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

I've responded twice earlier to this issue. I'm using a new M3 Pro, Nov. 2023.

I had initially concluded that the garbled text sometimes occurs during the dynamic rendering of the message being composed when using Apple Mail on the MacOS 14.3. As others have discovered, doing something that causes a redraw of the message content seems to restore it, so further editing can be done. The tactic that usually works is grabbing a corner of the message container and resizing it to force a redraw.

New observation: the garbling is more likely to occur when both text and graphics are being rendered within the message being edited. E.g., when an icon appears such as for an attached PDF or .docx file. Also, sometimes when a hyperlink (URL) is embedded within the message, Apple Mail may generate a thumbnail icon of the webpage that the URL points to. And, if the inline text prediction feature is enabled, that may also interact with the rendering process.

In all these cases, this happens to me when a mix of text characters and graphics are being dynamically represented in longer text messages. When I compose longer messages that do NOT contain any URLs or attachments (i.e., no images being rendered), with inline text prediction disabled, the garbled/corrupted text bug does not rear its ugly head--in my experience.

Apple, please fix annoying bug ASAP! It makes Apple Mail unpredictable and unusable! Ugh.

I'm on a MacBook Air 2020, with an Apple M1 chip. And no, it doesn't seem to matter whether it's full screen or not.

So, are you confirming that when Apple does a screen share, they actually see the bad text rendering?

I have reported the bug, but I will not call support and go through the agony of doing an OS re-install. I went through that 2 months ago when Apple confirmed some illusive bug that caused disk usage indexing to be corrupted. The process of doing a fresh install took 20 hours total by the time I reinstalled my apps, Parallels, made all the UI setting changes to my preferences, set up 10 email accounts again, got Time Machine setup up again, etc. My build log is here if anyone is interested. I AM NOT going through this again - I will just wait for Apple to issue an update and continue composing my lengthy emails in Word. This is really insane - I can't imagine that Apple employees aren't seeing this on their own systems.

Same problem since updating to 14.3 on M2 MacBook Air. Hitting carriage return causes the display to corrupt. It generally updates the display I type something else, but only after a delay which scrambles the rest of the text.

Unfortunately, switching off predictive text, mentioned bye others, did not solve the problem for me. Also wondered if it was related to Display settings for text size, but apparently not.

First noted the problem in Apple Mail but extends to Scrivener, a word processing app which uses macos's native text tools. The problem does not seem to arise with Microsoft Word, for example. Also, I'm using Arc (Chrome-based browser) to write this, and no problem.

The issue is causing havoc for me. Really hope Apple escalates it.

I see today February 8 apple released iOS 17.3.1 with a text fix. So I checked my Mac and it also has a fix in 14.3.1 out now. So happy for this and hope it fixes this problem we have all been struggling with.

FYI everyone - if you want apple to fix this, call support, create a case ID and go through troubleshooting steps with them. They CANNOT REPORT the issue to engineering until ALL troubleshooting steps are exhausted. The last step includes re-installing the OS, and only after that fails to work is the issue reported to engineering as a problem they need to solve.

If you wait for others to do the above, you're just making it take longer for a fix to happen.

Apple support tried the following with me:

1. recreate the issue by composing an email
2. verify issue is limited to composing only (an email with issue, when sent, is not received displaying the issue)
3. create new user account > add email user (with email you use) > recreate the issue there

Once the issue happens with a newly created user, it's identified as a systemwide OS problem.

Once an OS reinstall does not fix it, the customer service rep will refer it to engineering to be fixed.

Once you go through steps 1, 2, 3 (or more) above, you'll be sent an email on how to reinstall the OS.

I've had inline predictive text turned off all along but never helped me.

I tried turning it off over the weekend and it made no difference.

Same here, I turned off the inline text and the issue persists! royal pain in the a!

I've been having these same problems, both on an M2 Mac Studio and an M3 iMac. It definitely happened after the Sonoma 14.3 update.

It's wild. Sentences from earlier paragraphs will randomly show up in later paragraphs. Text will overlay other text.

I have exactly the same problem. It is so bad that composing emails in mail is not possible. My workaround is to use notes and copy into mail, but then the problem occurs with formatting the pasted text. Using Mack book pro. THIS IS HOPELESS.

Thank you for taking the time to document this issue with Apple support. I have taken several steps on my own that seem to have minimized the issue I reported on Jan. 26.

1. I started using Outlook, with no changes to my system. Outlook editing worked as it should with no issues, whereas Apple Mail continued to do its corrupted/garbled text when editing.
2. I changed my settings for keyboard to NOT show inline predictive text. That did not help with the corrupted text display in Apple Mail editing.
3. In Apple Mail, I did mailbox rebuild. When that was occurring my antivirus program identified and quarantined some attachment in the ~/Library/Mail/ ... inbox.mbox path. When the rebuild was finished, I did a full system scan, and the AV found 2 more infected attachments. These were likely in unopened junk mail that got downloaded from the Exchange server during the mailbox rebuild.
4. I did system maintenance with OnyX, which does a number of things, including the rebuilding of the apps launch database, clearing caches, etc.
5. Then I used the new Apple Diagnostics program to test all the hardware systems in the new M3 Pro. The diagnostics passed with no detected issues: Use Apple Diagnostics to test your Mac - Apple Support
6. I did a complete re-installation of MacOS 14.3 via the Mac Recovery mode.
7. I restarted, then I did a complete AV scan again, and no malware was detected.
8. I have been working normally since Jan. 26 with many apps with no issues. I decided to try Apple Mail once again, and so far so good. But I have not been writing long messages with significant editing, as I was doing when the corrupted text display issue first reared its ugly head.

I did these steps because, occasionally in the past, I was able to resolve issues following MacOS upgrades that were apparently caused by some old prefs/caches leftover from past OS's and apps.

I have the same problem - so annoying, trying to write detailed emails to clients and it's basically copy and pasting bit of text from further up the email over what I have already written. Currently mail is not fit for purpose - it's quite a fundamental operational need using mail isn't it. Get it sorted Apple! Using MacBook Air with M1 chip and Sonoma 14.2.1

I have been experiencing a similar, but slightly different issue. For me, I will be editing an email and a sentence that I just wrote/edited would be replaced by a previous sentence that I wrote above. E.g.:

Hello XXX,

Here's the first sentence of my email.

Here's the second sentence of my email.

Best,

XXX

Would get changed to...

Hello XXX,

Here's the first sentence of my email.

Here's the first sentence of my email.

Best,

XXX

If I save the draft, close the message, then open it again, my original, intended text is there. So, it seems to be a display issue more than an actual over-writing/composition glitch.