Continued corespotlightd process CPU overload issues

Question

Level 2

336 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

Reply

Answer 1

Mitch Stone Author

Level 2

336 points

Dec 21, 2024 2:05 PM in response to Mitch Stone

Some additional information to report after a couple more days of exploring. On my Mac Studio, this issue is produced reliably by opening a large (20mb+) Pages file. This file also happens to be stored in iCloud and is shared for collaboration, though I don't know if this is a factor. Within around five minutes of opening this file, the corespotlightd process spikes, and it remains out of control for at least 10-20 minutes after closing the file. Eventually it settles down. I have not been able to reproduce this behavior with any other document or app. Opening this same document on my MacBook Air does not cause the process to run wild.

I decided to locate and remove the Spotlight preference file: com.apple.MobileAsset.SpotlightResources.plist

In Sequoia it is found in the directory Users/yourusername/Library/Metadata/Assets. By default this is a hidden directory that can be made visible by typing command-shift-period in the Finder. Once you have revealed the hidden directories you can easily search for the file in Spotlight (assuming it is working for you), or follow this path. Control-click on the file and select Move to Trash from the popup menu. Restart your Mac. A new Spotlight preference file will be created on startup. Note that if you previously set any volumes (such as external drives) to be excluded from Spotlight indexing, they will be added back in by default. You can change this in your Spotlight settings. Re-hide the hidden directories by typing command-shift period again.

I'm not sure if this solution completely cured my problem, but so far it sure has helped. The process does not spike up as quickly and it returns to a background state far more quickly than before after the Pages document is closed.

I'd be interested to know if anyone else tries this and gets results, positive or negative.

Reply

Answer 2

SBML

Level 1

48 points

Dec 27, 2024 8:01 AM in response to Mitch Stone

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.

Reply

Answer 3

Mitch Stone Author

Level 2

336 points

Dec 27, 2024 8:39 AM in response to SBML

Thanks for the response. It seems your experience is similar, if also different in interesting ways. I've since found that my large Pages document still causes the process to spike up, but not as quickly as before, and since deleting the plist file for Spotlight, it resolves more quickly when the document is closed. The document is not password protected, so I don't think this is the source of the problem (as least, not by itself). My next step is to make a copy of this document and see if it causes the issue when it is or isn't shared or stored in iCloud. I suspect this is the commonality.

I didn't save the kernel panic report my Mac sent to Apple, but it also ID'd the corespotlightd process. This is what sent me looking at Activity Monitor.

Reply

Answer 4

Mitch Stone Author

Level 2

336 points

Dec 27, 2024 11:15 AM in response to SBML

I believe I can now safely report that the issue is generically related to how Spotlight handles large Pages documents. I Finder duplicated the shared collaborated document in iCloud, and with collaboration off, roughly 10 minutes after opening the process begins to hog the CPU. Moving the document to a local volume, same results. The problem does resolve much more quickly, and seems less severe with the deletion of the Spotlight plist, so it is definitely worth trying, but obviously this is only part of the issue.

Reply

Answer 5

MgS_2012

Level 1

38 points

Dec 27, 2024 12:14 PM in response to Mitch Stone

Hmmm - okay - I'm seeing the same behaviour, but instead of with large documents (mine are sizeable, but not huge), but with _NUMBER_ of documents being accessed.

In my context, I have 8-10 documents open at any one moment (all on iCloud), and an additional 5-20 PDFs opened in Preview.

I did a reinstall of MacOS about 2 weeks ago after this problem cascaded into spontaneous crash-and-restarts even while the machine was otherwise idle (all documents closed), and I was in the midst of a lengthy video call when it decided to crash. (I also saw multiple spontaneous reboots happening overnight when the machine was otherwise idle).

Regarding re-install of MacOS, when I ran Disk Utility from Recovery Mode, it identified a ton of mismatch counts and other filesystem errors that it was unable to repair. At that point, I decided to do a nuke-and-pave, with the computer behaving itself until today when I see corespotlightd chewing CPU like candy again. (It wasn't even appearing in the list for top prior to today).

If the suspicions mentioned above are true, then this appears to be an indexing problem with the interaction between Spotlight and iCloud. (I'm reaching here, but iCloud indexing looks like a common denominator)

Reply

Answer 6

Mitch Stone Author

Level 2

336 points

Dec 27, 2024 1:36 PM in response to MgS_2012

I am seeing the issue being triggered with documents stored either locally or in iCloud, so it seems to me iCloud is off the top suspects list. You don't say if the large documents you have open are Pages documents or something else. It would he helpful if you could be more specific. Also, have you tried deleting the plist, as I suggested?

FWIW, I opened a very large TIFF file in Pixelmator and left it open for some time without any issues. Not a lot of surprise there since this file type is one that presumably Spotlight does not attempt to index.

Reply

Answer 7

PolyRod

Level 1

80 points

Dec 29, 2024 3:58 AM in response to Mitch Stone

I am using an M4 mini with 24GB. In the past few days, I've seen corespotlightd running at somewhere around 140% CPU. At best, it drops to about 80%. And I've just checked and seen it at 38.5% - which is the lowest I've seen in days - but moments later bounced back to 132% and remained high. CPU Time 1:07:06.22 despite restarting late last night.

