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

Well, now that I’m several emails in to 10.10.2, I fear I typed too soon. I’m seeing some very minor delays. More like what I saw in December when this whole thing started for me.

But it’s nothing like it has been in the last few days, where the delays were getting more frequent and longer.

I’m wondering whether there’s some delay cache hiding somewhere in the background, doing X+1 for every email, until it gets unmanageable again.

I’m stumped.

Erick

Same here, no fix for Mail typing lag in 10.10.2. Happened on the first e-mail I composed.

I never see a beachball associated with the lag, even if I leave the keyboard alone when some characters don't appear. That may be because I have a very fast processor and tons of RAM.

I also haven't seen the type-display in Mail get any worse over time.

I do see a beachball in Mail occasionally, but not really associated with anything else. It seems as if clicking on another app then back to Mail will remove the beachball from Mail.

(For the record, I haven't experienced any of the general WiFi issues others have. The New York Times does seem to load faster. Maybe also Amazon search results.)

I did a bunch of performance-tuning stuff in Yosemite and was hoping that might cure the trouble, but I'm still seeing it as well.  One piece of positive news is that memory management seems to have improved a bit with this latest release.  Before, the "steady upward ratcheting" would never release any memory.  Now, it is releasing some memory back once the reply has been sent.  So I have resorted to these workarounds:

- restart Mail when memory gets up above 200mB or so

- I've also stopped my old habit of opening replies as a way to remind myself that I owe a person a note.  These days I open the reply, compose and send it right quicklike -- because the longer it's open, the more memory it consumes (and once the reply is sent, Mail releases some, but not all, of the memory.

Somebody mentioned earlier that the "w/ external keyboard" could be removed. For my part I can also do away with Yosemite - I'm running ML 10.8.5 on a iMac, 8GB RAM, 1TB HDD, and I noticed the lagging starting around late september last year. This is something inherent in the mail app itself - so Apple should fix it.

I have tried the workaround suggested by OConnorStP, and it seems that it works. This evening I have sent a bunch of mails out, and have not seen any discernable lagging in the last 3-4 hours.

As I see it (I might be wrong), Apple changed something in a universal core module of Mail affecting several versions of their OS.

Hm.  Just curious -- has anybody tried this "rebuild the indexes" fix?  I used to have to do stuff like this all the time, but I've gotten out of the habit.  I'll give it a try if nobody's done it.  Here's the link I'm on:

     http://osxdaily.com/2013/08/01/rebuild-mailbox-reindex-messages-mail-mac-os-x/

i did that early on...and almost everything else i could think of. no difference...

One poster mentioned that the lag was not happening in a new test account. Has anyone followed up on that long enough to feel sure that the problem goes away in a fresh account?

This seems unlikely to me because there are enough people posting in this thread to have a very wide variety of user prefs files.

Here's what I've noticed about this thread:

1) If someone thinks they've finally fixed it, just wait an hour.  They always post a "spoke too soon" message.  Whatever is happening takes a few minutes to an hour to resurface after some of these changes.  I don't know why.  I also don't know how black holes work so... 

2) No one is reading the 26 pages of posts and so old attempts at fixes that didn't work (but appear to at first - see #1 above) are starting to be retried by new people which results in two new posts every couple days.

We have one reliable workaround.  Move your mouse constantly.  While you move the mouse, the lag doesn't happen.  So type with one hand and move the mouse with the other.  Or use a foot mouse.  Of course, you'll type so slow with one hand that you probably won't notice the lag.

I switched off of mail after 10.10.2 didn't fix it.  And yes, I'm grumpy about it.

one of the first things i tried was a virgin OS X account. i did NOT have the lag, but then again...i only ran the account for an hour or so. anyway, this still needs a real fix. c'mon apple, this is painful....

1) If someone thinks they've finally fixed it, just wait an hour.

Harsh! Sometimes it takes a day or two, depending on how much they use Mail and how closely they follow this thread.

2) No one is reading the 26 pages of posts and so old attempts at fixes that didn't work (but appear to at first - see #1 above) are starting to be retried by new people which results in two new posts every couple days.

Exactly right. So the diehards should reply politely.

We have one reliable workaround.  Move your mouse constantly.  While you move the mouse, the lag doesn't happen.

I posted a Keyboard Maestro macro above that will move your mouse for you. But unless someone's willing to test this extensively, I think we don't know if mouse movement is really involved.

And yes, I'm grumpy about it.

Really? How could we tell?

(Seriously, no offense intended. I'm grumpy as well.)

one of the first things i tried was a virgin OS X account

But really testing this in the sense of continuing to do whatever you do with your Mac would be both time consuming and painful, and might not yield any answers. It could easily be that setting up a brand new Mac from scratch, and migrating your data over would just recreate the issue.

Wait! That's exactly what I did. I bought a 5K riMac and hand migrated all my data and most settings. And I've had the problem since.

I'm not saying no one should try. I'm just saying that if the problem doesn't occur in an out-of-the-box Mac environment that that's no solution to those of us with decades (literally) of data.

I'm willing to download an app or script from Apple engineering that I can trigger--maybe even with a keystroke combination--whenever I see the problem in Mail. That something would then collect data from my Mac and send it to Apple. Really, wouldn't that pinpoint the problem pretty darn soon?

Klahane wrote:

 

I'm willing to download an app or script from Apple engineering that I can trigger--maybe even with a keystroke combination--whenever I see the problem in Mail. That something would then collect data from my Mac and send it to Apple. Really, wouldn't that pinpoint the problem pretty darn soon?

But none of that can happen unless you file Bug Report or possibly just contacting AppleCare, but that's a long shot. Apple engineering does not hang out in this forum.

a number of us have reported this to apple, and someone (or more than one person?) has said on this thread that apple is looking into it. i don't expect them to discuss it (that would be un-apple-like), but i hope there's a fix posted...sooner than later. this has gone on way too long...

Of course. Been there, done that. I've been filing bug reports since July.

I'm not saying Apple engineers should hang out her. But there are some folks here who are talking with Apple engineers.

I've been contacting as many Mac news sources, industry pundits and journalists as possible to try to get this more press and limelight. I recommend others do the same.

I often cite this thread as an indication of how many of us have the issue, but I'm afraid we're preaching to the choir here...

The louder we scream in other venues, the quicker we'll be heard.