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For anyone who'd like a less drastic solution (ro reformatting your drive and a fresh reinstall) there's the option to script force quitting it every second or so. Still not what I'd call an "acceptable" solution, but an option some might consider nonetheless. Add the following towards the end of your .bashrc or .bash_profile: stopcorespotlightd() { while true; do sleep 1 if pgrep -x "corespotlightd" > /dev/null; then killall -ABRT corespotlightd fi done } stopcorespotlightd > /dev/null & (...or adapt for zsh or other shell choice as you see fit). Disclaimer: If you don't know what you're doing in Terminal and bash scripting please don't use this. To my knowledge corespotlightd can not be gracefully quit so the above is force quitting it every second. Force quitting anything is only ever advised as a last resort. Arguably this is such a scenario, short of reformatting your drive per the accepted answer. I have run this successfully for a few weeks, without any noticeable issues, and it has saved me loads of CPU, RAM and SSD thrashing. I believe very confidently it will not do your Mac any harm, but I offer no guarantees and do not accept any responsibility for your use of it or any adaptation of it.