Accountsd CPU usage high in macOS Catalina

If the problem does not occur in a new user account then there is a remedy.

• Move all your data to the new user account.

You could close Mail and delete the Mail/V7 folder in your ~Library but you probably would not hit the bad file.

You could use Easyfind to delete every mail oriented file under your user account. Might fix it

So please take 20 minutes to create the user account and try Mail there.

IF indeed the fault is in your user account but not an another account, in my opinion you can wait as long as you want for a fixed update, it will not come.

• Move your stuff to the other account or
• use another mail client.

I want to also mention that as an Exchange user who is experiencing similar issues, my solution that I'm living with for now is turning Mail to checking MANUALLY and not 'Automatically' or 'Every minute, 5 minutes, 15 minutes, 30 minutes or hour'. Ironically some mail keeps coming in automatically anyway, but I'm not having any CPU or memory issues (or fan issues) and all I have to do is GET NEW MAIL whenever I want. As I get over 500 emails a day this is a non-issue as I'm in Mail a lot and I prefer Mail over Outlook or Spark, having tried both of them as alternatives for Mail while dealing with this issue. The recent 10.15.4 supplement didn't solve it and I'm not confident it will ever get solved (at least in Catalina). I'm awaiting the latest from the Senior Advisor I've been dealing with and submitting logs to and have directed him to this thread. Hopefully in the not too distant future this will be solved. Here's hoping.

It's both Gmail and Exchange accounts.

I fixed on my gmail account. I did this accidentally when testing. I logged in under another account on my Mac in Safe Mode; added the gmail account there and tested with no issues under the new login. Came back to my regular login account and gmail working fine again. Went back to other account and deleted.

However, all of my Exchange accounts I have not been able to fix. I can run one at a time for a little while, but eventually have to disable once the "accountsd" process spins out of control.

All other types of email accounts work fine... this is limited to Gmail and Exchange, Exchange being the worst offender I think.

I've also noted that other 'tied in' apps will freeze and need to be force quit that are tied in via Exchange, such as Notes, Contacts, Calendar, Reminders. Deselecting these under Exchange Account settings seems to fix them freezing.

I've also seen Messages freeze when "accountsd" process is ramped up.

It's amazing this doesn't affect iOS whatsoever... but I remember about 3 years ago I had same issue on iOS until updates fixed.

Try deleting then re-adding the Gmail account to your email...

When adding, choose Gmail. At the end, only choose Mail in the option leaving Contacts, Calendars, Notes unchecked (for now). If that doesn't work, and you have iOS devices, make these match this setting or delete and re-add these too making sure you select Gmail when adding to make consistent across your syncing devices.

If you have any Exchange Accounts, disable these and test Gmail by itself... if you have both Exchange and Gmail, I bet it's Exchange and not Gmail causing the most issue (it was for me).

Let us know if you get fixed...

He meant Quit or Force Quit... but it's a temporary fix. You can do the same by opening Activity Monitor and quitting there. But it's temporary. How many Mail accounts do you have? I have a dozen. My Gmail is fine now, and iCloud and all other IMAP and POP accounts are fine... just the Exchange Accounts are causing the issue for me now. I've disabled Exchange and just get those emails on my iOS devices until Apple fixes this.

Try the Automatic setting. How many Mail Accounts do you have? Try disabling all of them (right click on the account in Mail, and select "Take account name offline") then re-enable just one at a time and try for awhile. Narrow down. For me it's mostly my Exchange Accounts... but I did delete and re-install all my Gmail accounts in Mail.

Create a new User account on your Mac, and login to it. Open Mail and add your offending account there. See if it causes the same issue. (Only takes a few minutes and is easy to do).

This isn't a fix, but may narrow the issue and will give Tech Support useful information.

I did have this issue and even had to resort to the manual check email set to "never".

Ever since I moved all my Exchange accounts completely out of Apple Mail and into Outlook -- everything has been good for me. My Apple Mail continues to have iCloud, POP3, SMTP, and Gmail accounts in it and it is working fine. accountsd stays well under 30% CPU at most and is usually less than 1% CPU.

I would prefer to have all my mail accounts in Apple Mail, but I'm able to work with this now.

I'm finding a simpler approach works for me: I keep my terminal window open and every 4-5 hours, I just execute these two commands:

killall -9 accountsd

killall -9 ContactsAccountsService

That reduces Mail's CPU usage dramatically. When it creeps back up, I do this again.

I have disabled my iCloud mail and two imap accounts and kept my three main exchange accounts active. This has been running for over 3 day’s without a problem.

My contacts are still in iCloud and my agenda’s are in Exchange.

So for those that believe it’s caused by Exchange I disagree.

I see a relation in the number of email account I use. When no more than 4 it seems to stay oke. After that every account added makes it more worse.

ps. @vip4lif you can also get that result by simple quiting mail and reopen it again.

For me at least, I have come to find out after 9 months of investigating/Trial and Error that Exchange is defiantly related to this issue. It may not be the cause and there may be other issues that cause the CPU spike, but I have found that if I remove the exchange accounts everything works like normal in mail.

Wish apple would look into this issue.

I'm glad that we're all discussing this still. It proves that there's a major problem.

I wonder how many of us can contribute this to Keychain. I noticed a major difference once I deleted most of my passwords that were connected to mail accounts. Especially accounts that I once had on a different server that are now on Exchange servers.

I ended up just deleting a ton of keychain passwords. Granted, I had to add some software passcodes back.

I have one email that was proving to be a pain. I need to add it back and that will tell me if the problem definitely lies with Keychain.

I think permissions changed somehow when we all upgraded to Catalina.

For me, the problem was an issue inside Keychain.

I wouldn't be doing anything heavy on the computer. The only thing I would be doing is coding. Randomly the CPU would spike. Both accountsd and Mail were always the ones at the top.

So I would close Mail and the CPU would come down.

Since deleting all my keychains, especially the ones from 8 some 10 years ago, the problem has stopped. Granted, I had to add passwords back for a lot of my client's FTP accesses and some mail.

It's been almost 2 weeks and no issues.

Yes tomorrow it will be a week since I upgraded to 10.15.6

Mail on my MBP16 has been working great since the update.

Mail is using standard not more than 5% and might spike to 145% at starting mail but that will drop fast to less than 5%.

And the accountsd % is also low when it might spike to maybe 20% but it will drop again fast.

I have never seen the huge 200+ percentages for both the mail as accountsd processes anymore.

And I'm using 3x 365, 1x iCloud, 2x iMap and 1x gmail accounts all the time what was a no go before the update!

So my conclusion is that 10.15.6 finally has fixed this annoying Bug for me!

TO ALL: Please share your experiences to see if it solves it for all of us!

I just disabled my exchange accounts and so far (20 min) mail is is back to normal and accountsd is at 0%!

I think that exchange might be the culprit as suggested.

Nothing worked for me. I removed Exchange from Mac Mail and it solved the problem. I've moved to Outlook for Mac...