Accountsd CPU usage high in macOS Catalina

Is everyone on here using the Feedback Assistant to report these issues? I can't get Apple's attention and they have not fixed it in the latest beta. And I have a feeling unless everyone reports it they won't treat it with a high priority.

For me the issue is when I activate my two Gmail accounts in Mail. Normally accountsd and Mail take 300% CPU for less than 30 seconds, when I make active both Google accounts randomly the CPU will go to 400% and the fan will start at maximum speed for very long periods of time, causing the entire machine being so slow that I need to close Mail to be able to work. When that happens, if I don't pay attention, and I close the lid it will drain the battery and the laptop overheat in my case... I tried multiple times deleting and recreating the accounts.

I have 5 Exchange, 1 iCloud and 2 Gmail accounts.

It is so bad for me that I'm trying to learn my way in Outlook now.

Thank you,

Agreed. I'm currently using MS Outlook, a little awkward but it works with all my email accounts from Exchange, iCloud and Gmail accounts. Mac Calendar is working fine with all accounts, including Gmail.

I've suspected it is the several POP accounts I have that's causing this. Some of them are no longer active (but I keep them for the mail archives) which I am certain doesn't help. This was never a problem with earlier versions of macOS mail.

same problem, unfortunately your solution doesn’t work (and what the heck is mail doing anyway storing things in iCloud? Shouldn’t IMAP store anything Mail requires in the first place?)

given the different hacks that worked for different people but not others, it would seem they try to sync accounts between devices, but if there are some inconsistencies, things go bonkers.

Typical Apple assumption: everything “just works” (until it doesn’t), and thus users have no control.

Do I miss the days of human readable settings files, that if need be one could edit and fix.

Yes I was confused for a moment and erased my response.

It only helps if you don't want to use your apple mail account. Mine is turned on but with no problems even though I don't use the account. But the account does exist.

It has to be more complex than it appears, like the Apple account in question cannot handle mail or only exists as an alias.

I think there are a number of issues at play here. I don’t use (and never have used) an iCloud email account and yet the problem surfaced for me. With all of the things I’ve changed, it’s a lot better. I only have to kill the accountsd process once a week or so - or whenever it acts up. So it could be a couple of things that are causing this issue.

It's not how I usually do things, even ashamed to admit, but due to being sick etc I just rolled with it and it sortof fixed itself after some time, maybe I accidentally changed something, but desktop and documents are being synced via icloud, also when I set my old laptop running High Sierra to sync desktop via icloud, it also attempted to lift off from my table for about 24 hours, might be something else, might be coincidence too

suggestd sends out thousands of these when I Calendar...

[com.apple.calendar.foundation.contacts] [Failed to fetch me contact with error Error Domain=CNErrorDomain Code=400 "Invalid Predicate" UserInfo={NSLocalizedDescription=Invalid Predicate, NSLocalizedFailureReason=The operation couldn’t be completed because its predicate is invalid.}]

I have read this thread with great interest as I have the same issue and I have the new 16 inch MBP with 32 gigs of RAM and have been baffled with what's going on. Given all the other posts, some of the remedies suggested don't apply to me:

• I don't have gmail
• I don't have MAIL checked under iCloud as the email I use the most is on Office 365 Exchange
• I don't have FileVault on

Also, interestingly, my issues has always been CPU usage with Mail. suggestd and accountsd (neither of which do I know what they relate to) have never been nuts for me like others who have posted. They get high but not near as high as others have mentioned

But I am mainly posting to say that I was able to get in contact with a Senior Advisor at Apple who of course confirmed none of this is normal behavior and we ran the Capture Data app they provide during support and have submitted my logs via that app so that the engineers can review it. If they come back with any interesting suggestions not already covered here I'll post them.

Yes. That’s exactly what I’m saying. The corrupted address book is causing the issues with accountsd. I like all of you have tried numerous fixed. Sometimes they temporarily work, but since implementing this fix I have not had 1 cpu spike in the past 3 days. The console errors have disappeared. I have rebooted my co outer many times. I can firmly state this issue is resolved for me.

Not sure if anyone else has tried this yet BUT when you uncheck all the Exchange accounts items you mention above the account automatically becomes Inactive - and you need it Active to use it. So at least Mail has to be checked I am presuming.

Mail is better but suggestd is still out of control and it's due to Mail.

I can reboot my computer, not start Mail and everything is fine--including suggestd. Once I start Mail then suggestd goes crazy...

I suspect Google and Apple do not play well together. I use Gmail in safari for the one tiny Google account I created simply to allow privileges in Google Maps and YouTube, (Gmail app on iphone), and Mac Mail app for proper mail (Outlook and Apple).

I don't allow Google to be involved in my online affairs otherwise. It isn't strictly IMAP for example.

Gmail I suspect has caused many problems with Mail app and Catalina generally. Not blaming Google devs or Apple devs - I am blaming both, and they need their ears boxed.

Hi nmehtalumen, I'm now in touch with my 2nd Apple Senior Advisor and have re-submitted my logs, etc. and should be hearing today about it. One thing that was interesting to hear is that he had me look at the Memory Pressure in Activity Monitor which you can access via the Memory tab (2nd tab) at the bottom. it seems engineers are looking for Memory Pressure to spike towards the top of that little window when they are looking at problems for this Mail thing but I've stressed that that's never happened to me. I just get a steady green line (no peaks even) when Mail is open and it crawls the machine to a halt. I've directed him to this actual forum thread and one other on a similar topic and I personally don't think we're going to have the issue resolved - certainly before this possible Tuesday update release. As the post below from @VktorDM, I too have moved for now over to MS Outlook. Not happy about it as I hate MS, but it's the closest experience I get. There are some cool things about Spark (which I have tried) but for me, the killer in Spark is that it always has to group by conversation and I just can't stand that practice so Spark isn't a good option for me given that. It sucks but good luck!