Core Spotlight uses high CPU when running Evernote

[FastP 0]

For several months now, whenever I have Evernote running on my Mac I've noticed the corespotlightd process takes a higher than expected CPU percentage.  It could be anywhere from 25% - 45%.  It's significant enough that it drains my battery more quickly than it used to (I've been using Evernote for a couple years).  It got to the point where I stopped using Evernote and switched to OneNote.  But after using OneNote for a while, I think I like Evernote a lot better.

So, I'm back to trying to figure out why corespotlightd keeps running with a high CPU percent when Evernote is running.  I uninstalled Evernote and reinstalled and still get the same behaviour.  I've let it run for a long time so if it's indexing, it's really taking a long time.

Any suggestions for how I can resolve this?

Paul

[PinkElephant 8,091]

No idea. On my MacBook Pro EN is completely silent, only taking up a small fraction of available CPU. It only spikes when I put load on it, like searching or other jobs.

Could you be more specific on MacOS, EN version, if it was installed directly or from the AppStore, and the Mac you’re using (model, year, CPU, RAM).

[Remnant 0]

I'm having the same problem with a new Macbook Air, Evernote 7.14 update has been installed.

When I have used the search function within Evernote at times the fan kicks in. Otherwise it never kicks in. 

I then check the Activity Monitor and find that 'corespotlightd' is using more of my CPU than Evernote, enough such that the Macbook begins to overheat thus prompting the fun to run.. 

 

[mrtheta 0]

I'm having this problem as well on my 2019 Macbook Pro, with a fresh install of macOS 10.15.6 and Evernote 7.14. While Evernote is running, corespotlightd uses 100% CPU, and stops a few seconds after I (completely) quit Evernote. The bug is also causing corespotlightd to write absurd amounts of data to disk (over and over again): over a few days before I realized what was happening, the process wrote almost 6 TB of data! I'm hoping it was all buffered and didn't hurt the life of my SSD

Is there any hope of getting a response from Evernote about this 1 year old problem? Apparently I can't submit a ticket since I don't have Premium, but this bug makes Evernote very difficult for me to use, since I can't leave it running.

[mrtheta 0]

For anyone else who comes across this: Anibal kindly made a ticket for me, and the Technical Support folks said this is a known bug: it has been fixed in the new client for Mac, but we'll just have to wait until that is released. They said some people have worked around the problem by completely uninstalling Evernote using AppCleaner (checking all boxes for items to be removed; this will delete your local notes!) and reinstalling, but the problem came back for me as soon as I re-imported my notes.

[Nuelind 1]

I'm having this same issue, where the 'corespotlightd' process uses an unreasonable amount of CPU power whenever Evernote is open (even if it's in the background and not being used). Has the new Mac client mentioned in the previous comment been released yet? I'm on 7.14.

Thanks.

[mrtheta 0]

Yes, the issue seems to be fixed in Evernote 10, but I can't use it because they dropped support for local notebooks (everything must be sent to their cloud)  I have finally given up on Evernote and switched to Obsidian (using this tool to convert my notes).

[everc 5]

I'm observing for many weeks that the "Evernote Helper (Renderer)" process is absorbing up to  200% or even more of CPU (MacBook Pro). The latest EN version 10.5.7 did not solve the problem. Deleting evernote/cache didn't help either. A solution to the problem does not seem to be in sight.

[Nuelind 1]

@mrtheta -- ugh! Disappointed to hear that... a lot of my work is kept in local notebooks, which now exceed the upload limit for Basic accounts, so converting them to synced notebooks will be a pain 😑. I think I'll try out Premium for at least a month to switch everything over to the cloud and see how I feel about 10.0, but I'll be on the lookout for a replacement. Thanks for the recommendation.

@everc -- personally haven't noticed the Helper using up excess CPU, but then again I'm still on EN 7. I'll let you know if I see the same when moving to 10.

[Nuelind 1]

UPDATE: After upgrading to Premium and converting my notebooks from local to synced, the 'corespotlightd' process in Activity Monitor is back to a steady ~0% CPU usage while Evernote is open. I'm still on version 7.14 -- have not yet upgraded to the new version 10 Mac client (and probably won't now). So maybe this bug has something to do with local notebooks having special indexing requirements which the synced notes don't?

[everc 5]

Version 7.14: no problem. Version 10: severe problem!