Level 2

384 points

Continued corespotlightd process CPU overload issues

I am wondering if anyone has discovered any new ideas for stopping the corespotlightd process from hogging the CPU. According to Activity Monitor, the corespotlightd process often occupies more than 100% of the CPU load, sometimes spiking as high as 400% on my M2 Ultra Mac Studio. This problem has become so severe that it often pinwheels under normally non-intensive tasks. It can cause the video to flicker on my Studio Display. In one case it caused my Mac to kernel panic (crash).

I encountered this bug only after installing Sequoia 15.2, but having researched this issue extensively, I find that Mac users have identified it since at least macOS Ventura. So here are some solutions we don't need to hear again:

Reindexing Spotlight by adding and removing volumes in Spotlight Privacy. This provides relief only temporarily. Within hours the process is again grinding the Mac to a halt.

Killing the corespotlightd in Activity Monitor. Again, this is at best only a temporary solution as the process will reinstate itself.

A "clean" install of macOS. First of all, no such process really exists. The OS recovery process simply reinstalls a new copy of the System files. Nobody reports this as a fix. An internal drive wipe and reformat, and restore from Time Machine is also unlikely to help, as it simply returns your Mac to its previous state. If the corespotlightd problem results from a corrupted file, the problem will likely simply be recreated in your reinstall. "Nuke and pave" might solve the problem if it caused by a format or directory issue on your startup volume. This does not seem to be the case, but if anyone has permanently cured the problem by this method, please report it.

What we do need to hear is from anyone who has spent time with Apple Support on this issue and been provided with solutions that actually work, or has new ideas about what causes it. Feels like we're on our own here, since Apple seems to be stumped.

Posted on Dec 19, 2024 11:21 AM

Top-ranking reply

mphollis

Level 1

42 points

Posted on Jan 29, 2026 6:33 PM

I had this, in a major way. Activity Monitor showed greater that 100% CPU at ALL TIMES. My 2022 M2 became unusable, freezing, pinwheeling etc. Just like all these descriptions. I searched here and in other forums online, and I tried the many suggestions (short of reinstalling the system software). None of the resolutions fixed the issue. Eventually, I read one post that eluded to large Pages docs with many edits, especially those stored on iCloud Drive potentially contributing to the issue. I've been working on a 100+ page town report in Pages. It coincided with the worsening corespotlightd CPU issues, and it has had a truly enormous number of edits. While the doc isn't exactly huge (like 32 mb's?) the number of edits stored in it practically rival the number of atoms in the known universe.

So here's what I did: I created and saved a copy of this file, and also emailed a copy to myself out of caution. Then I moved the copy file (and it's associated files in it's folder) to my desktop, and I checked the "keep downloaded" option... I triple checked that my backup copy was current and working, and then I (terrifyingly) deleted the original file which was the result of hundreds of hours of work. I then restarted my Mac. I opened activity monitor and the issue is completely gone. corespotlightd is now using POINT one percent of my CPU.

My theory is that it was attempting to not just index the file itself, but also every single tiny edit I had done... perhaps as part of the "revert to" feature? Each nudge of a line or copy/paste of a section or tiny movement of an image... it was saving and indexing them all. When I made a copy, all that data was left behind. The new file has no undo's available. And voila, my Mac is working like it should again. What a relief!

Hope this helps somebody out there, because what a terrible experience it was for a while there.

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511 replies

Jan 1, 2025 8:46 AM in response to MgS_2012

Thanks for your posts! I have large Pages files on my M2 MB Air and Apple Intelligence turned on. Editing those docs is when I first noticed the problem that eventually led me to corespotlightd high CPU usage. I’m wondering if Writing Tools in Apple Intelligence is the culprit. I talked with Apple Support yesterday (NYE) and made it to the point in troubleshooting where we identified it as a User issue and not system wide. We progressed to a system re-install, which you already know doesn’t work. I’ll talk with Support again tomorrow, but in the meantime, I’ve turned off Apple Intelligence on my Mac to see if it will also calm down

briantf

Level 1

20 points

Jan 1, 2025 10:07 PM in response to briantf

This seems to be promising. Corespotlightd now at 0% while reindexing in progress .

