Comments on: mds – what MDS process is and why it uses CPU on the Mac

By: Fix Fan Noise & Overheating After Upgrading Mac OS X with an SMC Reset

Fix Fan Noise & Overheating After Upgrading Mac OS X with an SMC Reset — Sat, 04 May 2013 22:43:45 +0000

[...] an upgrade from 10.6, 10.7, or 10.8, this is usually because of Spotlight and the mdworker & mds process combination, which irons itself out over the course of an hour or so. If waiting it out [...]

By: Hide the Spotlight Menu Icon in Mac OS X

Hide the Spotlight Menu Icon in Mac OS X — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 18:11:58 +0000

[...] reemphasize, this does not disable Spotlight or mds, it only hides the icon from the [...]

By: 9 Reasons Why a Mac is Running Slow and What to Do About It

9 Reasons Why a Mac is Running Slow and What to Do About It — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 05:08:25 +0000

[...] can also look in Activity Monitor for the “mds” or “mdworker” processes, both of which are related to [...]

By: George

George — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 21:43:44 +0000

If you are using a using any P2P programs you may want to prevent Spotlight from searching your”incoming” directory. I discovered Spotlight was trying to index the partial files and was killing my performance. Once I added the directory to the list under System Preferences > Spotlight > Privacy my utilization went back down to normal.

By: Andrew D.

Andrew D. — Fri, 04 Jan 2013 01:02:16 +0000

It’s a bit much to segue from a computer annoyance to a sweeping prediction of where Apple is going.

If mds is going nuts evebn after reboot I would figure it is corruption somewhere. Perhaps reset the index to start from zero: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2409?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US I am very sensitive to processes wasting power on my macbook (no laptoasters, thank you) and rarely have had a problem with mds or spotlight. The UI could use work though, like a lot of Apple stuff right now.

By: Bill

Bill — Wed, 02 Jan 2013 20:02:16 +0000

This is only 1 example of what MDS does. On my machine its running at 63% with a secondary mdworker running at 115% and my spotlight is not indicating anything of a rebuild.

This is a major pain in the butt. This happens randomly almost everyday. Spotlight is a bloated piece of junk software that appears to be thrown together by a group of people being rushed. Is not clean, its not smooth, Its not even smart enough to ignore the contents of a program and lists pieces of graphic art for the UI’s and app note files that any normal day to day user would NEVER search for.

Apple is falling apart, loosing its shine, as sloppy programmers, Ideas and programming are poorly implemented and handed out to Users.

By: j

Mon, 22 Oct 2012 04:40:07 +0000

BugsMan is a douchebag. Keep up the good work.

By: Luke

Luke — Sun, 26 Aug 2012 05:48:38 +0000

Thank you for writing this really nice, simple explanation of mds. It’s been running at 75% on my mac and I didn’t know if it was some process that was hanging that I should kill. I wish you could schedule it without needing to know Terminal language.

And I agree that Spotlight is wonderful and more people should know about it, and so a little praise about it is a good thing. Too bad Bugsman didn’t agree. I’m glad we know his opinion and can change the world to fit his preferences.

I drifted to Alfred from Spotlight, though, because it displays results with big text, in the middle of the screen. I like that!

Luke

By: Albert G

Albert G — Mon, 02 Jul 2012 13:26:12 +0000

I just started an initial time machine backup (on a new drive) and I noticed the mds and mdworker processes hitting the CPU in a big way.

Does this mean that spotlight is now also indexing the backed-up files ?

Albert

By: How to Disable (or Enable) Spotlight in Mac OS X Lion

How to Disable (or Enable) Spotlight in Mac OS X Lion — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 10:13:35 +0000

[...] in Mac OS X Lion can be done with the help of the Terminal. The following command unloads the Spotlight mds agent from launchd, preventing the daemon from running or indexing any drives [...]

By: Morialkar

Morialkar — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 04:03:49 +0000

@Kono: do you restart your mac on a regular basic? this will probably clear the problem, as (I’m making a guess here) the process probably uses more RAM over time, in the same manner as Chrome or Firefox after 3 days and 10 tabs openned.

By: Kono

Kono — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 16:33:56 +0000

my mds and mdworker is completely hogging my system and it has been going on for several week. I am suspecting that this is not a correct behavior. Does anyone know how to fix this permanently?

Thanks,

By: Mike

Mike — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 22:02:49 +0000

My mds process is not hogging to the extent that you are describing but it is using a constant 254MB of virtual memory which is the top user on a periminant basis. Does that sound right? Is is a problem?

Great article I have never noticed spotlight icon with a dot in the middle meaning that indexing is going on. Can you schedule it to happen when you decide not when the mac decides? “

By: Robert Harder

Robert Harder — Mon, 07 Feb 2011 18:45:50 +0000

@Jeff

sudo ln -s /dev/null /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Frameworks/Metadata.framework/Support/mds

(For the sake of future Internet searchers finding this page: Just Kidding! Also -f flag left off intentionally. Whew!)

-Rob

By: Jeff

Jeff — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 20:07:37 +0000

The most important question, however, is “how do you shut down that stupid mds process that is taking up 2GB of memory?” Pertinent if you’re doing computing with your mac, and that silly program is at the top of your “top -o rsize” I just saw it there, found this helpful post, and decided to experiment. I did this command: “sudo killall mds” and it went away. Nothing else seems to have crashed, so I hesitantly recommend this as a possible one-time solution, with caution of course.

Wait, never mind. It started up again. Anyone know how to disable it?