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Why is Mac Mail app so slow in performing searches. It can take more than a minute to perform a search. The problem is in Big Sur. My MacBook Pro, which still has Catalina, has no such problem searching.
iMac 27″, macOS 11.4
Thanks for your suggestions.
I have tried:
-- Quitting Mail App
-- Restarting the computer
-- Rebuilding mailboxes when I found the email searched for, when the search took a long time
Each of these attempts at fixing the problem often seemed to work temporarily. Eventually I was back in the land of never-ending searches.
Have a good weekend!
Thanks for your suggestions.
I have tried:
-- Quitting Mail App
-- Restarting the computer
-- Rebuilding mailboxes when I found the email searched for, when the search took a long time
Each of these attempts at fixing the problem often seemed to work temporarily. Eventually I was back in the land of never-ending searches.
Have a good weekend!
Hi walrus549,
Thank you for posting in Apple Support Communities. From our understanding, you are experiencing slow performance with your Mac when performing tasking like searching in Mail, is that correct? Do you notice this when performing any other task? Have you tried the steps listed here: If your Mac runs slowly.
Hope that helps!
Hi walrus549,
Thank you for that information. Since noticing this, have you quit the Mail app? You can also select to rebuild your mailboxes to see if this continues. Check out this article on how to perform those steps: Rebuild mailboxes in Mail on Mac.
How to force an app to quit on your Mac
Have a good one!
walrus549,
Thanks for trying those steps. Have you tested in another user to see if this occurs system wide? You can also test in Safe mode to see if it continues.
Set up users, guests, and groups on Mac
How to use safe mode on your Mac
If it does, we'd recommend creating a back up of your data just in case and reinstalling the macOS since the Mail app is built into the macOS.
Back up your Mac with Time Machine
If further assistance is needed, you may be able to reach out to Apple Support here: Get Support depending on your region.
Have a good one!
No other task has slow response. Mac Mail app is really slow, taking more than a minute to search for a sender. I had no such problem on Catalina on the same computer, a 2015 iMac. My MacBook Pro is still running Catalina, and searches in Mac Mail are speedy.
I have also discovered that when I search mail using Spotlight, the response is very fast, so I started using it for searches in Mail.
I have 429GB available on a 1.02 TB hard drive. I have 16 GBytes of memory. All apps I am now using were also on my computer when it was running Catalina, which ran problem free. The hard disk is running fine, and Disk Utility reports no problems when I run First Aid. No app is showing a high percentage of CPU. It is notable that when Mail is searching, CPU % is near 0 for all processes with the word mail in them.
I attached snapshots of Activity Monitor while mail is searching. of Activity Monitor while Mail was searching.
Mail search is very slow in Big Sur
