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

8.1 (1993) also. am with my client tomorrow who seems to have the issue in 10.7.5. will see if it's the same problem, or something different. it DOES seem to be that this happened since the 'final' yosemite was released...so curious if her issue is really something else. will report back...

my client's issue was definitely not the mail lag we've been discussing here, (she's having sluggishness with everything). so...just a yosemite issue after all? that makes the most sense. still no word of a fix? someone out there must have an idea...

I had occasional (maybe two or three over several years) lags using Mail with earlier iterations of OS X but they were fixed with a reboot or restarting Mail. They were nothing like the consistent problem I have now.

I have confirmed by installing MenuMeters that my CPU, Disk, RAM, and Network are all yawning when this pausing is occurring.  No memory swapping, no pegged hard drive or CPU.  I expected that because if it weren't the case, the entire system would be lagging, not just Mail.

I think we do have a clear consensus here that the problem is not something in our control to fix.  What we have here is bad code from Apple for Mail.  It's not a setting, it's not a memory leak.  I'm sure whatever is at the root cause is something that would explain why the problem seems to temporarily vanish when we do certain things only to reappear shortly thereafter but that's not getting away from the fact that Mail has a flaw.  For the record, none of these temporary fixes have worked for me for even a minute.

I've only found these ways to keep my sanity around this:

1. Type my emails in TextEdit and then copy/paste them into Mail - my current workaround.

2. Switch to a different mail app.

3. Hire someone to stand over my shoulder and move my trackpad around while I type - 100% effective, very expensive, have to deal with body odor.

4. Have a third arm surgically attached to avoid #3 - Not possible with today's medical science (thankfully).

So now we wait for 10.10.2.  If it doesn't fix things, I'm going to reluctantly do #2 above.

3. Hire someone to stand over my shoulder and move my trackpad around while I type - 100% effective, very expensive, have to deal with body odor.

4. Have a third arm surgically attached to avoid #3 - Not possible with today's medical science (thankfully).

Above, I provided a Keyboard Maestro macro that will move the mouse. I have tested it briefly, and did not see any typing delay during that brief test.

Advantages:

1. Cheap (even if you have to buy KM), no body odor

2. Much less embarrassing in public after your solution #4

well put. am also doing the textedit thing, but it's annoying. am not ready to move to another mail client (i've had postbox on my mac for weeks, unopened). i've considered a mouse for my foot (it rocks all the time anyway). the third arm idea...am gonna pass on that one. pray for 10.10.2 to bring us relief...

Has anybody tried this:

System Prefs/Keyboard/text/

untick 'use smart quotes and dashes'

That fixed my 'jumping cursor after typing an apostrophe' problem!

Not sure at this stage if it has fixed the Mail typing lag, too early to tell.....

that didn't fix it here (tried this a while back)...

I've tried that and I think all the other simple tweaks mentioned here thus far. No improvements - not even any temporary ones. Frequent Command-S also makes no difference for me.

I'm contacting my senior advisor who confirmed this issue, and he's sending periodic requests to engineering for updates. Nothing yet.

Interesting that not everybody out there is having this problem (and usually not even our coworkers sharing our LANs and WANs and running similar machines). So there may be something common to OUR machines that is arguing with Mail in the background.

Here are some other things running in the background on my machine...let's look for a common denominator:

In System Preferences:

ChronoAgent

CodeMeter

Default Folder X

Flash Player

Growl

Java

Logitech Control Center

TechTool Protection

Non-Apple items in the Menu Bar:

Evernote

1Password

Samsung SmartPanel

DropBox

BusyCal Menu

DriveGenius DrivePulse

CreativeCloud

Non-Apple In Notifications Panel:

PCalc

Erick

Great idea Erick.  Here's my list...  How about you others?  See any pattern emerging?

Overlaps with your list:

- 1Password

- Dropbox

My favorite suspect:

- VMWare Fusion

i have flash and java...nothing else like your list. and i've certainly seen the issue when rebooting and opening only mail...

In System Preferences:

Flash Player

HP Scanjet Scanner

Non-Apple items in the Menu Bar

DropBox

Keyboard Maestro

(I use 1Password, but don’t use the menu bar item.)

Non-Apple In Notifications Panel:

None

And here's one to add:

Mail extensions or add-ons

None

You'd also want to have some plausible idea of how any add-on would interact with Mail.

If you're in contact with an Apple engineer, those of us who notice this issue could send a whole system report. I'm sure they have database programs to flag anything unusual that's common to the reports.

For me, the issue is intermittent, but then I probably only compose a few e-mails a day. I did notice it yesterday.

Of Erick’s list, I use/have installed:

Flash Player

Growl

Evernote

1Password

I use BusyCal, but don’t have the menubar item enabled.

Kirk out

My lag has been absent for the last several weeks after struggling with it endlessly ever since upgrading to Yosemite. I wish I could offer an explanation, but I don't have one. I didn't do anything special or out of the ordinary though I have removed and added one of my two email accounts many times as I've been experimenting with other mail apps. My fiddling around (reconfiguring web mail sent folders, making various other IMAP folders) might have been a factor, but I just don't know.  While this doesn't necessarily help solve the problem, I thought I should report that for now, at least, I seemed to be cured of this horrible scourge.

Nevermind. It's back. But I really was without it for about two weeks.