MacBook Pro lagging, large CoreSpotlight, reindex needed

Hi,

The High CPU usage and lag from Corespotlightd or mds_stores are often caused by a corrupted index or conflicts with cloud services. On modern Apple Silicon MacBooks, the indexing process can become single-threaded and stuck in a compaction loop, causing system-wide freezes and excessive fan noise. 

To resolve this, rebuild the Spotlight index using one of the following methods:

• GUI Method (Recommended): Go to System Settings > Siri & Spotlight > Search Privacy. Add your main drive (e.g., Macintosh HD) to the list, wait a few minutes, and then remove it. This forces macOS to delete the old index and rebuild it from scratch.

• Terminal Method: Open Terminal and run sudo mdutil -E / to force an immediate reindex of the startup disk. If the index is severely corrupted, you may need to delete the metadata folder manually by booting into Recovery Mode and running sudo rm -rf /System/Volumes/Data/.Spotlight-V100, then rebooting. 

If the lag persists after reindexing, exclude external or cloud-synced drives from Spotlight indexing by adding them to the Search Privacy list. 

Conflicts between fileproviderd (iCloud/Cloud Drive) and Spotlight indexing are a common root cause of high CPU usage and unresponsive file dialogs. Ensure your macOS is updated to the latest version, as recent beta versions have known architectural issues with multi-core index compaction. 

In addition to M-UK's suggestions: some recent issues with Spotlight seem to be resolved by deleting the CoreSpotlight folder at

~/Library/Metadata/CoreSpotlight

and then logging out and back in.

Don't worry, any necessary content in this folder will then be recreated (but hopefully it will not regain the huge size it seems to have now).

AlysonfromBridgetown wrote:

I was nervous about deleting the whole thing, if M-UK's suggestion doesn't work I'll try this.

Ok.

Logging out = Apple -> log out of user ( just confirming I'm on the same page. I'm good at using the laptop, not always solving the problems)

Yes. You can also restart your mac, but logging out and back in is quicker. Since the only change is to a folder that belongs only to you, restarting is not required, but of course this would work as well.