MacOS

Spotlight

mds or mds_stores using tons of CPU

To stop it, run sudo mdutil -a -i off. To restart it again, use sudo mdutil -a -i on.

Reindex

If you have problems where spotlight isn't finding applications or files for some reason, you can initiate the indexing manually via sudo mdutil -E /.

High CPU Usage

  1. Restart the computer.
  2. Kill spotlight process in activity monitor: corespotlightd. It should restart with lower CPU usage.
  3. If that didn't work, kill spotlight processes in the terminal: killall corespotlightd.
  4. Restart again.

References

  1. Reindexing for Spotlight
  2. mds and mds_stores diagnosing
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Last modified: 202412312142