Disable system integrity protection. Boot into recovery mode and access the terminal. Run csrutil disable
rm -rf ~/Library/Metadata/CoreSpotlight (the bloated files here contain the crux of the issue)
sudo mdutil -a -i off
Remove the spotlight index. rm -rf /System/Volumes/Data/.Spotlight*
sudo mdutil -a -i on
sudo mdutil -E
Follow step 1 but instead, run csrutil enable

Mitch Stone Author

Level 2

384 points

Feb 4, 2025 9:20 AM in response to ericmurphysf

This is certainly interesting, and I also had the inkling from watching the Activity Monitor that more than one process is implicated. However I do wonder why I've been able to mitigate this issue successfully by simply deleting the spotlight plist. My system has been behaving itself for the last couple of weeks since I did this last. I don't know if anyone tried this before moving on to more drastic measures.

ericmurphysf wrote:

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:

Mar 9, 2025 9:37 PM in response to Mitch Stone

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.

Mar 16, 2025 8:27 AM in response to Daniel_145

Daniel_145 wrote:

What would you recommend, please? Reboots don't help, killing the spotlightd process in Activity Monitor helps only for a few minutes. Closing the Pages app helps but unfortunately I really need the document, it's the only reason why I didn't buy a pen and paper instead

Delete the contents of the ~/library/metadata/coresporlight/ folder. This has worked for multiple users including myself.

It's a temporary fix, in that eventually that folder will grow to the size you're seeing now. But I just see it as maintenance. Every couple of weeks I delete that data.

KWiPod

Level 2

381 points

Apr 2, 2025 12:23 AM in response to KWiPod

Since updating to MacOS Sequoia 15.4 (24E248) on Monday March 31st, all the spiking issues I described have stopped. Fingers crossed !

Mitch Stone Author

Level 2

384 points

May 13, 2025 1:52 PM in response to LAWM0N

No evidence points to iCloud being implicated in this issue in any way whatsoever. Certain large Pages documents that have been extensively edited appear to be the most common trigger of this issue, and it is not dependent on them being stored locally or in the cloud. Either way, the Spotlight data is stored locally, and it is the size and/or complexity of this data that seemingly causes the process to freak out.

LAWM0N wrote:

Are you saying 'do not use iCloudDrive for Pages or Numbers?' Ever? Or just do not use past contents (after downloading past contents onto your computer, but OK to use from now on?

Mitch Stone Author

Level 2

384 points

Oct 25, 2025 12:06 AM in response to dar221

I have had little to add to this discussion for a while, as this issue seemed to go away for me. Then, recently, I began working on a new Pages document. It isn't a particularly large document (around 10k words) stored in iCloud. I had been writing and editing it for several weeks, leaving it open for days at a time, without any apparent issues. Then I shared it for collaboration, with tracking changed turned on. Almost immediately after my collaborator began editing, the corespotlightd process shot up. So for me, at least, it is clearly not an iCloud issue per se. Shortly after closing the document, the process settles back down.

I also found a feature in Activity Monitor that I had not noticed before (possibly it is new in Tahoe). Double-clicking on the CPU pane brings up a window illustrating the CPU load per core. I have no idea of how to interpret this graph, or why all of the cores are labeled "Performance" except 1-4 and 13-16, which are labeled "Efficiency." In any case this is the graph from when the corespotlightd process exceeded 100%. A lot of red bars. Otherwise they are mostly green, and it seems even under this load, half of the cores are not in use at all.

Shared here in the hopes that someone will understand what this means.

KWiPod

Level 2

381 points

Apr 7, 2026 6:11 AM in response to PolyRod

"'I've probably just upset the gods of the innards of Macs."

Ha! I know what you mean! Thank you for all your info!

Despite corespotlightd working differently in 26.4, [resulting in the Pages corespotlightd SBBoD issue being resolved, for some, for the moment - I hope that wording assuages the Gods], many problems remain with spotlight file indexing in general.

In addition, I have a particular Pages file* that will ALWAYS causes permanent SBBoD, whether it is opened from a local SSD or iCloud. [And this happens on both my M1Max MB Pro and my M4 MB Air].

