Guide: How to solve Yosemite memory leaks and CPU usage

Hi Louis- thanks for the most to the point solution-

I tried all this and still no luck.

I dont use mail any more

iphoto not used for months

espon drivers not available for PS 10.10.1

preview is slow to open..

Another telling sign is the keyboard backlight stopped working...

i noticed that my App Memory usage is

There's no 'memory leak' as the author claims. Don't waste your time. Just uncheck 'displays have separate Spaces' in Preferences > Mission Control, it will solve the problem.

Hi, thanks for reply- what author do you mean?

I dont use mission control but have unchecked anyway :-)

I have unchecked 'displays have separate spaces' and still get an occasional crash to the user screen. Before trying all the options here, it was crashing multiple times per day but now it's getting pretty rare. I also stopped leaving the secondary account open since it was crashing so much. Haven't started leaving that open but I will try and see if it starts crashing again.

Everybody is talking about memory-usage. I get the feeling that the problem of CPU-Usage by MAIL is moving out of focus.

I still have that problem of hard working fans and 100 % CPU by MAIL. Is that also 'working as designed' while writing a 2-line-email?

Why is Apple not taking care of all that? Are we only struggling with virtual problems? Don Apple and Sancho?

I tried resetting SMC and PRAM ann unchecking 'displays...' I dont use Mail anymore...

Just went to post a photo to twitter and its too much for the machine...

****! Its like having a 10 yr old windows laptop...

@monostone I once didn't close Mail for many months and it made my machine very slow, if that's the case, try close and open it more often.

PRAM reset did not work for me, but after a ton of research the following fixed my machine:

Close Apple Mail.

Enter your Gmail Account using a Web Browser.

Check your Mailbox Labels for ‘/’ entries (e.g. [Imap]/Drafts .

Edit any ‘/’ Label you find. Remove the ‘/’ from the Label -> [Imap] Drafts.

Save your modfied label name(s).

Now launch Apple Mail.

This works. So problem solved for me. But, Apple really needs to fix their code to cope with a "/" in an IMAP folder name without going into a tight loop.

I was having the Finder routinely hanging at 100%+ when I was labeling and organizing large folders in Yosemite. I used Louis_Mercado's procedure but found that the situation was no better. It got so bad that I was using my Macbook Pro on Mountain Lion to organize my files via sharing, and tolerating that delay over whole-machine drag.

Today I discovered that when I use cover flow instead of column view, there's no hanging at all. So it seems Yosemite can't handle column view.

This reminded me that when I first installed Yosemite, I tried to drag a large number of files in column view to another folder in column view and the transfer froze and I was left with hundreds of 0 kB files that I could neither replace nor delete. When I tried the same transfer in icon view, there was no problem.

I'm astonished at this gaping hole in the OS operation. It has been weeks of frustration for me and a huge combined loss of productive hours. Every software update includes new features I don't need or can't see, along with some loss of features that I truly do use. This isn't the Apple I grew up with.

Each time a company grows from David to Goliath it's getting more evil. As long as David Apple battled agains Mickey Goliath all was fine. There are probably a lot of people getting sad about what is going on.

I've tried all of the suggestions here but am still crashing to the user login screen. I'm not having any problem with mail. My problem mainly shows up when I interact with Safari. I can just be opening a new window with Command N and next thing I know, I'm looking at the login screen without the orange √. I've been an Apple ONLY user since 1985 and now I'm wishing there was a new apple to replace the big apple that has become more like MS. What has happened to QC at Apple???

Even worse: this is called Apple Support Communities. But it looks like Apple isn't even noticing what's going on here. I feel like I should be crying.

I think you have to pay for that added service 😉

Maybe someone here is still in their warranty period and can see what apple's official solution is to this. I haven't went as far as a clean install but has anyone tried that and did it solve the problem?

Hi, I deleted a guest user acct that an Apple Help tech set up- thats no change ...

I went to them with the original mail problem 3 months ago they had not heard of it at all...

My machine is now next to useless...

Does not matter what i use- soon its 99% CPU usage....

@duke2211 have you taken it in to the genius bar. i tried everything and it turned out to be my video card, which was replaced. since it was replaced, i kepp transparency off and haven't had any issues.