You can make a difference in the Apple Support Community!

When you sign up with your Apple Account, you can provide valuable feedback to other community members by upvoting helpful replies and User Tips.

Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply ask a new question.

yaron-r Author

Level 1

6 points

mds_stores cpu

Hello.

My mds_stores process (presumably spotlight indexing service) has been consuming close to 100% CPU (as per Activity Monitor) for months now (yes, months). I have tried everything I can think of (and then some), and a lot of things suggested in this and other forums, including:

Stopping the process, removing the index and re-starting it (mdutil)
Restarting my computer (duh)
Checking my disk and volume for issues (there are none)
Resetting the whatever ROM (command-control-PR during boot)
Adding various directories to the 'do not index' list (either via mdutil or gui)
Disabling certain functions of my antivirus
Stopping time machine (I have a hunch the two are related)
Hoping it would just go away

Alas, nothing works.

Help. Please. PLEASE...

BTW by just typing mds_stores in google and watching the results, one may jump to the conclusion that mds_stores CPU consumption issues have plagued many MacOS users, and that maybe Apple should give this annoying little process some proper engineering (and QA) attention, befitting a premium brand and product. But that would be jumping to conclusions.

MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2017, 4 TBT3), iOS 12.1

Posted on Dec 3, 2018 5:54 AM

Top-ranking reply

Lincoln Adams

Level 1

23 points

Posted on Dec 16, 2018 8:27 AM

Made a shocking discovery and discovered the actual culprit:

It turned out to be the Pinterest Pin It Addon on my Firefox browser.

I started getting suspicious when mds_stores was finally quiet and then when I started up Firefox, mds_stores immediately went to 100% CPU. Incredible. I previously thought it was Dropbox or Google Backup but with mds_stores suddenly going bonkers once I started Firefox I started wondering if maybe it was Firefox after all.

So I stopped using dropbox, Google Backup and Firefox for a couple of days and mds_stores was quiet as a mouse. I finally had a computer again.

Then I started up Firefox again and mds_stores IMMEDIATELY went to 100% usage again. I tested further by disabling the addons once mds_stores calmed down again, and nothing triggered it until I enabled the Pinterest extension, and then RIGHT ON CUE back to 100%.

Unbelievable, all this because of a Pin It button that is OFFICIALLY provided by Pinterest. To say I'm angry is an understatement. How do you build such a crap addon that can create these kinds of problems and why on God's earth would a Pin It button even need Spotlight to begin with.

Even though it's not Firefox related, I'm removing it altogether as I also fault them for not having safeguards in the code that could prevent addons for running amuck like this. Just awful. I think there's a good reason why Apple is suddenly keeping extensions tightly controlled and part of the App Store now.

Hope this helps someone, aside from remote drives commonly being the culprit in excessive Spotlight loads, the browser you use with particular addons could also be to blame.

View in context

21 replies

Dec 20, 2018 6:53 AM in response to yaron-r

Very glad to see it worked for you as well. I'm going to report this to Apple in the Bug Reporter, even though it's not "their" bug technically, maybe it will give them a heads up to harden the code to prevent craziness like this in the future.

Merry Christmas!