14.3 Mail.app - Corrupted/Garbled Text When Composing Messages

Yes, I am experiencing this very annoying problem when editing in Apple Mail. I have a new M3 Pro running the latest MacOS Sonoma 14.3. This had not occurred before the OS upgrade, a few days ago. I was worried that something was wrong with the M3 Pro hardware. However, I see other posts here that indicate the problem is not isolated to Apple Silicon, and seems to have surfaced right after the upgrade to MacOS 14.3.

And it seems to be isolated to Apple Mail so far. It makes it nearly impossible to compose longer e-mail messages. I may have to switch to another Mail app until Apple fixes this really bad bug.

Yes, it's in the display part of the code. I've found that I can force a redisplay to remove the garbled overwritten text by using the Mail Format tab, and then selecting either rich text or plain text, which forces a screen refresh to show all the typing I thought was lost. Otherwise, I can't see the text I'm typing!

It's actually horrible, making Apple mail message editing unusable. I'm ready to switch to MS Outlook to see if that helps.

Come on Apple! This is completely unacceptable. Fix the problem!

Seeing similar problems with text in Mail with a Mac Studio M2 Ultra.

Also seeing big space gaps (like the example posted by someone above) when text is deleted. If I continue to type, the text eventually rights itself.

FYI update: did original troubleshooting mentioned in prior posts with Apple support, reinstalled the OS per Apple support, then my case number was escalated to a team lead in Apple support. After steps listed below, the lead is escalating the issue further to engineering with a full data capture of my system and a screen recording of the garbled text happening in real time on my computer.

I highly recommend that everyone do the same thing so engineering has escalated case numbers for this issue on intel, M1, M2, M3 and laptop and desktop hardware systems.

On the call with the support lead, we did the following:

1. Support person saw the issue happen in real time
2. We did a screen recording of the issue happening again in real time
3. The lead sent me an email on how to send files to Apple, and walked me through all the steps
4. That email asks the user to download a Capture Data app
5. A permission for full disk access was given to the Capture Data app
6. The app had a function to pull a full system log, which output a 500meg file
7. The system log and the screen recording were then attached and sent to the customer support lead
8. The customer support lead is sending the log and recording to engineering with all related info
9. in 24-48 hours someone from engineering (I believe) will get back with further information or steps to do

Once again, I recommend everyone do the same thing so engineering can get more and more of these escalated case numbers with the accompanying system reports and screen recordings of the issue.

Since updating to 14.3 I'm having a similar issue with email text being scrambled, moved around, repeated, or overwritten so that words and sentences lay on top of each other. Any suggestions for a fix would be appreciated!

The frequency is partially dependent on the length of them email. If it's a short, quick email, nothing may go amuck.

If it's a multi-paragraph email with various editing and recomposing, then the garbled text mess happens much more often. And, the degree of "garbling" is much worse - like whole sentences and paragraphs moving around / getting overlaid with one and another.

I've not seen it in Safari, for example, typing replies to this thread is fine. So far (for me) it has been just the Apple Mail.

FYI update - went through troubleshooting steps with apple until they asked me to re-install the OS. Just re-installed the OS and the email text display issue is still there. It can be easily replicated by typing a paragraph, then starting a second paragraph. By the time I get to the 3rd line of 2nd paragraph, the 1st line of the 1st paragraph suddenly repeats in the 1st line of the 2nd paragraph. It does it every time. If I keep going, I've even had the 3rd line of 1st paragraph repeat in 3rd line of 2nd paragraph.

On phone with apple support again - will update.

Same problem on my 2019 MacBook Pro with Intel 2.3 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i5 and Intel Iris Plus Graphics 655 1536 MB. A real nuisance and so disappointing after having a good experience with macOS 14.2.1.

I'm on 14.3 on a 2019 16" Intel Macbook Pro.

Not experienced blank gaps or garbled text, but having a different issue with Mail

When writing emails with several paragraphs, I'm finding that sometimes when I'm part way through, the text in the first part of the paragraph I'm writing sometimes changes to the text included in one of the earlier paragraphs. Sometimes it changes completely, other times it keeps flicking back and forth between the correct text and the incorrect text as you type. When it changed, using undo puts it back to the correct text (after first undoing any text that was written after it changed - which is annoying)

Apple needs to sort Apple Mail bugs - and quickly. Switched from Outlook on my Mac because it would keep dropping attachments when emails were sent, but now at risk of sending emails to clients that don't make sense or look very unprofessional, not to mention it taking 3x as long to write the email because you have to keep going back and retyping bits...

I have the same issue with Macbook Air 2022 - M2. With the lates Sonoma 14.3 update

This is impossible to deal with and frustrating!! The text overwrites and jumbles text & rearranges it , just crazy

14" M2 MacBook Pro here, as well.

Two modes of the bug appear: (1) Overlaying two lines of text on top of one another (screenshotted elsewhere in this thread), and (2) replacing the first line of a paragraph with the first line of another paragraph.

I may have to resort to using Outlook (shudder) until this is resolved.

M2 Pro Mac Mini. Sonoma 14.3. Creating a new message in a window of its own. Not full screen. The text is getting cut, copied, and duplicated in very frustrating ways. Part of the text will disappear, part of it will be duplicated where your cursor is, and repeated Undo is the only way to get the disappeared part back, even though you also end up losing some of your last typing.

I am also seeing this on an M2 iPad Pro using Logitech Folio keyboard under iPad OS 17.3.

At the moment the only way to get around this problem is to resize the window a little bit when this phenomenon occurs. This forces a redraw on the screen and things get corrected. This of course only works an a Mac, not on an iPhone. Apple has to fix this fast. Very fast.

If you don't want to go through troubleshooting steps with Apple, I'm guessing those typing emails for Tim Cook are having the same problem so it'll probably be fixed sooner vs. later.

I posted this once before here, but I think most of you missed it. I found the easiest possible workaround. The problem is still serious, and I would be furious if I have to continue constantly doing this workaround for months or even weeks, but here it is:

Thanks to reading the many good comments regarding this problem, I realize that what you type IS still there, even though when it glitches, you might not be able to see it. So all you do is simply toggle from your composing window to the Mail window and back using command-tilde, and you'll be good to go. Your text will go back to looking like it's supposed to look! This takes 1 second and works 9 times out of 10. 1 time out of 10, you might have to toggle back and forth twice.

I'm having the same problem and it's not just with Apple Mail. I'm having it with editing text in web forums with Safari which would use the same text editing engine as Apple Mail. At first I thought it was specific to one web forum but then found it was happening in Mail, too.