This macOS fix may stop beach balls

Mac users running macOS 26.5 have reported frequent spinning beach balls, sometimes accompanied by a trackpad that becomes completely unresponsive for several seconds. Activity Monitor commonly points to one or more processes consuming unusually high CPU resources: mediaanalysisd, kernel_task, and corespotlightd.

The issue was previously suspected to involve Apple Intelligence photo scanning. The mediaanalysisd process has been seen using between 50% and 150% CPU, while other users have reported elevated usage from the other two processes.

Macworld’s Michael Simon experienced freezes dozens of times per hour on the worst days:

Recommended reading

Yeston gives RTX 5060 an RTX 5070 makeover

“At any moment, my Mac will freeze, with my trackpad becoming unresponsive and a spinning beach ball replacing my cursor. It only lasts a few seconds, but on the worst days, it happens dozens of times an hour and renders the trackpad completely unresponsive, as if my MacBook were shut down.”

Deleting CoreSpotlight data

After trying several unsuccessful fixes, Simon found that deleting the ~/Library/Metadata/CoreSpotlight folder stopped the problem. This forces the Mac to rebuild its Spotlight index, but he reported no recurrence two weeks later. The author of the original report had also seen no further freezes after less than a day.

To remove the data:

• Open Finder.
• Choose Go > Go to Folder….
• Paste ~/Library/Metadata/CoreSpotlight.
• Press Command-A, right-click any selected item, and choose Move to Trash or Move to Bin.
• Right-click the Trash and choose Empty Trash or Empty Bin.
• Confirm the action when prompted.

The process may leave Spotlight unavailable while its data is rebuilt, so users should be prepared to wait for indexing to finish.

Photo by Ed Robertson on Unsplash