Lag in Typing in Yosemite's Mail w/ External Apple Keyboard

Working here on a MBP with an external keyboard.

Here's something interesting for anyone to try that is curious. Switch off wifi, then create an email. It seems fast for me and I typed two long lines without lag. Switching it back on, even while working on the same email draft became slow. It does seem even extra slow when typing, like it's hitting an external server for words as I type them vs. referencing a local dictionary. I also noticed that spell as I type when disconnected didn't offer a suggestion to a typo, just wavy lines, but when I was live on the internet offered a suggestion in a little blue box.

wifi off did not help here (i've tried almost every combination of things i can think of); virgin OS X account (and NO lag there), second email account. wifi off. wifi on. wifi at local coffee bar. Postbox (alternate email app, and no lag).

so, my own observations:

my user account. no external keyboard or devices. pop account, NOT gmail or apple. wifi off or on. lag at the coffee bar. spell check on or off. rich text or plain text. fonts validated in fontbook. 5g or 2.4g wifi channel.

etc...

I agree with fisherKing. I never have wifi on. I use an iMac that is connected to the internet via cable. The behaviour of the bug is the most troubling as it does not happen each time. I think it was fisherKing who mentioned that saving often helps a bit.

iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, Late 2014)

not me (the idea to save often). i've had no issues with anything disappearing. seems the most consistent things we're seeing in this thread:

apple mail, yosemite, user's main account

& not much else...

Josue Menjivar wrote:

I agree with fisherKing. I never have wifi on. I use an iMac that is connected to the internet via cable.

I'm fairly certain the problem wouldn't be limited to Wi-Fi, but it could be Internet connectivity in general if Mail needs to be checking for something over the Internet as you type. I doubt it spelling, but could be. Perhaps continually saving drafts?

I tried switching off WiFi on my MBP a couple of weeks ago and it made no difference and that was the only means my MBP had of connecting to the internet.

you mean auto-saving? anyway...wonder why this just started one day (about 3 weeks ago for me). def hope apple gets on this already...

the weirdness continues. i deleted 'drafts' and 'trash' folders on my mac. i also went into Home/Library/Mail and deleted the imap folder (am on a pop account). then i wrote a long email, with NO lag. BUT...the NEXT email i started, and the lag was as bad as ever.

why no lag for the first email? still can't figure the common denominators, the variables... biggest os x issue i've ever dealt with.

hey all,

i had the same problem (2-5 second typing lag in Mail) after upgrading from Mavericks to Yosemite. i noticed right after sending an email there were multiple copies of the sent mail of various lengths in my "sent mail" folder (that later converged into a single "sent" email). these copies seemed to correspond with the number of times i got held up while typing. i went to Mail - Preferences - Accounts - Mailbox Behaviors... and unchecked the "Store draft messages on the server" box. 2 days now, and not a single lag in typing emails (fingers crossed) since.

btw.. i'm on a 2011 macbook pro, 2.3 GHz intel i7 core, 8Gb DDR3 RAM, running Yosemite 10.10.1.

p.s. i tried the safe mode, reset SMC, reset PRAM steps last week, to no avail.

sounds good except here...am on a pop account, so no "store draft messages on the server", ie nothing to disable (or enable)...

fisherKing wrote:

sounds good except here...am on a pop account, so no "store draft messages on the server", ie nothing to disable (or enable)...

I was just about to make exactly the same point.

sorry fisherKing, i'm pulling mail from a Google IMAP account (should have mentioned that)....

after looking at your last post, and from my success with not storing draft messages, it still seems to me that the lag is coming from something getting intermittently saved, and after you sent your 1st email, a new folder or something was created, and the problem started over again.

I'm IMAP and the lag continues regardless of where I store my Drafts. Disabling "Store draft messages on the server" was one of the early settings several folks, including myself, played around with.

It doesn't make any difference where Drafts are stored, as far as I can tell.

Kirk out

def seems to be something like that. now if we could only pinpoint it. where's apple? this is such a disruptive problem...

Response from Apple Senior Support yesterday:

"Your issue has been escalated to the next level of Engineering and will contact you once I get a response back from them."