turn off spotlight indexing.

This means the only options are to live with this, by occasionally deleting the metadata folders, deleting the .plist file, and perhaps turning indexing off and on – all while waiting and hoping that apple fixes the problem.

I agree with Mitch Stone: it would be good to know if other documents (such as Numbers files) cause the same problem, and to see what happens with a new user.

THANK YOU to sugarskyline for showing me how to change the default presentation of the message board.

roysch53 wrote:

Regarding the two large folders (NSFileProtectionCompleteUntilFirstUserAuthentication & Priority) under the ~Library/Metadata/CoreSpotlight folder; I don't have "Advanced Data Protection" turned on, so how is it that the NSFile... folders exist - is this part of Apple Intelligence? The NSFile... folders do not exist on my Intel iMac, only on the M2 laptop.

Has anybody removed (or renamed) these large directories, turned AI off and restarted - I just wondered if they get recreated.

Also, has Apple Support shed any light as yet?

The folder structure for Spotlight metadata under ~/library/metadata differs greatly between Intel and Apple Silicon systems. I have yet to delete metadata from either of the Apple Silicon systems I own, but based on postings by others, it sounds like it's safe to delete the entire CoreSpotlight/ folder. After you delete these folders, macOS will recreate them after five or ten minutes, and then they'll start to grow again. But so long as I don't leave Pages files open when I'm not editing them, they don't grow nearly as quickly.

As for Apple Support: I've been dealing with them on this issue for the better part of a month now, and while they've been helpful, the only concrete information they've been able to provide so far is that it is safe to delete the Spotlight metadata folders. I've done Capture Data sessions on an Intel Mac and an Apple Silicon Mac, and also sent them a detailed email describing my research and findings thus far. Unfortunately, the last senior advisor I spoke to, the weekend before last, was going on vacation for a week. I'll follow up with him tomorrow and see if he has anything to add, although what I'd really like to hear is that the Spotlight team is working on a fix to be added to a future system software update.

Mitch Stone wrote:

Did you try my suggestion? For me, it actually did help a lot. I'm not sure I understand the resistance to it, given the simplicity and apparent effectiveness. I'd really like to know if it works as well for others as it did for me.

Based on the totality of posts on this thread, it seems very likely that while using Pages is not the sole cause of corespotlightd (and Spotlight metadata) running amok, it seems to be possibly the largest contributor. So far, users seem to have had decent luck with one, two, or all three of the following:

1. Mitch's recommendation of duplicating a Pages file (thus removing versioning information, which seems to be what spikes corespotlightd activity and Spotlight metadata accumulation), and then making further edits to the duplicated version.
2. Removing Spotlight-related .plists.
3. Removing Corespotlight metadata from the ~/library/metadata folder(s)

None of these workarounds are permanent fixes. But they seem to buy at least temporary reprieve (I deleted Spotlight metadata yesterday afternoon, and right now the system fan is at 12%, system CPU usage is below 20%, and corespotlightd doesn't even appear in the top forty processes). If I have to delete metadata once a week or so (a task that takes all of ten seconds), that's a small price to pay for acceptable performance.

If you're running into performance issues, including Time Machine issues, I would recommend you try some or all of these fixes. Apple may or may not ever get around to addressing these issues (which seem to disproportionately affect Intel systems which are obviously not Apple's priorities these days). But these fixes, singly or in some combination, seem to work for a lot of people. I'd at least give them a try. None of them seem to have negative consequences, unless you're unusually dependent on versioning in Pages.

Last week, I called Apple Support and described the corespotlightd issue on my 4-months-old M4 MacBook Air [MacOS 15.5]. An appointment was made with the Genius Bar at my local Apple Store.

At this appointment, I explained our Pages [v14.4] corespotlightd issue to a lovely chap and we ran the hardware check which passed, ruling out my machine. I showed the Genius this forum, and he arranged for next-level-up Apple Support to call me the next day.

