Accountsd process using huge amounts of CPU and memory

I've had this problem on a 2017 15.4" MacBook Pro and 2019 16" MacBook Pro both running the latest version of Catalina and it happens regardless of whether or not I'm connected to the Internet. I manage A BUNCH of e-mail accounts using Apple's Mail.app.

1 iCloud

3 Exchange/Office 365

8 Gmail

1 Yahoo!

1 IMAP/SMTP

I did a little experimenting and have found that accountsd and Mail.app behave "normally" when I'm ONLY using it to manage my iCloud account. I have Outlook from Office 365 managing my Exchange/Office 365 accounts. I use Thunderbird to manage my GMAIL, Yahoo! and IMAP/SMTP accounts. Everything EXCEPT my iCloud account was removed from the System Preferences -> Internet Accounts pane. I've been running this way for the last five days and performance has been great.

In this time I have NEVER seen either Thunderbird or Outlook 365 consume > 100% CPU. Their "Memory" usage seems to stay around 512 MB (Thunderbird) and 741 MB (Outlook). My fan NEVER runs.

Today, I added one Office 365 account back to Mail.app (I'm still using Outlook 365) and since doing that, performance seems to be OK.

Have you been able to make the problem go away by reconfiguring your Google and Exchange based accounts to using IMAP/SMTP? That has consistently worked for me. For me personally, it seem like MacOS 10.15.3 "fixed" the problem with Gmail, but DID NOT fix the problem with Exchange-based accounts. For the Exchange-based accounts (Office365 and Outlook.com), I'm using IMAP and SMTP configurations.

Hi, I have removed the Office 365 account from Internet Accounts, configured an app password for my 2FA protected Office 365 account (https://account.activedirectory.windowsazure.com) and with that password re-added the Office 365 account to my Mac. I have all options (Mail, Calendar, etc.) selected. I still have S/MIME signing active and use encrypted emails regularly. I have not suffered the continued high CPU usage of accountsd since the change 4 days ago. Not sure if it's now really resolved, but it's looking promising. Thought I'd let you know, maybe your setup also includes Office 2FA but no app password, yet.

Absolutely the same issue here. The problem is with O365 exchange account. When I disable the sync of Mail and Notes for the account -> all CPU load gone away. You can easily simulate just by turn off Wifi.

macOS Catalina10.15.5 (19F101)

MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2018, Four Thunderbolt 3 Ports)

2,3 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i5

16 GB 2133 MHz LPDDR3

I had added my three Exchange-based accounts to Mail.app using the native Exchange Web Services interface. I added all eight Gmail-based mail accounts as IMAP/SMTP accounts. I did occasionally see instances of Mail.app using > 100% CPU utilization; however, accountsd CPU utilization was running low. The "Memory" for accountsd was 1.05GB and the "Ream Memory" was 105MB.

I removed my three Exchange Web Services-based accounts and re-added them using the relevant IMAP/SMTP interface. So far, Mail.app CPU utilization remains < 100%.

I just switched my account to plain 2FA (MFA) without any app password and did the same: Removing and re-adding the account that I assume being responsible for the problem (a Microsoft 365 mail account). You don't need to use app passwords any more for apple mail in the current version.

Currently – after 1 hr – it looks like it worked and the problem seems to be gone! I hope it's not coming back after everything has been re-synced.

I don't know but you're the first case I've seem that it's saying that it's google. Anyhow, this problem is very specific. The huge amount of CPU usage happens when you have an exchange account, mail is open and you are out of internet connection.

I've posted a link to macrummors forum were there are a couple of methods to fix it.

If you are just seeing huge amount of CPU usage on the normal operation of mail —without dropping the internet connection— it's just a totally different problem.

The problem with Exchange accounts arouse, at least in my case, after the upgrade to Catalina. So it could perfectly be related to the update itself that mess up the settings, since it can be fixed deleting the settings totally —following the instructions on macrummors forum— and setting the account up again.

Seeing as how nobody knows that the problem is, I think it is a little premature to discount things as being totally separate. I was seeing a huge amount of CPU and Memory utilization with Mail.app and accountsd when both Gmail and Exchange accounts were configured with the OAUTH2 authentication.

Now with only Exchange configured to use the OAUTH2 authentication and Exchange Web Services interface, I am seeing the occasional spike in CPU usage from Mail.app (going up to 150%), but the accountsd process is staying pretty low. On the memory front, accountsd is using 105MB of "Real Memory" and "1.05GB" of memory. Performance is MUCH better than what it was when I was using the default configuration.

Relative to ssilvanoo, I too have an environment that has been upgraded from one version of macOS to another and migrated from a number of different macBooks using Time Machine and Migration Assistant via Thunderbolt cable. And I have been having this problem to some degree since macOS High Sierra at least. It does seem to have gotten worse under Catalina to the point where my system becomes almost unusable necessitating a restart.

I too tried to no avail to raise the issue with Support, but my problem was that I am not on the GA release, so I have to go another route (which I'm doing).

I have found that using IMAP/SMTP with application passwords for my Office 365 accounts alleviates the problem for me.

Again, aside from moderating this forum for violations of the rules, I don't know how much posts in this forum are reviewed by Apple support personnel or software developers when prioritizing bugs to fix in software.

FWIW, I (see above) only got it to work (and it's worked ever since), after I set up the app password for Apple Mail, despite it not needing one anymore.

I really don't know what the heck you've checked in this thread / forum, but the solution was already posted and I can assure you, that at leas in my case it working and lasting. Actually there are not one but two solutions. One is a workaround and the other is permanent fix.

The fix is in this thread https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/accountsd-mail-process-and-cpu-usage.2212236/?post=28119300 and the work around is just use IMAP instead of exchange for the office accounts. You can use exchange for the calendar if you wish.

The latest update to 10.15.5 (19F101) seems to solve this issue for me.

If you haven't already, I would suggest making sure you have documented the issue using Apple's Feedback portal for Mail.

https://www.apple.com/feedback/mail.html

If you're running the general release version of the OS, you can call Apple Technical support and try to work through the issue with them.

Just got off the phone with Apple Support supervisor and was told that this is a known issue and current recommendation is to "quit the Mail app when not in use." 😔

I've been running with Mail.app configured to poll my three Exchange-based accounts in addition to my iCloud account for about a week and I am NOT seeing the same performance problem.

I just added all my Gmail-based accounts to Mail.app; however, when I went to the System Preferences -> Internet Accounts pane, I used the "Add Other Account..." option. I created app passwords for each of my Gmail-based accounts and configured them as IMAP/SMTP accounts. We'll see how that goes.

I suspect the problem is Gmail accounts that are using the OAUTH2 authentication. Perhaps the accountsd daemon is constantly trying to renew the OAUTH2 token?