Accountsd CPU usage high in macOS Catalina

Did you try changing how often to "Check for new messages"? It might be a coincidence, but the problem hasn't come back since I changed it this morning.

Same issue. Tried tips from below. For me helped changing automatic download to once per 5 minutes. I can live with that delay.

Yes based on your script, I just used the killall -9 accountsd command as needed. That works for me. Thanks!

Just updated... all fixed here too!

Update to 10.15.6 took care of the issue.

Apple will not give feedback here

Install another email client like Airmail or Outlook and delete your ~/Library/Mail/V7 folder

I set my email to check for new messages every hour . I also did not provide account info for messages or iCloud . I don't use iCloud .

seems to have helped but it was till eating up memory until it maxed out the 8 gig on the machine .

I upgraded memory to the max this iMac would hold 16 Gig and also installed a ssd drive while I had it apart. After restoring back to right after the .1 update everything seems fine and memory usage seems normal and the cpu is barley being used .

on a note even though I have checked to check mail every hour I still get updates every five minutes or so .

I'm back on Mojave. Catalina was way too buggy. I've had several issues, it was slow, mail was a pain in the brain, and shutting down my Mac took 1-3 minutes. I had the feeling I'm back on my 2010 MacBook white unibody with ssd and 8gb of ram but my 2010 MB it worked smoother than my MBP 15 2018 2,6Ghz i7 16gb 560x.

IMHO: the actual version of Catalina is Mac's Windows Vista.

ps. if you want do downgrade and you re running in to error -1008f make sure you delete your Mac in "find my Mac" "Find my iPhone" and logout of your Apple ID on your Mac. otherwise you've no chance to downgrade.

pps. I'm so happy to be back on Mojave it runs so smooth without any issues.

I have been experiencing this extremely frustrating problem too.

I have had to change away from using Mac Mail to solve the issue - hopefully this wont have to be a permanent fix.

The issue seems to be caused by my Gmail accounts.

Solution Posted Here.

In the console those private errors everyone is speaking about reference a corrupted addressbook. This is the source of the high CPU spike. To fix your addressbook you need to follow the steps exactly on this page. This issue has ****** me off for 4-5 months now, and I have tried and failed numerous times to fix this issue. After I applied this fix, my mac mail started to function like normal again (*Thank god)

https://appuals.com/fix-mac-running-slow-due-addressbooksourcesync/

Hope this helps others who are having the same issue which seems like a good amount of people...

Interesting correlation. When I upgraded to Catalina I had to delete all my contacts on iCloud and turn off that account. I moved them to a gmail account. The reason is that after the upgrade the address book went wonky on me. I have multiple address books and thought I'd try killing them one by one to see what worked. I started with Apple's because I figured that gmail had it more together. After I did that address book went back to normal.

Can u post the console log of errors while the cpu spike is in progress.

I can point you to the reddit post that I have kept a record of each fix that I have tried over the past few months. The fix I mentioned has resolved my issues. The console log will point you in the right direction. I can assist if you want.

If there is one commonality is that this issue is directly related to exchange. Everyone I have spoken to and assisted has said as much. That being said you should not have todo anything with your exchange accounts. However before I applied this fix I did remove my exchange accounts, deleted mails plist to revert mail settings and then re added the exchange accounts. I thought this had worked but the cpu spiked again. It was only when I was able to pinpoint those private errors in console to the corrupted address book file that I found the current fix which I can say is still working days after being applied. I’m willing to help. You can post your console log and I can take a look for you.

Yup, exchange is the biggest pain for me. But not all. I disabled one with some very specific setting / authentication and usage went down.

But I still do have a lot of trouble, when I turn on my macbook, mail.app is open and there is no internet connection. In that case I got immediately 200%+ CPU usage and wont stop anytime soon. Have to kill app.

Hey all - Catalina 10.15.3 is out tonight and I've installed it and so far things are better for me - going to try over the next day or so and see if there's a noticeable change. But curious if others can do the same and let's all report back. Thx