How to resolve Slow Email Opening on macOS Monterey 12.4

Here is what worked for me today 6/26/22 (OS Monterey 12.4 on iMac). I went into Mail>Preferences>Privacy and unchecked "Protect Mail Activity." I made sure "Hide IP Address" was checked. Suddenly all my emails will open. It was taking 1-2 minutes or more every day since the last OS update. What a relief. I hope this is useful for you.

Hey, Mfiles, I know your email is close to two years old, but I can't thank you enough. Your simple solution worked! Now life is worth living again! Okay, that's a bit of hyperbole, but really: mega thanks.

olyman1955 wrote:

Seems like ever since my Mac OS Monterey was updated to 12.4, I've had a lot of problems opening my email. I can click on the email envelope to open my email and wait a minute or so for my emails to be downloaded. Then when I click on the email to open, it only opens to show who it's from and the subject, but it may take anywhere from 30 seconds to 2 minutes to fully open the message of the email. Even if it's only 2 or 3 lines. Normally, I could click on the email and it would open completely, whether it was an ad or a letter from someone. Has anyone else had this slow email opening problem?

Quit Mail. You can try holding the Shift key when you launch the Mail.app and see if there is a difference...

You can try disabling any mail plug-ins or extensions in Mail.app and compare your results...

Mail>Preferences>General>Plug-ins

You can try a SafeBoot of your machine as a test for some third party interference/cache clearing/ etc.

log in and test, reboot as normal and test

SafeBoot How to use safe mode on your Mac - Apple Support

I worked on this problem for 6 months on my Sister's old Mac mini. It was stuck on Monterey, and could no longer be upgraded. I think I did everything on the list including reinstalling the system. Nothing worked. Finally bought a whole new mini, imported all the old email and the problem vanished.

After spending a year trying every suggested solution to the slow Email downloading problem, I finally found the solution. I bought a new M3 iMac. Lightning fast now. It seems the problem was the old rotational hard drives on the Intel iMac.

Wow. Thanks Mfiles. I've been having the same problem in Sonoma 14.4 (maybe 14.3) and now 14.4.1.

Your solution of "I went into Mail>Preferences>Privacy and unchecked "Protect Mail Activity." I made sure "Hide IP Address" was checked." just worked for me too.

Thanks so much.

Have you tried booting into Safe Mode as leroy douglas suggested in this first reply?

Boot into Safe Mode according to How to use safe mode on your Mac and test to see if the problem persists. Reboot normally and test again.

NOTE: Safe Mode boot can take up to 3 - 5 minutes as it's doing the following; 

• Verifies your startup disk and attempts to repair directory issues, if needed

• Loads only required kernel extensions (prevents 3rd party kernel/extensions from loading)

• Prevents Startup Items and Login Items from opening automatically

• Disables user-installed fonts 

• Deletes font caches, kernel cache, and other system cache files

If not then do so.

Have you tried the following: boot into Safe Mode according to How to use safe mode on your Mac and test to see if the problem persists. Reboot normally and test again.

NOTE: Safe Mode boot can take up to 3 - 5 minutes as it's doing the following; 

• Verifies your startup disk and attempts to repair directory issues, if needed

• Loads only required kernel extensions (prevents 3rd party kernel/extensions from loading)

• Prevents Startup Items and Login Items from opening automatically

• Disables user-installed fonts 

• Deletes font caches, kernel cache, and other system cache files

Thanks Old Toad; here it is

No major problems found

EtreCheck found no major problems with your computer.

Can I trust the Etre tool to get rid of some older files?

The old stuff relates mainly to adobe garbage (like everyone has) and some old printer related stuff.

generally to me it looks healthy (exept that the memory gets a lots of swaps) but performance even with Lightroom is OK.

First, there is no reason to ever install or run any 3rd party "cleaning", "optimizing", "speed-up", anti-virus, VPN or security apps on your Mac.  This user tip describes what you need to know and do in order to protect your Mac: Effective defenses against malware and other threats - Apple Community.  

There are no known viruses, i.e. self propagating, for Macs.  There are, however, adware and malware which require the user to install although unwittingly most of the time thru sneaky links, etc.   

