
1+2=800% CPU usage on Catalina Spotlight calculator - abhisuri97
https://www.reddit.com/r/mac/comments/iimizu/how_to_hit_800_cpu_usage_on_an_mbp_add_12/
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bobdole12345
Yeah, spotlight doesn't know it's definitely being used as a calculator.

That 800% cpu is spotlight searching everything in its index for '1+2', just
like it is supposed to.

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abhisuri97
I was an avid calculator spotlight user; however, ever since Catalina CPU
spikes have been insanely high, I have stopped using it. And most of the other
users who noticed this started posting about it this year, so I am sure that
there was some change that was rolled back that caused spotlight to stop
recognizing when a calculation was being invoked (but I could be wrong).

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bobdole12345
Why is the assumption that it's a bug?

If your index is large, it spins up all cores, because it's parallelized in
recent versions.

You know, doing what it's supposed to do.

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abhisuri97
I think it’s a bug because a) 100%+ cpu usage is ridiculous even for normal
spotlight searches past the initial spotlight indexing operation and b) this
definitely worked without an issue or insane cpu usage before Catalina
(checked on old MBP on Sierra).

The option to use spotlight as a calculator is part of its feature set. And
the fact that it still does recognize (after a lot of cpu usage) that I wanted
to make a calculation does indicate that the calculator functionality is still
there. It just seems to be triggering some huge operation that requires even
more cpu usage than a normal spotlight search.