I reported the issue via Feedback - Pages - Apple and the iWork Team (still called that despite being incorporated into Creator Studio!) reached out to me. I installed the iWork and iCloud profiles they sent me and opened the rogue file - which triggered the SBBoD superbly - saved the reports via Activity Monitor, and sent them to the iWork Team (along with the rogue file) this very morning.

I don't know if the policy is for the iWork Team will to report back, probably not. My guess is the the only way I will know if the issue is solved, is if, with the next version of Pages (or the one after that!), I can open the file without a SBBoD festival.

Thank you again to all contributors !

Ironically, the file was created on a screen sharing call with Apple Support to demonstrate the corespotlightd problem! I typed in some random letters, added an emoji, and just kept copying and pasting until the word count was around 220k. When first opened, both the Pages and AppleSpell processes in Activity Monitor have a spiking fit and then the SBBoD appears. After a minute or so, the SBBoD disappears, but the moment the trackpad is touched (to select text or to scroll), the SBBoD appears again ... and so on for ever. It is an uneditable document! Force Quitting Pages is the only way out!

Jun 18, 2026 7:33 AM in response to Mac Jim ID

Mac Jim ID wrote:

…It does seem the initial problem of the bloated spotlight file has been resolved for others with the updated version of Pages and even the CPU usage of CoreSpotlight has returned to normal for CaptainJoy, ericmurphysf, antoine2008, PolyRod, malhal, and Retic.…

I spoke too soon. Since upgrading to macOS Tahoe, I have had to trash the contents of the ~/Library/Metadata/CoreSpotlight folder 5 times in 8 months. Updating to Pages 15 doesn't seem to have made any difference.

What follows are the results of my latest CoreSpotlight trashing.

macOS Tahoe 26.5

Experiencing freeze ups and spinning beach balls several times an hour.

Folder/File Sizes at 6:05 PM

~/Library/Metadata/CoreSpotlight at 54.94 GB
~/Library/Metadata/CoreSpotlight/Priority folder at 22.47 GB
~/Library/Metadata/CoreSpotlight/NSFileProtectionCompleteUntilFirstUserAuthentication folder at 16.03 GB
~/Library/Metadata/CoreSpotlight/SpotlightKnowledge folder at 13.14 GB
~/Library/Metadata/CoreSpotlight/SpotlightKnowledgeEvents folder at 154.5 MB
~/Library/Caches at 3.22 GB

I do not believe “Optimize Storage” is turned on.

Apps running: Activity Monitor, Finder, Mail, Pages 15.2.1, Safari,

Disk Writing:

kernel_task had written 3.19 TB
backupd had written 107.98 GB
corespotlightd had written 77.18 GB
launchd had written 50.99 GB
mds_stores had written 1.21 GB

9:08 AM — worst offenders

CPU: corespotlightd occasionally spiking close to 150% CPU
CPU: kernel_task spiking over 100% CPU
CPU: Pages using ~25% CPU with one 2.8 MB and one 3.8 MB documents open
Disk: “Data written/sec” sitting at ~150 MB/sec

9:15 AM — trashed contents of the ~/Library/Metadata/CoreSpotlight folder

9:18 AM — worst offenders

CPU: tccd at <50%
CPU: fileproviderd at <50%
Disk: “Data written/sec” at <1 MB/sec

Jan 7, 2025 6:07 AM in response to Mitch Stone

Hi, Mitch. After talking with Apple Support, I discovered I had a different problem. I'm a bit embarrassed about it. Router performance is basic 101 troubleshooting and I failed to speed test the router as part of looking into continued lags and spinning wheels after I had turned off Apple Intelligence (which successfully addressed corespotlightd hogging the CPU). I ran a speed test and it showed my router was running at an upload speed of 2.61, dreadfully slow, especially when working with large documents on iCloud (where all my Pages documents reside). Also, there's several discussions out there regarding how quickly we can upload documents to iCloud, which might cause delays and even spinning wheels while editing large documents, like the Pages documents I've been working with. So, I'll need to decide if I want to fork out $50 a month to increase my upload speed or just move my large Pages docs to my computer and back them up to my external drive. >>sigh<<

Mitch Stone Author

Level 2

384 points

Jan 28, 2025 8:41 AM in response to ericmurphysf

Interesting. Checking these folders on my M2, I find that the size of the CoreSpotlight folder is 37GB, but no file within it is even a megabyte in size. The SpotlightKnowlegeEvents folder clocks in at 463 MB. It contains far more subfolders, so it is difficult to figure out where this data is hiding. Has your performance been improved by deleting the contents of these folders?

