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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326 replies

Nov 12, 2014 6:33 PM in response to mswamp

Apple representative contacted me as well, both with phone call and email. Email address was with apple, phone number caller ID was apple number. I called an apple main number to be certain and used his extension and was legit.


Spoke at length with them on phone, so impressed by the effort. Especially since it was a proactive gesture on their part and unsolicited since I personally never filed a ticket or anything.


Duplicated the problem for them in minutes, sent them multiple Diagnostic readings during Mail Memory Dump... and hoping this will help them resolve.


Also, my biggest issue is not the memory dump with GoDaddy IMAP which is easily worked around by disabling the draft sync... but instead with Apple Mail's inability to properly and consistently sync with new incoming mail. Workarounds for this are more of a pain and limiting, requires quitting mail, taking offline and back on, etc. And this isn't just a Yosemite issue, this issue persists from previous operating systems and versions of Mail. Trying to see if I can get them to help resolve this as well.

Nov 13, 2014 4:17 AM in response to Rob Hambly

I, too, received a call from an Apple "Senior Advisor" who seemed very interested in getting details. He also asked me to run sysdiagnose if the problem surfaced and I offered to re-enable "Save draft messages on the server." Within a couple of hours, I was in trouble, again, with only about 16MB of RAM. I tried running the command he emailed me, but most of the steps timed out, I assuming due to limited system resources. I'm still trying to get the resulting file to him, as it's over 14MB and too large to email.

I also did some screenshots to better convey what I was seeing and have already sent those to him.

The good news is that it appears that Apple has taken notice of this issue. The bad news is that if they've already seeded 10.10.1, it may be too late for the next update? Let's hope not.

Nov 13, 2014 6:12 AM in response to CTM

Hi CTM, I had asked the Advisor about this possible scenario and asked him a question. Can I keep my Activity Monitor app open to monitor the Mail app's memory and when it begins can I activate the Command Line And then quit Mail? He said, yes, they only need the Log file to record a few seconds of the issue. This way we won't lock-up our entire systems and have to reboot but the only caveat is that you'd have to stare at your Mail.app for a few minutes till the issue started. I hope that makes sense. Thanks!

Nov 13, 2014 6:45 AM in response to wal073

Yes, exactly, there a quite a few free reliable and secure large email attachment services. Just be wise in which one you use. WeTransfer.com is great and we also sometimes use TransferBigFiles.com - Also remember of you have an iCloud Drive you can put it in there and email the Advisor the shared link. This is what I'll be doing because I know the file will be too large for an attachment. Thanks!

Nov 13, 2014 8:12 AM in response to wal073

wal073 wrote:


Hi CTM just a note if I can be of help. When you said I'm still trying to get the resulting file to him, as it's over 14MB and too large to email.


You can send the file by using www.wetransfer.com a free file transfer service. You can send up to 2GB of files free of charge.

Isn't this a Yosemite Mail thread? I thought Yosemite was supposed to support large e-mail attachments with Mail Drop. Are you suggesting that Yosemite e-mail is buggy? 👿

Nov 13, 2014 8:31 AM in response to etresoft

Hi Etresoft. I know Yosemite supports large email attachments but bearing in mind the problem the Mail app has of swallowing up memory I took it for granted he is not using the Mail app thats why i suggested to use wetransfer. If Mail was performing well of course i won't suggest to use wetransfer but this is not the case: Mail is totally useless with 10.10 so to send large files you have to use a file transfer service

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Yosemite OS 10.10 Mail Memory Leak

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