Comments on: mdworker – What is mdworker?

By: MC

MC — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 19:38:24 +0000

So turn it off

By: concerned reader

concerned reader — Sun, 10 Mar 2013 14:25:34 +0000

You’re right, if you find yourself wanting to get rid of the annoying spotlight bobbins, it’s not worth killing mds … because, at least in Mountain Lion, the little ****er just restarts itself.

You need to be more ruthless. As root,

mv /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Frameworks/Metadata.framework/Support/mds /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Frameworks/Metadata.framework/Support/mds.not

And then killall -9 mds

then rm -rf /.Spotlight-V100

Remember where you put mds if you ever recant and decide to re-enable it.

(Don’t do the above unless you’re prepared in the event that disaster ensues to lose all your data and do a complete re-install without once blaming this comment for it, obviously)

By: Tim

Tim — Tue, 24 Jul 2012 23:51:17 +0000

60% cpu is nothing. mdworker runs at 95% on my machine (2008 macbook pro), overheat, and kill the charger (with some smell on the macbook too). Tried to kill it many times, and it continue to resurrect at same CPU level. Finally, I power down the macbook and it stop coming back for now. Luckily I am around to hear the loud fan, and smell the burn. Otherwise, it would have fried my Mac.

By: Sid

Sid — Fri, 06 Jul 2012 10:15:07 +0000

I seriously cannot *believe* that you’re telling us that we should be cool with some process suddenly eating significant memory / CPU resources at random times.

I can think of much better uses for my RAM than supporting a search tool I think I’ve used once in three years!

By: Chris

Chris — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 02:01:24 +0000

Uh, dude, you’re running a six year old machine. Spotlight is useless? You must be *really* new to Mac. Spotlight is fantastically useful.

What version of Mac OS X are you using. It’s changed a lot since the G4 days!

By: Some Guy

Some Guy — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 17:13:40 +0000

What do you expect? You’re running a machine that’s generations older than what’s currently out there.

By: John SMythe

John SMythe — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 15:41:35 +0000

Thank you so much for this tip. It solved my issue immediately. I had an external drive with ~800GB of photos (and my former Windows install). As soon as I unselected pictures, things calmed down and startup is bearable again.

By: Jim

Jim — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 03:58:42 +0000

I find that if I kill one mdworker process, there always seems to be another one.. I wonder if mds keeps re-spawning them?

By: Jim

Jim — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 03:55:50 +0000

One word: QuickSilver I *almost* never use Spotlight – some times to find a PDF or something. I *really* should turn it off on the Safari preferences folder, so it doesn’t continually reindex my web history.

By: Fix Fan Noise & Overheating After Upgrading to Mac OS X 10.7 Lion with SMC Reset

Tue, 20 Sep 2011 18:15:28 +0000

[...] users who have just performed an upgrade from 10.6, this is usually because of Spotlight and the mdworker & mds process combination, which irons itself out over the course of an hour or [...]

By: Display - BlackBerry Forums Support Community

Display - BlackBerry Forums Support Community — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 14:49:40 +0000

[...] Display Wow. An Apple product. mdworker xxx8211; What is mdworker? I guess OSX now runs on the BlackBerry. Cool. __________________ [...]

By: flaccid

flaccid — Sat, 03 Sep 2011 06:59:19 +0000

Thats actually the same thing. Activity monitor is just a frontend to kill or kill -9.

By: Phoenix

Phoenix — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 13:18:05 +0000

If mdworker is slowing things down, what about renicing the mdworker process?

By: Mac Running Hot, Slow, & Fans Blazing After Installing OS X Lion? Here’s Why

Sat, 23 Jul 2011 05:26:54 +0000

[...] Mac running hot? The explanation is simple: Spotlight. Yup, Spotlight and it’s worker modules mdworker and mds are at it again. When you update to Lion 11A480b, whether you are upgrading from 10.6 Snow [...]

By: hagen

hagen — Sat, 21 May 2011 01:18:46 +0000

Telling people to use Terminal to kill mdworker is a crime.

Activity Monitor, select process, quit process.