Q: Running Out of Memory Since Yosemite

I have been using this fix as suggested by austin69.

"I was able to talk with a senior support person at Apple last night.  He said he received some feedback on the issue, and then he had me uncheck the 'Store draft messages on the server' in the account settings for each email account.  While I was at it I also unchecked the 'Store sent and junk messages on the server'. 

It's been almost 24 hours and no memory issues since, and mail now only takes up a small CPU percentage.  I realize it still may be too early to know for sure if this was the fix, but wanted to share this information."

It's working well for me.

Just an fyi, it's been 72 hours with no issues since unchecking the 'stored drafts, sent and junk messages on server' from each account.  Just wanted to share and hopefully others have had the same results with this.

I can confirm your observations.  I am 3-days now w/o severe problems related to Mail & Memory.  Unchecking the "Save Draft" option seems to work.

Also, just a note that on the 27th I reached an elevated level of Apple Tech Support and they acknowledge the problem and that they are working on it.  I was able to replicate it in regular and "Safe" mode while they were tracking the issue.  All good, for now.

I too, can confirm that unchecking 'Store draft messages on the server' in the account settings for each email account has totally stopped the out of memory problem for me on a 4GB MacBook Air (Mid 2011).

Thanks for the tip austin69 and the unknown Apple Tech!

Same here, not running anything too major (or shouldn't be major for a rMBP).

The big hogs for me seem to be Chrome and Spotify. So now I just don't use those. Ever.

Sad times.

Unchecking 'Store draft messages on the server' for my Exchange email account seems to have helped me, too.

I was about ready to pull my hair out... Not only was the overall system slow, but Mail wouldn't clear the "read" indicators in the email list for Exchange email items (although gmail items worked fine). That was making Mail very frustrating to use.

So far, so good. Thanks!!!

UPDATE on my post: The read indicator and flags in Mail are still a bit funky, sometime needing me to close and restart the Mail app to see the changes, but it is much improved from what it was by unchecking the 'Store draft messages on server' and 'Store junk messages on server' items for the email account.

As another update to my note, there is definitely a memory leak in Mail. Monitoring the memory with Activity Monitor over the day, Mail's memory usage starts out ok (100 MB or so), but it tends to keep growing over the day. I need to close and restart Mail a few times per day, otherwise it gets into the GB range for both memory and compressed memory usage.

So I am getting by for now by turning off the 'Store draft messages on server' setting for the mail accounts, but I sure hope that this is fixed in the Yosemite update that Apple currently has in testing with application developers. The news reports say that Mail and Wi-Fi are a focus area in this next update.

It seems that I have it not in mail but in Safari! I didn't understand how the BETA version has been released to public with such an important problem. I cannot open 5 programs in once with a new macbook I purchased which has 16gb of memory. I was using mackbook air with 4gb and had no problem with mavericks what so ever. I am completely devastated with the work apple is putting so far. iOS 8 is a failure where the phone gets stuck every time as well. Well I don't wanna say it but something definitely have changed since he is gone......

I have been battling this for weeks & have finally found a workaround that has worked for me for 2 days now. Mail only seemed to spike in memory when I was creating an email. I monitored with the activity monitor closely. When it started to spike, I would quickly force quit mail from the activity monitor. so it wouldn't hang my computer. When I open mail back up, all but my last 3 characters I had typed were still there in my drafts every time so it occurred to me it was constantly saving drafts. In regular mail accounts this shouldn't cause a problem but with IMAP accounts it has to constantly communicate with the server. To eliminate this until Apple comes up with a solution, I unchecked the store drafts on the server on all IMAP mail accounts and this solved the memory drain. In particular, it is the Go Daddy IMAP account that causes the most grief. Not sure if this applies to you but it has certainly been a big relief for me since all my IMAP accounts I use for business.

Is there any workaround for Safari activity monitor says it is using 120gb Oh My God! In which it does not even allow me to post a photo memory full!

I suggest focusing on extensions first. If you have one or more extensions installed follow these steps.

Open Safari Preferences>Extensions and disable each extension by clicking on the extension, then unchecking the "enable" box. Then, restart Safari.

If performance improves, then return to Safari Preferences and enable one or two extensions. Restart Safari. If CPU activity is normal, then continue down the list following the above sequence until you find the culprit.

As with any major OS or application update, it's up to the 3rd party developer to bring their product into compliance with new system requirments.

The first few days of yosemite everything was fine, but since one week i get this error too. It comes reverie few minutes so i can't work with my imac anymore.

I have this problem also with other applications when mail is closed.

Activity monitor says still 1 GB Memory free.

Apple should fix this problem very fast. This is not acceptable for an 2800€ PC

Thank you very much as there weren't any extensions installed. Nevertheless I found the solution. Not to use Safari and use Chrome

That’s a shame you left Safari. It kicks Chrome’s butt every day of the week. One of the nice things about Apple is it’s integration, its worth the time to try and get Safari back on board. Now that you have left, there is nothing to loose by trying a few more things. You may have cookies causing you grief. Under safari is clear all history and website data. You may want to try that first. You can double check in preferences and then privacy. You will see there if it removed all cookies or data. It will allow you to remove there too.  If that doesn’t work, here is a link to an Apple discussion on how to reset Safari via terminal. https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4099160?tstart=0

It's not a bad idea while in privacy settings to only allow cookies from websites you visit & prompt each day for location services. You could have a lot of sites tracking your location