How to resolve Slow Email Opening on macOS Monterey 12.4

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.

BTW, you can drag copy the text in Console, or hoghlight the top line you want, then hold Shift & select bottom line you want, the CMD+c... Text is much more useful & easier to deal with.:)

Whilst I'm a bit over my head, it looks like this is the problem...

Windowse:CFRunLoopModeFindSourceForMachPort returned NULL for the "kCFRunLoopDefaultMode" mode LivePort:224783

suggested detected obsolete pending counter; reset to 0

Kernel

4 duplicate reports for sandbox: contentlinkingd(802) deny (1) Read user preferences kCFPreferencesAnyApplication

kernel sandbox: com. Apple. Deny WebKit (5354)(1) mach-search com. Apple.Distributed NOTIFICATIONSBUV3

kernel sandbox: com. Apple. Deny WebKit (5354)(1) mach-search com.Apple.analytics

com.appl No error handler for XPC errors: <private>

Kernel

Sandbox: com.Apple.Deny WebKit (5354)(1) mach-search com. Apple.tccd.System

com.appl) send_message_with_reply_sync(): XPC_ERROR_CONNECTION_INVALID for message 0x122207190

com.appl TCCAccessRequest_block_invoke: Connection invalid

22:55:20. 254674-0400

Kernel

1 double report for Sandbox: com. Apple.Deny WebKit (5354)(1) mach-search com. Apple.tccd.System

22:55:20. 254679-0400

com.appl 0 is not a valid connection ID.

com.appl 0 is not a valid connection ID.

com.appl XPC-Message response connection invalid (daemon unloaded or disabled)

com.appl XPC-Message response connection invalid (daemon unloaded or disabled)

kernel 1 double report for sandbox: com.Apple.Deny WebKit (5352)(1) mach-search com. Apple.tccd.System

kernel sandbox: com.Apple.Deny WebKit (5352)(1) mach-search com.Apple.analytics

com.appl No error handler for XPC errors: <private>

com.appl XPC-Message response connection invalid (daemon unloaded or disabled)

com.appl 0 is not a valid connection ID.

com.appl 0 is not a valid connection ID.

com.appl

0 is not a valid connection ID.

0 is not a valid connection ID.

com.appl

0 is not a valid connection ID.

XPC_ERROR_CONNECTION_INVALID | Apple Developer Documentation

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/32950412/infrequent-xpc-error-connection-invalid-error-when-talking-with-helper-app-over

https://www.manpagez.com/man/3/xpc_connection_send_message/

Might see if there's something mysterious in /Library/PrivilegedHelperTools/ directory and its registration file is located in the /Library/LaunchDaemons/ directory.

Monterey works fine here for Mail.

Are you running any VPN, Anti-Virus, or Cleaning apps?

We need to see what all is running, a report from this will not display any personal info...

Using EtreCheck - Apple Community

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/

Thanks for Old Toad’s etrecheck instructions…

Slow iMac 2017 - Apple Community

I have Private Internet Access, but only use it occasionally, not running full time.

No Antivirus, other than Apple's GateKeeper. I do have Cocktail installed, again, only run occasionally, Entrecheck does flag it's launch agents as unsigned. very much appreciate your help! Here's the report:

Have the same problem.

I did 'SHIFT - OPEN'.

It does help. Most 98% display normal in presenting themselves. keep the fingers crossed.

Some mails are still slow. Is it attachments? It is, I saw, specifically on first opening (in my test of N=1). It is as if Monterey performs some checks.

• Or the relationship with my F-Secure scanning software is not perfect.

It would be a great relief;

but I have it checked because there are so many spam email senders that track if I just openend or not, they infer the account is live (if Yes, they'll send a load of new garbage ...)

So I unchecked.

I also had 'protect activities in mail'

• So Apple should circumvent the problem of giving away my handling of emails then in another way.
• The feature is a kind of encryption of my email/IP-address, where the two parts of the communication cannot conmmunicatie my identity. Smart.
• But like all encryption, slow, maybe fast on the M1/M2 that has silicon functions for it. To the expense of older users.

It looks indeed so it looks the hide IP address that comes bundled in with the 'protect activities'

Well I was too quick.

Again this morning, with the boxes for privacy and hide IP un-checked

• the Mail still took 30 secs to open a new mail from a mailing list.
• most other mails do open just as fast as before
• If I say to mail Mark as Unread, and then open, it is there immediately.

Puzzled.

Today I started Mail, (Monterey build 12.4),

1. and the first mail shows its content.
2. As I move from one mail to another and back again, the content is still there.
3. and when I do that 3-4 times, then all at once the contents are not shown anymore. Then the lag starts.

So to me it seems like this too is a memory leakage problem. [One in which the Mail memory gets sort of saturated, exhausted]

Oh yes, I have changed the pointer of the mouse to being static (and unfortunately, in some programs the curser is not seen while typing.)

I actually had forgotten about this issue until I saw all these posts appearing again. The issue seems to have resolved itself on my Macs without me noticing. In my case, email slowness might happen a couple times a week, or a couple times a month. I can tell you two things that have changed with my system that may or may not have been a factor.

1. I deleted Little Snitch. There are so many services now that want network access, it because too much of a pain in the *ss to keep track of it all. I finally surrendered and gave up on Little Snitch and uninstalled it.
2. Due to unrelated issues with my email server, I deleted and re-added my email accounts on the Macs.
3. I am up to Sonoma 14.4.1, so maybe these had nothing to do with it and Apple pushed out some fix or other.

I don't know if either or the combination of these things did it, but I have not experienced slowness in months (knock on wood).

In order to see what software might be causing the problem (which would be carried over to the new machine during migration) you should try to fix the problem before getting a new machine.

Download and run Etrecheck.  Copy and paste the results into your reply. Etrecheck is a diagnostic tool that was developed by one of the most respected users here in the ASC and recommended by Apple Support  to provide a snapshot of the system and help identify the more obvious culprits that can adversely affect a Mac's performance.

IMPORTANT:

Before running Etrecheck assign Full Disk Access to Etrecheck in the first window that comes up so that it can get additional information from the Console and log files for the report:

Also click the About… vurron and read the info to further permit full disk access.

Copy the report

and use the Additional Text button to include the report in your reply.

Then we can examine the report and try to determine what's causing the Mail performance problem.

Download and run Etrecheck.  Copy and paste the results into your reply. Etrecheck is a diagnostic tool that was developed by one of the most respected users here in the ASC and recommended by Apple Support  to provide a snapshot of the system and help identify the more obvious culprits that can adversely affect a Mac's performance.

Copy the report

and use the Additional Text button to paste the report in your reply.

Then we can examine the report and see if we can determine what's causing the slowness in Mail. It's not a glitch in Monterey because if it were, every one would be experiencing the problem and we're not.