Mail under Mountain Lion is painfully slow / unusable

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sdpate Author

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Mail under Mountain Lion is painfully slow / unusable

I started this on a separate list. Someone suggested posting to the ML group so here goes. Take a look at:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4142266

To summarize again:

The upgrade to Mountain Lion went smoothly but Mail works really badly afterwards.

When sending an email, it takes a few minutes before the mail goes out. And that's with any size message.
Auto-completion of mail addresses while composing takes multiple minutes. Even after it finally comes up with a list of email addresses, pressing enter on one also takes minutes to acknowledge
At various times, hitting the mail icon on the dock has no effect. The same is true with Command+TAB

Overall, the unresponsiveness is painful and making me wish I hadn't upgraded

I use Mail for work as well as home. It's now making my work day completely useless as composing and sending a single email now takes about 5 minutes (regardless of the size of the email).

MacBook Pro, OS X Mountain Lion

Posted on Jul 27, 2012 8:47 AM

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Answer 1

sdpate Author

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Jul 27, 2012 8:58 AM in response to sdpate

I've tried multiple things including removing ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.mail/Data/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail.pli st without success.

I have two IMAP accounts I use with email. I removed both and then added one back. I then went to compose a new email, started typing the name of a recipient and once again, it just spins for a loooong time.

I bring up Activity Monitor which shows Mail as "Not responding". I have plenty of free memory (3GB free plus .5 GB inactive) and plenty of free disk space (35 GB). The CPU is sitting at 85% idle.

So, none of the usual system contention issues.

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Answer 2

Jul 27, 2012 9:07 AM in response to sdpate

Same problem. More generally speaking, just very slow. Sometimes it froze the whole system.

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Answer 3

sdpate Author

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Jul 27, 2012 9:11 AM in response to sdpate

Even brute force methods don't seem to work. I did the following:

$ rm -fr ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.mail

$ rm -fr ~/Library/Mail

I then started Mail again, added my iCloud account and went to compose an email. As soon as I start typing an email address, it spins for minutes!

If only I could go back to Lion easily! Sigh! 😢

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Answer 4

Gat0r

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64 points

Jul 27, 2012 9:14 AM in response to sdpate

Got to be some isolated issue(s). I only use Mac Mail but it seems to be quicker on ML since the upgrade.

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Answer 5

MacFan65

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Jul 27, 2012 12:07 PM in response to sdpate

Ditto... Type a few words and just spinning. Can't imagine this is isolated. I was on like Leopard before this and never had these issues. Please say there is a solution, I like everything else about ML, but unusable when it takes me 5 minutes to type two sentences.

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Answer 6

sdpate Author

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Jul 27, 2012 12:10 PM in response to sdpate

One suggestion I saw:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3259383?start=0&tstart=0

involved removing ~/Library/Application Support/AddressBook/MailRecents-v4.abcdmr

I removed the file, quit Mail and started it again. It rebuilt a new file but the problems still remain.

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Answer 7

sdpate Author

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Jul 27, 2012 12:19 PM in response to sdpate

I have no idea whether anyone at Apple reads these threads? I hope so ....

There are obvviously multiple problems at hand here. Wrt to spinning when trying to autocomplete, I ran fs_usage as root on the Mail process. I see a lot of fcntl() (SETLK) system calls and a lot of reads for files under:

~/Library/Application Support/AddressBook

I then tried to bring up Contacts and see similar issues. It just sits there and spins until I eventuall get an error. See attached screenshot.

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Answer 8

MacFan65

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Jul 27, 2012 12:31 PM in response to sdpate

I have doubts, but I just went to the Disk Utility, clicked on "Verify Disk Permissions" and then clicked "Repair Disk Permissions." I can't believe it was just a permissions issue, but this actually seemed to fix the problem. I have been doing everything in my power to recreate the email spinning issue, even upon opening the email, I don't have the issue. I am cautiously optimistic this was somehow enough to fix the issue...

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Answer 9

mgodwin

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Jul 27, 2012 12:49 PM in response to sdpate

Mail is insanely slow for me too. Deleting a message takes 2-5 seconds and I am unable to compose anything. In an attempt to compose an email yesterday Mail repeatedly crashed when autosaving (I think?), I would type 2 words and it would crash, over, and over, and over, again. Hopefully I spammed apple with enough crash reports they'll actually do something.

I honestly have been pretty disappointed with the new mail app - it's way better than the one pre Lion, but it's still pretty subpar compared to other alternatives. Performance wise, it just isn't what I've come to expect from Apple.

Hope you guys can fix the problems!

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Answer 10

sdpate Author

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Jul 27, 2012 1:37 PM in response to mgodwin

I tried repairing disk permissions but that didn't help.

The fact that my address book is screwed up is a big clue but I don't have ideas on how to fix it!

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Answer 11

Jul 27, 2012 2:03 PM in response to mgodwin

Mail 6.0 is very slow on my MBP right now. I noticed that my cooling fan came on, so I checked Activity Monitor, and Mail is consistently claiming over 90% to 105% CPU. Something's eating CPU, and killing performance...

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Answer 12

sdpate Author

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Jul 27, 2012 2:50 PM in response to Adirondack Moose

Finally - I have a fix. It was related to address book problems.

The solution is highlighted here:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4141510

*** Be warned though - make sure you already have contacts up in iCloud before doing this:

1. Bring up System Preferences, go to iCloud and uncheck "Contacts"

2. You need to remove the folder /Users/<your_name>/Library/Application Support/AddressBook

If you have issues removing, quit Mail and Contacts

If you don't have contacts in iCloud, try renaming the folder

3. Reboot the machine

4. Bring up System Preferences, go to iCloud and now check "Contacts"

Now when you bring up Contacts, it should sync with iCloud, Mail and Messages will work fine.

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Answer 13

greenev

Level 1

10 points

Jul 27, 2012 9:54 PM in response to sdpate

Ok, that worked very well and now things are back as quick as before. Maybe even faster. How do I now bring back the contacts to my mac and not just on the cloud?

Thanks for bringing back life to my mac so I can enjoy the benefits of the new System Software.

Pete 🙂

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