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Yosemite OS 10.10 Mail Memory Leak

Since upgrading to Yosemite I have ran out of memory (MacMini, 16 Gbytes) three or four times. I have traced this to Mail.app. The trigger seems to be when you drag multiple files into the email to have them included. Then, the memory usage starts racing, eventually using up all free memory within seconds. The only way to recover is to use Force Quit from the Activity Monitor, normal Quit from within Mail does not work. See the attached screenshot. By the time I grabbed the screen shot and pressed Force Quit, it was already up to 17 Gbytes of Memory.


Has anyone else came across this problem?


User uploaded file

iPad 2

Posted on Oct 19, 2014 5:17 PM

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Posted on Oct 19, 2014 7:52 PM

Since installing the last beta of Yosemite (the first I tried), I have had multiple instances of "Out of Application Memory." I've never had them before under any OS on my MacBookPro 15", Early 2011, 16 GB RAM. I chalked it up to "it's a beta," but since installing the final version today, the problem continues. Since I had to get some emails written, I just closed the other apps and left only Mail running. I soon get the same error and Mail becomes unresponsive. If I try a few times to unpause Mail, the computer itself will lock up and I have to reboot it. I'm watching my RAM usage and very soon after Mail is launched, available RAM quickly goes from around 13 GB down to around 100 MB, then I get the message. I reboot, launch only Mail and watch the same thing occur.

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Oct 19, 2014 7:52 PM in response to mswamp

Since installing the last beta of Yosemite (the first I tried), I have had multiple instances of "Out of Application Memory." I've never had them before under any OS on my MacBookPro 15", Early 2011, 16 GB RAM. I chalked it up to "it's a beta," but since installing the final version today, the problem continues. Since I had to get some emails written, I just closed the other apps and left only Mail running. I soon get the same error and Mail becomes unresponsive. If I try a few times to unpause Mail, the computer itself will lock up and I have to reboot it. I'm watching my RAM usage and very soon after Mail is launched, available RAM quickly goes from around 13 GB down to around 100 MB, then I get the message. I reboot, launch only Mail and watch the same thing occur.

Oct 20, 2014 10:03 AM in response to mswamp

I discovered that I had the exact same problem. The Mail.app would eat away at all my memory till it popped-up the Force-Quit box with an error message, Paused my apps and then locked up my entire system. My only choice was to power-down. Through much testing I tracked down that the culprit was SpamSieve. I have removed it completely and the Mail.app works fine again. I have contacted C-Command for a solution or updated software but nothing as of yet. Perhaps this will help someone. Thanks!

Oct 21, 2014 7:04 AM in response to mswamp

Same issue here. After Mail Mac runs for a while, it starts adding Gigs and Gigs to the memory and the memory pressure skyrockets. I've seen it up past 100G yesterday. It just happened again when it creeped up to 20G and my MacBook came to a screeching halt. I had to Force Quit Mac Mail and memory pressure dropped. My MacBook Pro has 8G memory. See attached tiffs of the Activity Monitor before and after quitting Mac Mail. What gives here? Will there be a fix? This is slowing down my productivity dramatically. Help? (let's not even get into the Chrome issues ... )

User uploaded file oh, and i guess tiffs aren't supporting in this forum? #cmonson


User uploaded file


User uploaded file

Oct 21, 2014 7:43 AM in response to mswamp

I upgraded to Yosemite two days ago, and the exact same thing has happened to me twice now. I'm glad I stumbled on your post here because it didn't occur to me that it was taking place when Mail was open and just after dragging an attachment into an email. I watched the RAM do exactly as you say, it raced from 5 or 6GB free down to less than 20MB in less than a minute. I also got the force quit pop-up.


I do not believe I have anything called SpamSieve.


Mail.app worked just fine before, when I had 3 or 4 Adobe applications open, Spotify, Chrome and possibly other apps and I've never experienced slow-down or memory shortages on this machine.


Sigh...I hope there is a bug fix for this soon, this is terrible.

