Excess CPU/Energy use with iCloud account in Apple Mail.

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Excess CPU/Energy use with iCloud account in Apple Mail.

There is huge CPU and energy use with the iCloud account in Apple Mail (MacBook Pro, Catalina 10.15.6) – it's associated with a continuous "Moving messages" progress bar showing in the Mail Activity window.

This doesn't occur with the two other Exchange accounts I use, and it disappears if I disable or take the iCloud mailbox offline.

In addition, the iCloud account on my Mac does not synchronize properly with iCloud. iPhone Mail seems to work properly.

Anyone have an explanation/solution for this?

(Before you ask, I've checked the disk with Disk Utility, tried starting in Safe mode, restarting, cleaned up some extraneous folders in the iCloud account, and a variety of other manoeuvres.)

MacBook Pro 15″, 10.15

Posted on Jul 30, 2020 7:24 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Finley888 Author

Level 1

12 points

Aug 4, 2020 10:00 AM in response to Finley888

Finally seem to have solved this (for now, in any case) by signing out completely from iCloud, then signing back in. If you try this, be sure to save data from Calendar, Contacts, etc. on your Mac, and then when you sign back in, to Merge computer data with cloud data. My Calendar initially showed complete duplication of events, but it sorted itself out after a half hour or so.

Thanks to Apple Support staff for guiding me through this process.

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Answer 2

karina184

Community Specialist

Aug 2, 2020 10:39 AM in response to Finley888

Hello Finley888,

It sounds like you're experiencing an issue with iCloud and the Mail app on your MacBook Pro. We'd like to see if we can help.

You've done some great troubleshooting steps so far! Are you noticing high usage of CPU and Energy for the Mail app or a specific process in Activity Monitor? Learn more, including how to quit any malfunctioning processes, here: See how apps affect Mac performance, battery runtime, temperature, and fan activity

We hope this helps!

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Answer 3

Finley888 Author

Level 1

12 points

Aug 2, 2020 11:00 AM in response to karina184

I’ve done all that. As I mentioned, the Activity Monitor shows very high CPU% and Energy use for Mail, but nothing registers for Mail sub-processes (Mail Networking, Mail Web Content). This only happens with my iCloud account, and is coincident with “Moving Messages” and “Downloading Messages” in the Mail Activity Window. When I disable the iCloud account the activity and energy grain disappear. I have also reinstalled MacOS Catalina with no improvement.

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Answer 4

Finley888 Author

Level 1

12 points

Aug 2, 2020 11:01 AM in response to Finley888

Also, Apple Support has tried to help, but they don’t seem to have any idea about the cause.

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Excess CPU/Energy use with iCloud account in Apple Mail.

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