Accountsd process using huge amounts of CPU and memory

Hey!

I really would like to know if you really have the same problem or just a similar one related to accountsd. I mean… I was reading the post on the site you shared and I don't have any of those things. I don't have a gosht keychain and the computer work well and the accountsd has a normal behavior if you don't have exchange mail account enabled in mail and no connection.

I just disabled my exchange mail —just the mail— and everything work well even with mail open and no connection. At least in my case the problem is pretty specific to Exchange mail accounts on Mail app on Catalina.

What is going on, at least in my opinion is, mail just enters in a loop when you have a exchange account and no connection and try to connect to the server all the time.

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 also did not have a ghost keychain. Also, it seems like the problem is gone as soon as I disable a certain exchange account. And yes, I also was able to reproduce it on a new user.

I think we have exactly the same problem.

The problem just was temporarily resolved when I was applying the actions suggested in the blog post's last amendment. As far as I remember I deleted the account details in the keychain and removed and re-added the mail accounts.

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.

Hi blcmildmay,

Thank you for using the Apple Support Communities! I understand you're running into a performance issue with your Mac when it comes to using your Mail app, and I'd like to help.

It sounds like you did a good job identifying the relation between the high CPU process and the Mail app. Have you tried resetting the SMC: How to reset the System Management Controller (SMC) on your Mac - Apple Support. If not, give that a go. If the issue remains, continue below.

Let's have you boot up into safe mode. It’s a way to start up your Mac so it performs certain checks, repairs, emptying of system cache, and prevents some software from automatically loading: Use safe mode to isolate issues with your Mac - Apple Support. Once in safe mode, check to see if the same behavior continues when using the Mail app online and offline. Sometimes safe mode can successfully resolve some issues. With this being said, after testing in safe mode, restart and log in as normal to see if that helps resolve the behavior.

If it continues, I will have you test a new user account next, to isolate if this is a user-specific issue, or a system-wide issue. Here’s how: How to test an issue in another user account on your Mac - Apple Support. Based on the results in the new user, you could continue to the section titled 'If the issue doesn't happen in the other account' or 'If the issue happens in the other account' to continue troubleshooting.

Keep me posted on the results and status of this behavior.

Regards.

I have exactly the same problem since moving to Catalina (I even had waited for 15.1) and I have been working on trying to resolve this since WEEKS. It's the worst problem I've ever experienced on a Mac in 20+ years. It affects my productivity enormously, because I need Apple Mail as a client.

I've spent numerous hours with support, performing all of the typical tasks they request. We could reproduce it under safe mode, with a new user, and also deleting lots of things in the libraries did not lead to any sustainable change.

Due to this (OK, and the new keyboard) I've even decided to immediately move to a new full-spec MacBook Pro 16" from my late 2018 (!) full-spec MacBook Pro. Interestingly, after migrating it was gone and performed well for something like a week until I added a certificate because I had to decrypt an encrypted e-mail that I had received in the past and was readable on my "old" 2018 MacBook Pro. Since adding the certificate, the problem was back on the new machine, so it seems to be related to certificates. I've tried to delete as much keychain data as possible related to my mail accounts (the problem it seems to be Exchange related) and I also removed the certificate from the keychain. Interestingly, the problem persisted even after removing the certificate. One thing I also noticed is, that one e-mail related certificate seems to come back automatically, even if I've deleted it. But this certificate is not the certificate I had needed for decrypting.

Following the final instructions here (https://buymymonkey.wordpress.com/2019/10/27/osx-catalina-cpu-spike-checking-mail-after-upgrade/) brought some days of relief. But now it's back, so maybe it's just a question of time and me adding the certificate just coincided with the problem occuring again. But I personally dont think so, because accountsd is keychain related and this would be a very big coincidence.

It's really frustrating. Even three calls with 2nd level (sadly, with three different people) didn't help. I had to redo many, many things even though I informed them what I had performed in the past on their request. In the end, the last agent just made very unprofessional (and obviously wrong) assumptions about the cause and told me to contact Microsoft, because it's not Apple's fault, also AppleCare just is a hardware guarantee, and with reinstalling everything my problem would be gone.

They just ignored that due to moving to the new computer I was able to pinpoint a possible cause of this - in my opinion - huge problem which clearly is some system bug. Also, no one was able to explain why the deleted certificate keeps coming back.

I'm really surprised that within spending multiple hours in high level support no one ever wanted to look into console or process info which might give clues what it relates to. Sadly, I'm not able to decipher the system information, but I'd say there's lots of indications on errors visible in console.

Apple needs to do something with this problem.

Obviously it's affecting more people than just me, in exactly the same way.

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 why you're giving him —and us— that hollow and scripted answer —from which we're quite tired of. The reality is that there a good amount of people that has this issue after updating to Catalina, and probably there are more our there, but they don't know they have it, even more since these days internet is so ubiquitous.

The issue, at least in my case, arrises when I leave mail app open, I close the lid of the computer and the computer loses internet connexion —at it should, since it was a tethered connection from my phone. I guess that the computer wake ups in power nap mode —if you have this feature enabled on the power settings— doesn't fine any network connection and goes crazy.

I guess that a work around is to disable power nap or close mail app if there is not internet.