And another FWIW: Since the last time I deleted the Spotlight plist about a week ago, I have had no corespotlightd process issues. So I do think this is worth trying.

ericmurphysf wrote:

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.

Feb 3, 2025 4:05 PM in response to CaptainJoy

CaptainJoy wrote:

ericmurphysf asked:

How heavy a user of Pages are you?

I use Pages all the time. As a rule, I always have at least one Pages document open, and often one or more are >10 MB.

I suspect this is the root of the problem. I don't know if the amount of metadata accumulated on your system is comparable to mine, but for the last quarter of last year I was editing at least one file (on multiple Macs) that by that time had grown to ~200 MB (roughly 1,200 pages with many embedded graphics), and I'm pretty certain the result was half a terabyte of metadata saved in my user library folder. I strongly suspect a consequence of that amount of metadata was system instability, major issues with Time Machine backups, and degraded search performance in Spotlight to the point of unusability.

Since deleting this metadata last week, all three of these issues have resolved. The one remaining issue is that metadata continues to accumulate at an alarming rate, which will likely force me to remove it just as I did the last time, probably within the next two months. I'm pretty sure this is a bug somewhere in Apple's code that will need to be resolved via a future macOS update.

Feb 9, 2025 4:18 PM in response to Bets

Bets wrote:

Still concerned about just deleting the Corespotlightd file - but at least I've found it. Thanks for the discussion - I hope Apple does something about it. perhaps modify Pages somehow.

I haven't yet had occasion to delete the CoreSpotlight folder on an M-series system yet, but I've deleted all the Spotlight-related folders' contents (while leaving the folders themselves in place) on Intel systems, and have seen no ill effects.

If you want to be super-careful on an M-series system I would recommend you open the ~/library/metadata/CoreSpotlight folder on an Apple Silicon system, and delete all the contents except for the SpotlightKnowledgeEvents folder. Then, when everything else has been deleted, open the SpotlightKnowledgeEvents folder and delete its contents.

This is probably a belt-and-suspenders approach; other users have simply deleted the entire Corespotlight folder without ill effects.

Mitch Stone Author

Level 2

384 points

Feb 9, 2025 4:19 PM in response to fronesis47

I don't think we know how large this folder is supposed to be, and I can attest to the fact that no process is taking over the CPU with the folder containing this much data. FWIW, I left the large Pages file open for several hours with no change in the amount of data being stored or any processes running amok, at least that I was able to witness. My issues with this process hogging the CPU seem ridiculously random. When I started this discussion, my Mac became essentially unusable within 5-10 minutes after one large Pages file was opened. Same file now, not nearly as much of a problem. All I have attempted as mitigation is trashing the spotlight plist.

fronesis47 wrote:

Mitch Stone wrote:

Earlier in this discussion it was established that iCloud is not the culprit. Files that will trigger the problem will do so whether they are stored locally or in iCloud. I meant corespotlightd because this the process I see as being hyperactive when the CPU is overloaded. Either way I have had this large Pages file open for over an hour now and the file has not grown at all. Unfortunately all of the theories we've come up with so far are incomplete or flawed. They only seem to work for some users some of the time.

I realize iCloud is not the cause per se (because the problem has been reproduced with Pages files that are not on iCloud Drive). I'm curious about exploring the possibility that the problem is worse without the optimize function on. It seems to me that with my two machines, there's just much slower growth of the folder on the machine with optimize on.

I'll also add: I'm not sure your case completely disproves the general thesis. 60Gb is a really large metadata file. It's already at the point that corespotlightd is taking over the CPU. So by this point it doesn't really matter that the folder has stopped (or significantly) slowed its growth; it's already a problem. And I guess I have to assume that the folder got that big for the same reasons as everyone else. If you could delete your folder, and then open a pages file and have the folder not grow – that would be a totally different data point.

Now that I've been deleting my metadata folder (as an experiment) I have absolutely zero issues with corespotlightd. If the corespotlight folder is smaller than 10Gb I find I never have any slowdowns at all.

Continued corespotlightd process CPU overload issues