Accountsd process using huge amounts of CPU and memory

The Accountsd process uses huge amounts of CPU and memory that makes my laptop almost unworkable. This happens when I'm not connected to the internet and the Mail app is open. This is a big problem as I need to access emails when on the move and often I won't have internet (e.g. on a train or plane or a place without wifi)

This became a problem after installing Catalina and it took me a while to figure out the issue. When connected to the internet, there is no problem at all.

I have a MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2018, Four Thunderbolt 3 Ports) with 2.7 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7 and 16 GB 2133 MHz LPDDR3.

Any ideas?

MacBook Pro 13”, macOS 10.15

Posted on Nov 23, 2019 3:50 AM

Top-ranking reply

DB Suwanee

Level 1

14 points

Posted on Jan 19, 2020 2:33 PM

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.

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Accountsd process using huge amounts of CPU and memory

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