Anti Virus developers try to group all types as viruses into their ad campaigns of fear.  They do a poor job of the detecting and isolating the adware and malware.  Since there are no viruses these apps use up a lot of system resources searching for what is non-existent and adversely affect system and app performance.

There is one app, Malwarebytes, which was developed by a long time contributor to these forums and a highly respected member of the computer security community, that is designed solely to seek out adware and known malware and remove it.  The free version is more than adequate for most users.  

That being said uninstall F-Secure according to the developer's instructions. Then rerun Etrecheck to make sure of the the F-Secure supporting files have been removed.

Another thing to remember is that you have the second slowest iMac sold by Apple at the time of purchase: 8 GB of RAM and a 5400 rpm drive in the Fusion drive.

Booting should be quick but opening and saving files on the HD will be a bottle neck.

Next time click on the Additional Text button and then paste the report in the window that opens up.

First, there is no reason to ever install or run any 3rd party "cleaning", "optimizing", "speed-up", anti-virus, VPN or security apps on your Mac.  This user tip describes what you need to know and do in order to protect your Mac: Effective defenses against malware and other threats - Apple Community.  

There are no known viruses, i.e. self propagating, for Macs.  There are, however, adware and malware which require the user to install although unwittingly most of the time thru sneaky links, etc.   

Anti Virus developers try to group all types as viruses into their ad campaigns of fear.  They do a poor job of the detecting and isolating the adware and malware.  Since there are no viruses these apps use up a lot of system resources searching for what is non-existent and adversely affect system and app performance.

There is one app, Malwarebytes, which was developed by a long time contributor to these forums and a highly respected member of the computer security community, that is designed solely to seek out adware and known malware and remove it.  The free version is more than adequate for most users.  

That being said you've installed what most of the users here consider akin to malware, CleanMyMac. uninstall CleanMyMac according to the developer's instructions. Run for a while and then rerun Etrecheck to verify that there are no files remaining with either CleanMyMac or MacPaw in the file name.

In the second report check to see if it still reports a failing hard drive under Major Issues.

Major Issues:

    Anything that appears on this list needs immediate attention. 

    Failing hard drive - This computer has a hard drive that appears to be failing.

If it still reports a failing hard drive make sure you have a full and complete backup. You might want to consider getting an external SSD, clone your boot drive to it with Carbon Copy Cloner and boot and run from the external SSD.

NOTE: be aware that at the time of purchase you bought the slowest Mac that Apple offered: 8 GB RAM and a 5400 rpm hard drive.

It would be much more expensive to try to replace the hard drive in the Mini than to get an external SSD to use. And you can take the SSD with you when you upgrade your Mac.

Those features are turned off on my machine.

What's weird is that I've been traveling for the past week and a half, and I haven't seen it get stuck once.

At home, I have two LG monitors that I also use as docking stations - they have USB hard drives attached as well as wired ethernet. They are daisy chained together via DisplayPort, and when I'm home I dock to these via a DisplayPort-to-USB-C dongle. I have never experienced the issue when disconnected from this setup.

As noted earlier, it's definitely not a network issue because FireFox is able to load pages when Mail is stuck. And sometimes Safari won't load content when in this mode. I still think it has something to do with WebKit which renders content for both Safari and Mail.app. And just googling I see that somebody else has noted this connection: Mail, Safari, Chrome and other WebKit-bas… - Apple Community

One (not only) common theme in this thread and also Mail is Slow and lagging. - Apple Community

is that removing or disabling part (or all) of various Security extensions in either macOS or Mail (such as Avast, Bitdefender, etc.) often seems to solve the problem. I too have had this problem since Monterey 12.4 and it continues now on 12.6.3 (my MBP can't go to Ventura) and an iMac on 13.2. I have been running for a few days now with no rendering delay problems in Mail since removing my Sophos Home Endpoint. That did not include any Mail extensions but did include a Web Scan component. I have previously read about significant changes to the third-party Security integration hooks (and exemptions for Apple software). These problems that we see in HTML email rendering (and some have mentioned Safari as well) may be interaction between Security extensions and these changes. The problems may be more pronounced in the Apple Mail and Safari apps due to unexpected interactions between third-party security tools and the special exemptions granted Apple software.