This worked for me but with a couple caveats... In macOS Big Sur the spotlight data folders are protected by SIP, and so Terminal needs to be granted "Full Disk Access" per this StackOverflow post: https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/507063/cant-list-directory-even-as-root I believe that it is macOS's SIP (System Integrity Protection) that stops the du and lsprocesses from accessing the files/directories, even when running as root. SIP appears to be, since macOS Mojave, active for a number of locations under ~/Library, which means that only trusted applications can access them. I added my terminal application (iTerm2) to the list of applications that should be granted "Full Disk Access", and I did that in the "Security & Privacy" Systems Preferences settings, under the "Privacy" tab. This seems to have solved it for me. I say "seems" as I'm no macOS expert, but I believe this is what made me able to access everything under ~/Library. Apple recommends not turning off SIP globally on the system, for obvious reasons, and I don't see a real reason to do so either. After you have followed the instructions above then sudo mdutil -a -i off / sudo killall -KILL Spotlight spotlightd mds sudo rm -rf ~/Library/Metadata/CoreSpotlight/ sudo rm -Rf /System/Volums/Data/.Spotlight-V100 Then restart, you should be good to go! You can optionally then disable "Full Disk Access" for Terminal at this point if you are concerned about security.

ugh, reposted below as an answer to fix formatting: https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/675482?answerId=691564022#691564022