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The mail app slows down to the point of being unusable. accountsd process takes from 250 to 500% cpu load when this happens and even makes the fans spike loudly. it takes minutes before that returns to normal, only to star again if I move from one account to the other. Incredibly frustrating. Started with the move to Catalina. When I google this, I find TONS of people with the same issue but no fix. Help!
Mac Pro
Hi Alemany,
Welcome to Apple Support Communities. I understand you're experiencing slow performance on a Mac, due to the Mail app displaying a high percentage in the CPU pane for Activity Monitor.
It's important to rely on using your Mac at optimal speed to complete your daily tasks, and I'll be happy to help.
To help troubleshoot this behavior, I recommend to follow the steps outlined in these two helpful articles:
These steps can help isolate and resolve the issue you're experiencing.
We look forward to hearing an update on the results.
Kind regards.
This has finally been solved. Recap, I tried every idea on this board and on the internet, including starting without extensions, reinstalling the system, creating a separate log in and starting new with a fresh email set up, etc etc etc. Nothing worked. I also tried the more esoteric tinkering with the system via the terminal. Nope, nothing worked.
So yesterday I upgraded to 10.15.6 and BOOM! Mail is working perfectly! No issues at all, fast and responsive, accountsd no longer hijacks the CPUs, it just works. Since this started when I moved to Catalina, and a Catalina update fixed it (and nothing else did), I am assuming this was a problem introduced by Catalina, never acknowledged by Apple, but finally fixed.
All is well.
Alemany,
Thanks for getting back to us and for providing that information.
With the regard to the articles that were previously provided, following the steps outlined in each article is relevant to your issue. I encourage for you to see if those steps has any impact in resolving the behaviors that is occurring.
In addition, I also suggest to create a test user account and see if the Mail app is displaying a high percentage in the CPU pane of Activity Monitor: How to use Activity Monitor on your Mac This will help determine if this is an issue that is user specific or system wide on your Mac: How to test an issue in another user account on your Mac
Best regards.
Thanks but my MAC runs very well I dont have issues with the system. And the app problem is not that it quit or freezes. The issue is simply that the process accountsd takes up to 500% CPU and the mail app slows down to the point of becoming unusable. Other mail programs dont do this, just the Apple mail app. And this started when I moved to Catalina. Any suggestions about this issue? Thanks!
Unfortunately, not yet. Keep trying everything I see on the web - seems there are thousands of us with the same issue and thus hundreds of potential solutions, none have worked yet. Very frustrating.
I am now killing accountsd every time it gets unresponsive and that gives me about 5 minutes of reasonable work. Not like before but at least usable.
One thing many people seem to align to is that having google mail accounts cause the issue. They remove their google accounts and the issue goes away. That would not work for me as most of my accounts are google mail. Plus a mail app that doesn't work with one of he most common emails is a non starter...
if I fix this I will post it here. Thanks!
Hi @Alemany, thank you for your swift reply. I did the same. I mean, I tried everything found on internet.
I've also tried to tweak Gmail configuration limiting the number of labels exposed as IMAP folders and also to limit the number of messages shown but gmail in the Imap folders.
All without any results....
Currently I'm using Thunderbird for the gmail accounts but this is not a solution, just a workaround :-(
Anyway it is unbelievable that Apple don't fix this problem if it is affecting a lot of users.
Hello, have you been able to solve the problem? Thanks
Thank you for the update. I can confirm that the last update have fixed the problem! :-)
Mail app slow and accountsd process taking most of the CPU