And have started to get beachballs. And stutters - in Pages, in Numbers, in Excel, in Firefox, moving mouse, and other apps.

I have an M1 MBP which, so far, has not suffered this. Yet I edit the same files, which are in iCloud.

Dismounting all my external drives does not help noticeably.

My Pages documents vary from trivial to substantial. And the CPU usage persists even when I quit Pages, and Numbers, and Excel, and Word, almost everything.

It had been running fantastically. That makes it extremely disappointing.

All software is, to the best of my knowledge, bang up to date - and no beta versions/releases.

Reply

Answer 8

PolyRod

Level 1

80 points

Dec 29, 2024 4:20 AM in response to Mitch Stone

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.

Reply

Answer 9

Dec 29, 2024 4:34 AM in response to Mitch Stone

I did not have quite the same problem.

In my case Spotlight (mds_stores) was writing up to 100 GB per day and apparently deleting it instantly as nothing ever appeared on my SSD and there were no unpleasant symptoms.

However, it was causing massive unnecessary writes so I selected all my drives in System Settings/Spotlight/Search Privacy and the writing has completely ceased. Presumably all other Spotlight activity has stopped.

Luckily I can live without Spotlight.

Reply

Answer 10

PolyRod

Level 1

80 points

Dec 29, 2024 5:40 AM in response to PolyRod

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.

Reply

Answer 11

Mitch Stone Author

Level 2

336 points

Dec 29, 2024 8:54 AM in response to PolyRod

Thanks, I will give this a try. Did you try deleting the Spotlight plist? This seems to help somewhat, at least until macOS writes a change to the plist, which seems to happen in the middle of the night. BTW, if you do remove the plist I've found a reboot isn't required to recreate it. Just log out of your account and back in.

Another peculiarity of this bug: I don't understand how it's possible for any process to exceed 100% of CPU capacity, but in any event, even when the corespotlightd process runs to 200% of CPU or higher, the total usage stats at the bottom of the Activity Monitor still shows no less than 80% of the CPU idle. The usage graph confirms that in fact CPU usage is far from saturated, but the Mac sure performs as if it is overloaded.

If someone with a technical understanding of how this works can ring in, I'd sure appreciate an explanation of what is going on.

Reply

Answer 12

a brody

Level 10

85,320 points

Dec 29, 2024 11:11 AM in response to Mitch Stone

"A "clean" install of macOS. First of all, no such process really exists."

Agreed in principle. Apple does offer Disk Utility on its recovery tool to erase the entire data drive, or the entire hard drive, and use internet recovery to restore the OS that came with the Mac, or in recovery, the last installed OS. Simple recovery keeps a partition with just the necessary tools to install the OS.

Use macOS Recovery on an Intel-based Mac - Apple Support - command-option-shift-R for Intel Macs.

Use macOS Recovery on a Mac with Apple silicon - Apple Support (these are Macs that were new starting November 2020 and later)

Either will give you a closer approximation of whether or not the issue is due to the storage issues, or issues with the computer. The Apple Hardware Diagnostics if they find something wrong could indicate something is wrong with hardware.

Reply

Answer 13

MgS_2012

Level 1

38 points

Dec 29, 2024 12:02 PM in response to PolyRod

Very similar to my experience.

Timing-wise, it corresponds with the release of the Apple Intelligence software (that's when I started noticing some odd behaviour). I temporarily have disabled Apple Intelligence to see if it catches up and settles down with it disabled (I'm not overly optimistic about that). At the moment I'm watching corespotlightd running up to a peak of 152% CPU, and then going gradually to a low of 18%.

Like yourself, Apple Intelligence I have an M1 MBP that is behaving just fine (but Apple Intelligence is disabled on that machine because apparently it's not available with "English - Canada" selected as a language).

About 2 weeks ago, before I did a re-install of MacOS, I ran Disk Utility from within Recovery, and it spewed a ton of index count errors - don't remember the specific text, but they were all the same, and all clearly some kind of "off-by-one" counting error.

It is marginally possible that I have a failing SSD in the machine, but that seems unlikely.

Reply

Answer 14

MgS_2012

Level 1

38 points

Dec 29, 2024 12:22 PM in response to Mitch Stone

%CPU is a bit of an odd duck in today's world of multi-core processors. It made more sense when we were doing things on single-core architectures like the VAX (yes, I'm that old). Back then a process chewing large amounts of CPU was pretty obvious. In a multi-core architecture, a process can simply get allocated to a different core when it gets switched out, resulting in the appearance of using "more than 100%" of a CPU. (The core allocation logic is opaque to most human beings - and I'm not exactly sure what the kernel / hardware interaction looks like there - it's been a few moons since I did any amount of kernel work)

Top in its default form is a bit aggressive, resampling every second. I tend to use the command "top -o CPU -s 5" to make it a little less hungry.

Reply

Answer 15

PolyRod

Level 1

80 points

Dec 29, 2024 12:33 PM in response to MgS_2012

I come from that far back as well!

The systems I worked on could originally be single or dual processor, later up to quad. And processor usage for a single process could almost reach 100%. With a maximum across all processes potentially approaching 400% on a quad. Which made sense.

But the precise meaning of 138% is far from obvious. Especially when we need to consider performance and efficiency cores. And how do GPU cores fit?

Reply