Accountsd CPU usage high in macOS Catalina

This was effecting my new powerful iMac too. The CPU usage for mail was running upwards of 300%!!

I have about 6 mail accounts and what i have noticed is that if I disable all the icloud accounts in mail the CPU usage settles down below 40%(mostly sub 10%)!

So now i have an issue - what to do with the icloud accounts?

As soon as i switch them on it ramps up the cpu usage.

All icloud accounts do not have sync of Documents and Desktop selected so that's not the issue.

i'll contact Apple support when I have time. It's crazy to think that my gmail email accounts in Mac mail are all behaving well - it's just the icloud accounts.

I cant believe it, but both my MBP 15" 2015 and MBA 13" 2015 are quite ok after 10.15.6 upgrade!

No accountsd RAM eater, no Mail.app CPU peaks. Hope the issue is solved!

Uptime of my MBP went up from 3 hours to 8 hours regarding the coconut battery estimate! Wow

It might sound strange, but is any of you using "Vanilla"? I removed the program and the issue disappeared.

Thank you!

Best workaround now is to simply not use the Mail app and use for example AirMail app. Then the computer is nice and cool again.

Sorry I'm referring to @NJFirefighter answer related to turning off Mail in the iCloud sync settings. Brilliant fix.

Anyone test the new Supplemental Update that came out today for 10.15.4? It has a line item for Office 365 passwords. Who knows? Could this be a fix?

what happens if you delete all the mail accounts and uncheck mail in icloud?

Then add them back gradually one at a time?

It has to be one of the accounts surely.

Thank you. I only unchecked Mail.app because I need Desktop & Documents sync. CPU usage is barely noticeable and memory < 70MB now.

the ones he marked 1, 2, 3

Basically if you don't use your iCloud mail account or calendar or reminders or contacts or any other features in icloud account settings then uncheck them.

I have the same problem... suggestd is also consuming a massing amount of CPU time. Are you seeing that too? My laptop runs super hot and battery can't keep up. I opened a support ticket through the Feedback Assistant. I suggest you all do as well so they prioritize the issue. If it is of any help you can reference my ticket # FB7357141 for high CPU from Mac Mail and FB7401860 for high cpu from suggestd.

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!

For what it's worth, Apple Mail has been behaving for me since the 10.15.3 update AND after I've moved all the Exchange accounts over to Outlook (and disabled them in Apple Mail). I still have several other accounts in Apple Mail including iCloud, POP3, and Gmail accounts

Same boat as you. I tried them all (I think).

spark is the best all around replacement but still buggy. Needs restarts every so often but works.

I have gone a different route and separated my accounts. I’ve set up forwarding for my iCloud and non essential gmail/yahoo accounts to one gmail account and use kiwi or chrome for that. Then I paid for outlook for my 4 exchange accounts.

not as seamless as apple Mail is but since apple Mail slows my iMac Pro to a crawl after a few days it’s the best I can do.

I've been having this problem as well, off and on, and it drives me nuts. My configuration of email is a bit complicated - 4 Exchange Accounts, 1 iCloud and 2 Gmail.

What is odd is that I can fix it it by turning off the 2 Gmail accounts OR 3 of the Exchange of the accounts (out of 4). Disabling either set seems to settle accountsd down. But if I activate one of the Gmail accounts, it spikes again.

So I'm thinking it's not just the Exchange or the Gmail interfaces that are the problem, but some sort of interaction between the two. Whatever it is, it must be subtle.

Update. Another couple of days have passed and this evening, I found I was back to 3GB accountsd memory and 400% processor usage. It seems the processor only goes nuts once the process has gobbled up loads of memory, it was quite happy at 1GB. SNAFU. Restarted mail, accountsd and now behaving more normally. WTF is this process doing to become so resource-hungry?