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.

Set list as default view

This has annoyed the shit out of me forever. I want list view as default, but it never seems to stick. This forces it.

# Use list view in all Finder windows by default
# Four-letter codes for the other view modes: `icnv`, `clmv`, `glyv`
defaults write com.apple.finder FXPreferredViewStyle -string "Nlsv"
# This helps to remove other views, which Finder remembered because of the
#.DS_Store files:
sudo find / -name ".DS_Store" -exec rm {} \;

References

  1. Reindexing for Spotlight
  2. mds and mds_stores diagnosing
  3. https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/284467/how-to-set-finder-to-always-use-list-view
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Last modified: 202602011935