Incredible CPU drain from corespotlightd

[SpaceGrayAlways]

Hello Everyone,

Ever since the last .1 upgrade to macOS 11.2.1 (20D74) I have had an incredible CPU drain from the background applicationEver since the last .1 upgrade to macOS 11.2.1 (20D74) I have had an incredible CPU drain from the background application corespotlightd. As this is an essential Spotlight service on macOS (which I use frequently) this is both annoying and problematic.

Reproduction Steps:
1. Type Command + Space bar, and enter a search term
2. Note that CPU immediately increases sharply
3. Note that it does not return after the search is completed and can continue for at least 15-30 seconds after, sometimes longer.

Views from Activity Monitor during 2 separate spikes

CPU Graph generated by iStat Menus

Steps I have taken to try and fix:
1. The only step that is a complete fix is a Terminal command of killall corespotlightd... This is of course not ideal for every time that I have to use Spotlight
2. I have disabled Spotlight search to a large number of areas, including external drives and online searches. This has not helped.
3. Restarts, Repair Disk, and re-indexing spotlight also did not help

Is anyone else facing this issue in macOS 11.2.1 and if so, has anyone found a fix?

 

[Honza1]

Sounds like bug which should be reported to Apple. Have you done so?
On my M1 mini this process jumps to max 4% and drops immediately. 11.2.1
I do not have Intel BS system yet, so cannot test there.