Mac is constantly freezing and overheating after macOS Tahoe update (26.0.1)

Hello everyone,

I'm having a major problem with my MacBook Air M2 (8GB RAM / 256GB SSD) ever since I updated to macOS Tahoe (26.0.1). My computer has become unusable—it's constantly freezing, lagging, and getting very hot, even when I'm not doing much.

The Problem:

I opened the Activity Monitor, and it looks like a background process related to the Mac's search feature (Spotlight) has gone crazy.

It's using up all of my computer's memory (over 15 GB!), which is causing the whole system to grind to a halt. The computer is just overwhelmed. The specific process names are spotlightknowledged and contextstored.

What I've Tried:

• I can temporarily stop the problem by "Force Quitting" these processes, but they just start up again and the freezing comes back.
• I also tried the standard fix for search problems (adding my hard drive to the "Search Privacy" list and then removing it), but that didn't permanently fix it.

I have to keep manually killing these processes just to use my Mac. Is anyone else having this problem? It seems like the update may have broken something.

(I'm attaching screenshots that show the crazy memory use.)