Spotlight slowing down and glitching computers

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Level 2

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Spotlight slowing down and glitching computers

New information about Spotlight slowing down and glitching your computer. I don't recommend it for anyone who regularly uses Spotlight Search but I don't - and am giving it a try to solve an ongoing issue for me and a lot of other folks.

I read a piece by Michael Simon in MacWorld that addressed the problem many of us have been having with glitches caused by Spotlight. He claimed that he solved his same problems by toggling off items under System Settings/Spotlight. He disabled 'Show related content' and 'Help Apple improve search'.

I have been regularly deleting large folders in ~/Library/Metadata/CoreSpotlight/ and this insight from Michael Simon seems to follow that same reasoning. Again, if you regularly use Spotlight Search, you obviously want to leave at least the first item enabled.

Posted on Dec 5, 2025 5:07 AM

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Answer 1

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den.thed

Level 10

90,712 points

Dec 5, 2025 8:27 AM in response to JNoel54

1) I've never had an issues with Spotlight slowing down or glitching any of my old or new Mac's.

Uncheck whatever you do not want Spotlight to index and then rebuild Spotlight.

as per > Rebuild the Spotlight index on your Mac - Apple Support

2) If your Mac is slowing down and glitching, then you may have other issues that need to be addressed.

To find out, download and run the free version of EtreCheckPro, from > https://etrecheck.com/en/index.html

Then post back here with your Report, as per > How to use the Add Text Feature When Post… - Apple Community

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Answer 2

JNoel54 Author

Level 2

202 points

Dec 5, 2025 5:55 AM in response to JNoel54

Simon also suggested disabling System Settings/ Spotlight /results from apps for Pages.

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