Ableton Forum

Hi,
I'm having a major issue with Live 12.3.5 where the indexer gets stuck and never finishes. It's indexing 6151 files and causing my MacBook Pro to overheat (85°C+).
My setup:

Ableton Live 12.3.5 Suite
macOS 26.3
MacBook Pro 16,1 (2019, i9)
Large sample library on main drive

What I've tried:

Disabled "Auto-analyze samples" in Preferences → Library
Removed individual sample folders and added only parent folders
Stop the indexer process which shows as "running" in Activity Monitor at 90-100% CPU

Questions:

How can I completely stop/reset the indexer without it restarting?
Is there a way to prevent indexing on startup?
Should I avoid indexing large sample libraries altogether?

The indexer is consuming so much CPU that my Mac is thermal throttling. Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks

Do you happen to have some of your library content hosted on a cloud?

[jur] wrote: ↑

Sun Feb 22, 2026 9:21 am

Do you happen to have some of your library content hosted on a cloud?

Nope

Open the Indexer.txt file which you'll find in Preferences > Ableton > Live 12.3.5
Go down to the last lines and see if it's getting stuck on indexing a certain file.
If so, temporarily remove that file (move it to a different location on your disk), then launch Live again and see if the indexer completes or not?

Folder above is hidden: https://help.ableton.com/hc/en-us/artic ... en-folders