On that call, I shared my screen and showed the (also lovely) support chap this forum. After creating a New User (to rule out a user-specific problem), I opened Activity Monitor, highlighted corespotlightd, created a Pages document and saved it to iCloud. After a few edits, corespotlightd spiked. 

The support chap then consulted and I was put on to a new (equally lovely, even higher-up) support chap to whom I showed this forum. He wanted me to duplicate the problem whilst screen recording. Unfortunately, I was unable to duplicate the spiking so the he sent me an email that allows me to send him a screen recording of the issue, should I be able to get it to happen.

I have been trying each day to capture the problem, but have, so far, failed. I will keep trying every day.

So we know that several individuals in Apple’s support hierarchy are at least  aware our corespotlightd spiking issue. How high in that hierarchy, I cannot say.

Perhaps, if a few more of us follow the Apple Support approach, we may be able to get this issue acknowledged and then solved.

I just bought a MacBook Air 2022 M2 with 16GB, after the immediate update it runs now Tahoe 26.1. I face the same problem, with the corespotlightd slowing down my processor, consuming energy, and stopping Pages from working every minute or so for a few seconds. I transferred the two Pages documents I was working on on my SSD, and miracle. My CPU load is below 10%, the machine is fast with corespotlightd at 0.1% ! I have Key, Numbers, Safari (a full load of tags open), Preview, Mail… open, and no troubles.

SO : it's not the system, it's just Pages.

Why is this not fixed ? please "Apple Guys" if you can't read that, ask an İ.A. to read the complaints and search the codes, or do your job, that shouldn't be so complicated !!!

Hey Mitch!

Does your other Mac open the same document that causes the issue without any problems?

Yes, I can open any of my Pages documents on my M1Max MacBook Pro from both iCloud and SSD without issue.

I can open any of my Pages documents on my M4 MacBook Air without issue too but only if they live on the internal SSD. If I open any of them from iCloud, corespotlightd beach-balling happens, most of the time. I can only stop the beach-balling by reinstalling MacOS (i.e. quitting apps, processes and restarting fail to end the beach-balling.)

Another test I'd like to see someone try in the interests of science is creating a new user account and opening the problem document in it.

When I had my M4 MacBook Air checked out by a Genius at the Apple Store last May, I was able to demonstrate the issue so the Genius reported - and escalated - the issue. The following day, an Apple representative called and connected to my MacBook Air. We created a New User account ... we created a new Pages document and saved it to iCloud and, after copying and pasting large amounts of text, the corespotlightd beach-balling unpleasantness began. This Apple rep said he would report the issue to the Pages team, and after a few days, someone higher up the support chain called, but unfortunately, on that day, corespotlightd beach-balling refused to manifest . . . which of course it did, the very next day!

Having had something of a respite for a while, no idea why, the issues worsened severely over the past few weeks.

Today, I changed my Spotlight settings. Switched OFF Welsh Dictionary, Google Drive, Outlook, Numbers, OneDrive, and Pages. (I think the others that are off were already off.)

Pages suddenly working like greased lightning. As it should on an M4 with plenty of memory.

I know I should have gone through them one at a time but I have little enough hair without pulling the rest...

Will have to check these settings on my M1 MBP. Which has been behaving quite well.

I thought I updated my status, but can't find it.

Once I updated to Tahoe 26.2 (now on 26.3) and Pages 15.1 the issues stopped for me. I've kept the Activity Monitor open for almost three weeks now. It does pop up to 40% or 50% CPU usage once in a while, but mostly between 10% to 15%. Corespotlightd is rarely above a few percent usage.

I just checked the core spotlight meta data folder just now, and it's at 31GB. It does not seem to affect performance, so I'm leaving it alone for now.

Apple must have fixed the issue with Pages 15.1. Or maybe with Tahoe 26.2 and Pages 15.1 together.

Hoping others have had this kind of success also.