Mail.app is extremely sluggish

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Level 1

140 points

Mail.app is extremely sluggish

Mojave 10.14.6, Mail.app Version 12.4 (3445.104.15), rMB pro mid 2015, 16GB RAM, SSD

I have 15 accounts, mostly iMap, 2 MSExchange. Ever since some months (cannot remember exactly) Mail is extremely sluggish. Opening a message takes 2 to 3 seconds, closing a message leaves a half closed shadow image for a second or two until the screen is fully updated. Switching to a different mailbox takes several seconds often showing that nice little SPOD. Did rebuild each and every mailbox, did all the save boot / delete caches dance, nothing helps. All other apps run fine, nothing out of the ordinary. Most accounts are served from MacOS Server inside the same network (gigabit wired), some are external (MS and aol). All accounts work and are properly served to my iPhone connected to the same internal network through WiFi. No performance issues there, so that should rule out the server.

Anyone experiences similar sluggishness? Any idea how to fix this?

MacBook Pro Retina

Posted on Sep 14, 2020 7:05 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

BDAqua

Level 10

245,261 points

Sep 14, 2020 8:52 AM in response to ruggiero

Safe Boot, (holding Shift key down at startup), does the problem occur in Safe Mode?

Safe mode attempts to repair Disks & clears lots of caches & loads safe Drivers, & prevents loading of 3rd party extensions, so if Safe Mode works try again in regular boot.

You can save us asking dozens of questions by submitting a report from this App for us to look at…

EtreCheck is a FREE simple little diagnostic tool to display the important details of your system configuration and allow you to copy that information to the Clipboard. It is meant to be used with Apple Support Communities to help people help you with your Mac. It will not display any personal info.

https://www.etrecheck.com/

Pastebin is a good place to paste the whole report if you capture the URL while there…

https://pastebin.com/

Whew, they've changed pastebin & made it harder, but after pasting in, click Create new paste button, then Embed button, then copy the URL...

The important part is...

https://pastebin.com/embed_js/KuvnghqA

Workable but harder for me to work with...the Note tool on the bottom of this editor's toolbar, as shown in the image, to copy and paste the output from EtreCheck. In a Reply before you click post, look for this to add longer texts...

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Answer 2

ruggiero Author

Level 1

140 points

Sep 16, 2020 2:14 AM in response to BDAqua

Seems there was a lot of cruft accumulating in RAM. Mail sluggish, and just the other day the rightside USB port stopped to work - no reaction, no device visible, no matter what I plugged in. Had to leave, put the MacBook to sleep yesterday, moved it to the place where I teach this morning, opened it and had a kernel panic right away. Wow! After a reboot everything seems to be fine again, Mail is (well, not too) snappy but quite ok, and the USB ports function again. Weird. Haven't seen a kernal panic in months. I tried a reboot (with and without save mode) and clean caches and all the housekeeping one knows of, and nothing helped. Is this MS Win? I learned in my forme life that a regular reboot fixed things, but was not aware that a Unix system needed that, too. Or maybe my 'puter is starting to feel a bit old and some hardware is on its way out....

Thanks for your help

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