Mail under Mountain Lion is painfully slow / unusable

Thanks. Your instruction helps! I'm wondering if this is a permanent solution to this problem, or we need to do this once in a while.

Chuasoonhau, have you tried turning Filevault back on? I have not yet gone there....

Regarding slow Mac Mail the problem I'm having is that the suggestions I've found in this communty work but only for a short time. I've made three different fixes which all worked but only for about two weeks and then it bogs down again. Anyone else with the same experience and what can be done about it?

I'm experiencing exactly the same thing. A couple of weeks go (the same day as my last post to be exact) all of a sudden and totally inexplicably, Mail started running at normal speed. It has gradually slowed down such that today it's back to taking as much as 30-45 seconds to load a single message, or to go from one message to another.

This situation is TOTALLY unacceptable. It's not 1995, it's 2013 and this (Apple!!) needs to get FIXED. NOW!

Tell Apple directly. Not us.

http://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html

Pete

I'm experiencing the same thing as well. I recently migrated to a brand new MBP w Retina and this thing screams, except for mail.

petermac87 is right...we need to tell apple (http://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html). I have. You all should too.

I have told Apple on numerous occasions since I "upgraded" to Mountain Lion. I keep waiting (and waiting, and waiting) for Software Update to tell me there's a new version of Mail available for download. And keep not seeing anything like that. I know Apple reads these forums, and there are numerous threads about this exact problem going back months and months.

I don't know how many people and how many times each those people are supposed to give Apple feedback before they do something about it. I do know it's getting really, really old.

Mail never has stand alone updates, it is integrated in OSX updates. I have never had an issue with it. Maybe it is conflicting with something else you have installed. What security/utitilies etc have you installed?

Pete

Whatever. I'm a user, not a tech geek. I don't have anything different on my machine than I did a year go when I was running OS 10.7.x

I don't really know, and I don't really care. I do know that Mail had *no* problems for me (nor anyone else I know of) under older versions of the OS. As soon as ML came along, bigno, Mail problems. Do the math on that.

I'm to the point of simply using a webmail client with my ISP and bypassing Mail entirely.

Jennings Heilig wrote:

Whatever. I'm a user, not a tech geek.

You don't need to be a 'tech geek' to remember if you installed some programs that didn't come with it, or have changed the settings from those that worked in Lion. Your attitude is not really one of a person who is attempting to fix their issue, but only wants to rant here and add nothing to this thread. If you do not wish to fix your issues, that is fine, but please stop posting in a thread where people re trying to fix theirs. 😉

Pete

Thank you for that advice & to the original ones giving it. I just went & gave feedback.

I've been having the spinning beach ball for awhile in Mail & even went to Genius bar & they didn't find anything. But at least its document. My AppleCare is about to run out.

Then since about the weekend I've been having problems w iMessage losing its memory it seems since it started asking me for my Apple ID (oh, also I guess it was also email, or I guess it asked for email password for iMessage being used on my Mac). & then it has also told me at least a couple of times that my friend's iPhone # is not registered w iMessages. This despite the fact that it works fine from my iPhone & we iMessage all the time w me using iPhone, Mac or iPad Mini.

Don't need these issues as I'm trying to get my place cleared out so I can list it for sale. Now this big time waster.

KathiMR wrote:

Thank you for that advice & to the original ones giving it. I just went & gave feedback.

I've been having the spinning beach ball for awhile & even went to Genius bar & they didn't find anything. But at least its document. My AppleCare is about to run out.

Then since about the weekend I've been having problems w iMessage losing its memory it seems since it started asking me for my Apple ID (oh, also I guess it was also email, or I guess it asked for email password for iMessage being used on my Mac). & then it has also told me at least a couple of times that my friend's iPhone # is not registered w iMessages. This despite the fact that it works fine from my iPhone & we iMessage all the time w me using iPhone, Mac or iPad Mini.

Don't need these issues as I'm trying to get my place cleared out so I can list it for sale. Now this big time waster.

It would well pay to start your own thread, as this thread is not dealing with iMessage issues. It will only cause confusion. Starting a thread of your own will bring more relevant and prompt replies than having it buried here in a thread on Mail slowness.

Cheers

Pete

I tend to agree w Jennings. Somthing is going on w mulitiple people reporting similar issues.

I am a very early Mac user, starting back w the 512k machines at work & then my 1st mac was the SE, although my Mom had the Mac Plus that I helped her with. Then had to be over on the Windows side for biz for about 8 yrs unfortunately & came back in 2010 (at that time still using Windows7 in bootcamp & bootcamp then as a VM in Parallels).

I have been disappointed by a # of recent apple issues where it has acted more like Windows. Such as Gatekeeper error message that misled me into thinking the software I was trying to download so I could update my router firmware, was damaged. Then an apple store guy told me it was just Gatekeeper. After I had wasted hours. & at least a couple of other issues that were not up to the standards I have come to expect from Apple, which is to be user friendly & not require us to be geeks.

& I guess I wasn't clear that I have been getting the spinning beach ball in mail. Will edit to make that clear.

So I've been having the same issues w the spinning beach ball in mail for at least several weeks now. The iMessages issue started I think on Sunday. There may possibly be a connection.

KathiMR wrote:

I tend to agree w Jennings. Somthing is going on w mulitiple people reporting similar issues.

You do need to remember that Troubleshooting Forums are just that, and all you will see here are people having issues. Put in context to Mountain Lion being the most downloaded OSX in Apple history (3 million in just the first four days and many million more since, in fact about 34% of all Macs run ML) then the amount who come here with issues are extremely tiny in percentage. There will be bugs in all OSX releases to a degree, though the installation of Third Party programs, especially Security/Anti-Virus software, Mackeeper, etc. are still the main cause of issues. As bugs crop up, then Apple address them, as they will be doing in the recent 10.8.4 beta released last week to developers.

I am not saying you are not having issues with Mail, I am simply saying that there may well be a simple cause which can be tracked down and fixed, but when people do not give details asked for, then it is a futile exercise to help them, as with wJennings last post.

Cheers

Pete

Are you saying MacKeeper might be the problem?

I have had it installed for a long time--over a year but haven't really used it as my brother told me it was going to have him delete newer versions of dup files rather than older ones.

So it has been installed well before I installed ML which was just about a mo ago (since I still wanted to be able to use Windows7 in Paralells at least some time & I had Parallels 5 & didn't really want to spend $ to upgrade it but would have had to or lost it for ML. So they gave me an upgrade offer which I took. & they also suggested that I just get rid of the bootcamp partition & run it just as a VM which is what i am doing now since I don't need to run Windows native anymore to get around tech support that says "we don't support Mac").

Some people also have commented that there might be an issue between gmail & Mail? I am running 3 gmail accounts & 3 cox accounts as I needed a portable email in prep for a move out of state.

Kathi

MacBookPro-mid 2010, 4 GB memory w ML latest updates

iPhone 4S 16 gb

iPad mini wifi 16 gb