I constantly have the beachball spinning (MacBook Air; M3; 8GB; Tahoe 26.5.2; hard drive shows 222.16 GB available of 494.38 GB). This is new since integrating everything into DT4. I have restarted to no effect. The activity monitor shows corespotlightd running high (% of cpu in 150’s range); no other apps are running high. We forced Spotlight to rebuilt its index, but it’s still jumping into the 115 range and the beachball still interferes with use.
As DEVONthink is now my largest folder, should I hide it from Spotlight? Is there any thing else I could try first? I do have AppleCare; perhaps I just call them?
Do a Spotlight search for Activity Monitor. When our application is stalled, go into Activity Monitor and select our application in the list of processes - it should show “(Not Responding)” and the name in red - and press Command-Option-S to run a sample on it. When the sample window opens, press the Save button and save it to your Desktop.
In DEVONthink, hold the Option key and select Help > Report Bug and attach the process sample.
DT is not stalling (in Activity Monitor, DT is only using about 14% CPU when i am active there); it is not showing “Not Responding” nor is the name in red. But corespotlightd is running very high.
The inter webs say it’s an indexing issue, something is hung up/trying repeatedly to index (if, in my limited understanding, I have that right).
I am not sure who constitutes “the inter webs” but we are with whom you should be discussing these issues.
We don’t control Spotlight. And if you’re using many tags, that could be having an effect.
We have no information on your database or if you’re importing or indexing (linking to external documents, not parsing document contents), where your database is stored, what it’s size is, etc. You are also running a very limited machine with only 8GB RAM, which could certainly be playing a part.
All this points back to my previous request for you to open a support ticket.
PS: Hiding your DEVONthink folder from Spotlight will do nothing as Spotlight doesn’t index the contents of our databases directly.
For the last few months I’ve been engaged in warfare with corespotlightd myself. It’s not limited to DT4, it’s a macOS issue, but, given what corespotlightd does, and what Spotlight is meant to do, it is possible that changes to your local file system (which may include things happening with DT4), can lead to corespotlightd going nutballs.
There are numerous news articles online about ways to “fix” this, but many of them boil down to forcing Spotlight to re-index your local file system by deleting the Spotlight index.
While correlation is not causation, I can attest that my personal experience has been that when I deleted the Spotlight index, things absolutely did improve (after a reboot as well - always start fresh).
Your Kilometreage May Vary, of course.
One useful article that came out recently on this topic is:
Again, this may have NOTHING to do with your specific issues, but, corespotlightd was making my system unusable and this seemingly helped.
Or, it had no effect whatsoever and time simply let corespotlightd do what it was doing (poorly) on its own.
Many thanks, dotsplatslash. And the article is 100% what was happening for me. We too found the same “fix” and did do the Spotlight re-indexing and it did seem to help. The spinning beachball is not longer constant; not gone, but not constant. I’ll take it as I keep an eye on it.
Thanks for chiming in… sometimes it’s good to know you’re not alone.
I’m not sure this is relevant. And it might not be reliable, but it just might shed some light on this. I had a lot of trouble recently with LaunchBar failing to launch any apps. It turned out that Spotlight had the same problem, and the source was in the MacOS indexing code. Some of this was fixed by upgrading from 26.5 to 26.6. It still doesn’t seem right, but I’ve found workarounds. The discussions I saw on the web indicated that Golden Gate and Apple intelligence will require much more indexing and so recent versions of Tahoe are doing a lot of indexing in the background to get a head start because Apple is afraid of everybody’s Mac sagging under the weight of a lot of indexing when Golden Gate comes out. I don’t know if this is real or just hallucinations, but I offer it, with some trepidation, as a data point in the discussion.
Ya… my issues continue. We more closely followed dotsplatslash’s article today (including deleting the files) and I am up and running again, but the activity monitor is showing the spotlightknowledged.updater running in the +150’s %CPU (how can it be over 100%?). We are wondering if I just need more memory (8 GB) especially as I head back to school, but this machine is relatively new and I balk at the outlay. I do have apple care and may just have to call them for help
I am running 26.5 and don’t see an available update for 26.6. Where/how did you find that update? TY
8GB RAM is sufficient for low-resource computer use but 16GB should be the minimum on a machine you need to get more out of. Even more is better, if possible (and affordable, as we know how volatile memory supply and demand is right now).
I don’t see that you’ve opened a support ticket so we can’t look at logs and machine info to better assess the situation.
Thank you, Bluefrog. I think I just need more oomph. Pages seems to be doing something here too (using 2.57GB of memory?!!)… I’ll call apple tomorrow about all this,
My current machine is 2 years old and as I now qualify for the student discount (!) and they will take my current machine in trade, I may just have to pull the trigger. Sigh.
Yes… I am thinking of probably going to 24GB. Does the SSD storage matter? It comes with 512GB.
512GB is a useful disk size and 24GB is definitely a plus. Disk space can be simply and affordably expanded with an external drive as needed, RAM can’t.
PS: As part of your hardware upgrade, make sure you get an external hard drive for your local backups. I believe a computer purchase is not complete unless a backup drive is included or you have one ready to go after unboxing. And yes, I strongly recommend unboxing, setting up the account, and letting Time Machine do a first full backup immediately or after installing the basics like DEVONthink and setting up your email. Even if you opt to use another backup application later, I still advocate this approach. A 1TB or 2TB drive should be fine.
For Mac OS upgrade, got to System Preferences > General > Software Update and possibly Check for Updates.
I have 48 GB of RAM, so I don’t think that’s an issue in my case, but Spotlight still doesn’t seem to be finding apps. My workaround is to add all the apps I ever use to Launchbar’s index ‘Custom Link’ section. I never used Spotlight for anything, so I wouldn’t have been affected if Launchbar weren’t depending on Spotlight under the hood.
I did the upgrade to 26.6. I didn’t get a notification that this upgrade was available (first time that’s happened; automatic updates is still on) so thank you very much for suggesting that fix. It made a HUGE difference; I had one track pad hang up and one beach ball yesterday. The next time that happens I’ll call apple support, and I am still thinking about upgrading my machine. But, as with most things, everything seems fine now so…
Tahoe has been a buggy mess in many ways so we do advocate staying on top of the point releases. That does NOT mean we suggest moving to the next major version when it becomes available, but e.g., 26.6 to 26.6.1, we do.
Lately, I’d wait at least for a .2 release but I’d also assess if you need to run the latest OS. IMHO, i.e., my personal take, there’s nothing in Tahoe compelling enough to move to it. If I didn’t have to for work, I would have stuck with Sequoia… or even Sonoma.