Oct 21, 2014 7:52 AM in response to Jonesology

Well, I just verified it's probably not SpamSieve causing the issue. I've been in contact with owner and he's been helping me diagnosis the issue, but as we were about to perform another test Mail did it again, memory usage skyrocketed and it locked up the entire system. SpamSieve had not even been reinstalled and it was previously manually completely removed. Time to call Apple again. Already called them once and they basically said it wasn't a problem with their Mail.app - pretty lame, because it's obvious that it is. This is just 1 of 4 major issues I'm having with Yosemite. Not fun.

Oct 21, 2014 8:28 AM in response to daring_rant

I was told by Apple that it was a 3rd Party plugin issue, but, as of now, I do not have any Mail.app plugins installed. Does anyone else have any 3rd Party plugins installed? I'm assuming you would include that info if you did, but I was just wondering.


I have 32GB and when it starts eating memory it literally only takes seconds and it skyrockets to about 28GB and locks-up my entire system, I can't even force-quit. I can only power-down, which makes this issue even more cumbersome & severe.

Oct 21, 2014 8:35 AM in response to Doren_Sean_Michael

I have no plug-ins installed. I have no extensions installed (other than what came with Yosemite). I never had this problem prior to the upgrade, and have had it consistently since the upgrade. Seems every few hours it does it. I originally suspected it was tied to file attachments, but it just happens randomly, even when I am just typing a short email.


Apple needs to fix this soon, it is a terrible problem. On the bright side, I am really come to appreciate Memory Cleaner (great utility for free), and leave it display the % free memory in my menubar, so when I see it start dropping fast I can pull up Activity Monitor and Force Mail to quit.

Oct 21, 2014 8:49 AM in response to mswamp

I've never used any plug-ins either. Mail worked fine all the time (aside from the usual connectivity quirks) before the Yosemite upgrade. It's possible it will do this without attaching a file, I'm reluctant to even open Mail at this point because my Mac is my livelihood (graphic/web designer) and I cannot afford much downtime (or worse!)


I too use Memory Cleaner, in fact that's how I've been monitoring this issue (I've never seen it go into the red until now.)


I wouldn't call myself a "beginner" Mac user but I certainly don't feel comfortable diving into system files and messing with any of that...I mean that's why I use a Mac, so I don't have to worry about my OS or my apps freaking out.


If there is a fix or an update from Apple, PLEASE come back and post it here, thank you all.

Oct 21, 2014 8:50 AM in response to mswamp

Same problem here. Never experienced this prior to Yosemite, so it definitely appears to be a Yosemite bug. I've found the RAM requirement going as high as 63 GB yesterday. So far today, I haven't seen the problem. I had been sending email via iPhoto yesterday and had dragged some files to the Mail icon in the Dock yesterday--one of those may be related. I have done neither today. No extensions installed here for Mail. It seems RAM is growing today, but it's only up to 120MB (started at ~65MB earlier today).

Oct 21, 2014 9:17 AM in response to mswamp

+1


I have had constant crashing issues due to "you are running out of application memory". I too traced it to Mail before finding this thread. When mail is closed, I don't have this issue. When mail is open, I eventually runs into this issue. I have no 3rd party plugins, just the standard mail.app - the only change that was made was upgrading to Yosemite. This IS a problem Apple, and it NEEDS to be fixed. Major productivity issues here. Multiple times a day I have to restart because of a system crash. If I can get to it fast enough I can force quit mail, but I normally only have a few seconds to do so before system crash.


I'm using a late 2013 MBP retina with 16gb of ram that otherwise always has, and still does, run perfectly.

Oct 21, 2014 9:18 AM in response to Doren_Sean_Michael

I use Memory Clean and ran into the same deadlock when memory got extremely low. I had configured it to automatically run when free memory got below something like 20 MB, thinking it could never get that low. When Mail.app sucked up all the available memory, the system got essentially locked up due to Memory Clean trying to free up memory and Mail.app sucking up every bit it could get.

Yosemite OS 10.10 Mail Memory Leak

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