You can make a difference in the Apple Support Community!

When you sign up with your Apple Account, you can provide valuable feedback to other community members by upvoting helpful replies and User Tips.

Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply ask a new question.

mswamp Author

Level 1

6 points

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

Top-ranking reply

David Wolfe1

Level 1

20 points

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.

View in context

326 replies

Oct 22, 2014 1:22 PM in response to BraxDad

I am also having this problem and its making my computer worthless as a work computer. I've had to reboot several times a day due to out of application memory errors. We need a bug fix!!

Oct 22, 2014 1:28 PM in response to brittneym

Remember, holding the Shift key down when opening the Mail.app does nothing else but what is listed in this article below and will not fix this issue. If you'd like to Rebuild and/or Reindex your Mailboxes because you have a corrupted messages this is perfect, but it appears to do nothing for this memory leak issue unfortunately.

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS4066

Mail: Mail unexpectedly quits when viewing certain messages

“Open Mail and immediately hold the Shift key until Mail completely launches. This will cause Mail to launch without any Mail message or mailbox selected.”

mlwebber

Level 1

0 points

Oct 22, 2014 1:29 PM in response to mlwebber

NOT RESOLVED: After too much optimism, eventually the Mail Memory Leaked and grew again. Not sure what is triggering it. Fine for 5 hours and then I just emailed a word doc as an attachment and the flood gates opened. Perhaps an attachment issue, viewing or sending, as some previous contributors have been suspecting.

Oct 22, 2014 1:30 PM in response to brittneym

I too use IMAP for work purposes.. but shouldn't have to reboot your system for this.. simply quitting or force quitting the mail app should free up the memory. Then just click resume on all apps in the warning prompt and all will return to normal. It's not perfect, but it's better than rebooting each time. I changed my settings to once per minute, and cleared out my mail index files, rebuilt my mail boxes, and I haven't had a repeat crash since this morning. Clearly there is a fix Apple will have to make. I'm just trying to ease the pain until it comes. I submitted a bug report through my developers login earlier today, and I'm sure hundreds of others have as well at this point.

DrVolt

Level 1

0 points

Oct 22, 2014 1:53 PM in response to brittneym

Agree. I have a MacBook Air (11-inch, Mid 2013) 1.7 GHz Intel Core i7 8 GB 1600 MHz DDR3 and since OS X Yosemite has been installed I have been racing my memory activity monitor to finish and send emails before the "Your system has run out of application memory" message arrives and freezes everything. Now I have been closing mail often and reopening it to start the memory leak from the beginning. Painful computing.

Oct 22, 2014 1:54 PM in response to BraxDad

I have done this suggested fix and been working well for a few hours (though I am now scared that it will blow up when I push Reply).

Oct 22, 2014 1:59 PM in response to daring_rant

What suggested fix? Thanks!

Oct 22, 2014 2:04 PM in response to Doren_Sean_Michael

Rebooting for the 19th time today. Steve would be ashamed.

Oct 22, 2014 4:44 PM in response to Doren_Sean_Michael

I'm having the exact same issue. Apple Mail took up about 11 to 12 gigs of ram and I had to force close every time. Please fix bug!

Oct 22, 2014 5:49 PM in response to mswamp

I'm in the same boat. Two computers, one 2008 Macbook Pro, and a 2010 iMac. Over 50GB of virtual memory being used by Mail.app at times.... Both computers have an iCloud account and an IMAP account from Godaddy.. No solution yet....

Lepto

Level 1

0 points

Oct 22, 2014 5:56 PM in response to emacinbound

That is exactly what's happening to me. I'm on a MBP Late-2008 with 8GB of RAM. I can see my CPU and my Memory usage shoot up when I have Mail up and running. When I noticed that my CPU was clocking at about 98.8% and my memory usage was at 68GB, I closed Mail and switched to Thunderbird. However, I also noticed that my Thunderbird was also clocking my CPU at between 60.5% and 89.8%. Memory pressure was low and in the green.

Oct 22, 2014 7:39 PM in response to mswamp

Count one more in. This memory takeover problem started for me about 48 hours after upgrading to Yosemite. The boys at MacGreekGab suggested disabling third party plugins, but that did not help. I, too, use GoDaddy IMAP and have had many of the problems mentioned in this thread. I've turned off automatic checking, but I'm not confident that will do the trick -- as other have noted. The problem appears at random times and escalates in a matter of seconds. Maddening.

Oct 22, 2014 7:42 PM in response to mswamp

Could the new setting in Mail.app "Automatically Detect and Maintain Account Settings" (on the Advanced tab when configuring an account) have anything to do with it? That's a new option in Mail 8, yes?

Oct 22, 2014 7:55 PM in response to hilde_dog

I encountered the same problem and just posted about it at Re: Out of app memory - what happened? and then somebody pointed me to this thread.

doug

thu23oct

Level 1

0 points

Oct 23, 2014 3:38 AM in response to mswamp

I am having the same problem. Mail regularly uses up >>1 GB of memory, up to 32 GB at one point.

Regularly restart Mail and all is ok.

Late 2013 MBP Retina 15", 16GB of RAM.

No third arty apps related to Mail.

Yosemite OS 10.10 Mail Memory Leak