Accountsd CPU usage high in macOS Catalina

Like @christian222, I've also followed those aforementioned steps and it's still an issue for me, and might even be slightly worse. I too have been awaiting word back from the Senior Advisor at Apple I got put with also provided logs, etc but I'm still awaiting word back. I could move to Spark as someone said that solved things for them but I on purpose spent the $ I did on the 32 gb memory for the 16 inch MacBook Pro so that I had ample memory to handle everything and am distressed that it's not happening. Once I hear anything back if it helps or solves I'll post.

Okay ladies and gentlemen, I may have a solution. Still testing. Accountsd has grown to 120Mb - BUT - stayed there. I had to delete some junk from Keychain. And right now I'm only using Mac Mail for Google Accounts. I moved my Exchange accounts to Outlook for Mac. If this works, I'll move those accounts back to Mac Mail and see what happens.

But it takes time for accountsd to grow huge and start using swap and forcing the CPU up.... so stay tuned!

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

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 found a solution that work like a charm for me. Easy too.

I went to the keychain app, and deleted all keychains that were empty. I follow this article:

https://buymymonkey.wordpress.com/2019/10/27/osx-catalina-cpu-spike-checking-mail-after-upgrade/

Hello all - so I too still haven't heard back from my Senior Advisor that I spoke to BUT I have done what the following link suggested (as @SometimesIAmRight mentioned above) and it appears to have worked:

https://buymymonkey.wordpress.com/2019/10/27/osx-catalina-cpu-spike-checking-mail-after-upgrade/

I've followed the steps in the 12/30 END OF YEAR UPDATE at the bottom of the page. I did not follow the keychain suggestion as I couldn't find any of the culprits that aspect listed.

It's been almost a week and after all my Exchange email downloaded again (over 450,000 emails) everything works fine, only Suggestd occasionally spikes but I think that's to be expected. But I regularly have been monitoring Activity Monitor and no Mail issues and been using the app fine now for days with no issues.

FYI on a side note, prior to the above solution, I'd been playing with Spark https://sparkmailapp.com . I don't like that you can't turn email threading/conversations off, but in the interim time I'd been experimenting with it I'd had zero memory issues. If they could turn the threading off, I might bail on Mail entirely. Oh - and other thing is that to save emails in folders you can only create folders in Exchange and save them there. Spark can't right now save emails to the local ON MY MAC locations like Mail can. Another potential drawback. But just throwing out there as a possible option. I get over 500 emails a day so I need something that works in a lot of cases and so far only Mail seems to be the best option but there's my two cents.

I still haven't heard back from the Senior Advisor I spoke to but at this point it seems I don't need any sort of response. Good luck all.

That cure is worse than the disease.

Backup in real time should be such a drain on CPU, especially in older models.

Feels like planned obsolescence.

More horsepower hides inefficient programming and should not make for lazy coding.

NJFirefighter wrote:

1. So I finally figured out the issue.

Mail is sending some data to iCloud. If you notice with your Documents and Desktop folders, Catalina makes it so saving to iCloud is a default. The same goes for Mail settings.

Settings>Apple ID>iCloud Drive (Options>

2. Uncheck Desktop and Documents folders.

3. Uncheck Mail

Not only is Mail working as it should, accountsd is using substantially less CPU %.

Anyway, this is what worked for me for now.

You seem to have woken up on the wrong side of bed this morning with these 2 posts....

I was merely suggesting that Spark worked great in order to provide an alternative that worked should anyone want it. But per my other post, since I did the steps I indicated before, I have had NO ISSUES since that process and am back using Mail with no issues and still monitor Activity Monitor daily.

I've had a BIG turn-around on this issue after upgrading to macOS 10.15.3. It will spike for a second here and there but not more 747 jet engine CPU fan.

As I type this, I did notice that accountsd is taking up over 700 MB of Memory, and hasn't been rebooted in awhile. No clue if that high, normal, or what. I just know my computer doesn't slow to a crawl any more...

Also better for me BUT I now have to run activity monitor all the time and force kill accountsd as it just grows and grows (if left alone I think it would go forever).

Let's hope 10.15.4 brings an answer to this. I mean it's been months.

a bit better, but yet ugly.

Catalina (I use osx since Cheeta.. and I am an apple fan..) is one of worst release of OSX: is full of bugs and slow in many aspects: this one is present since starting, but 8 months are elapsed....

:(

I'm working this case with Apple senior engineers now. I showed them showed them my blog with details, they had me do a few things and run/capture diagnostics. Will take 5 days for them to get back to me.

Please keep us posted. I had mentioned previously that I submitted logs to an Apple Senior tech and I've frankly never heard back. After following your guidelines on your blog, I'm generally still OK BUT after a few weeks the high CPU spike with Mail started building back up again and it's sporadic yet steadily so. And then goes away. So been trying to work through it as best as I can. But would love a permanent solution or I might lose patience and move to another client. Thanks

With the Apple engineer on the line, we unchecked all mail, calendars, everything under accounts. Restarted. Took a diagnostic snapshot. Then rechecked everything, restarted and took a diagnostic snapshot.

I'm glad you sent this because they wanted me to create a new admin-equivalent account on my Mac, and hook up the mail and see if accountsd grows there. Haven't done that yet.l

On my normal account, after about three days, accountsd is at 163MB and 5.9GB virtual memory. It's growing but slower.

It is good to have a "Spare Admin" permanently available for disaster recovery. In the absence of any "Mail Reset" function (which you can petition for in a Feature request on apple.com/feedback) then using the spare admin account with your Mail app is the only way to see if you have a corrupt library file. removing all your email accounts will not clean out your ~/Library.

if it does work OK on the spare admin user account then it is a bit of a job to find and delete all the miriad Mail files involved in your proper user account library.