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

SOLUTION!  This may be a premature victory cry . . . but I just update to the latest version of Yosemite (10.10.2) then disconnected all of my bluetooth devices (keyboard, mouse and SoundLink) then reconnected everything.  This *seems* to have stopped the keyboard lag and has also stopped the annoying crackling sound in the speaker.  Good luck!

Congratulations.

But what about all the people who have this problem but don't have any Bluetooth peripherals?

definitely not the same thing (the bluetooth issue). the mail lag is it's own issue. 10.10.2 definitely did NOT fix it...

Yeah, this is brutal.  My productivity is down.  Maybe Apple thought that since everyone uses thumbs for typing now, nobody is really expected to type all that fast anyway, so some lag is acceptable.

As a software developer, I'm leaning towards the idea that this is just a bug in this version of Mail.  Perhaps it is an abuse of thread locking, or maybe there is an event loop on the same thread as the composer that every so often has to do its "business", and for whatever reason, its business is not efficient.

Has anyone try downgrading to older version of mac mail, say from Mavericks?  Would it run on Yosemite?  Sorry if this was already discussed--no time to read 500 forum posts.

the 'slow keys' thing works. i've even got the accessibiltiy icon in my menu bar, for quick access. better than nothing...for now...

the 'slow keys' thing works.

I've resisted this workaround because I type in other apps too.

But I'll give it a try, with slow keys on, set to minimum.

OTOH, just in typing this, I see that repeated delete keys in Safari (like if I decide to type a different word) is pretty nearly as bad as the problem in Mail. That backspace problem might make this workaround unusable for me.

As one contributor suggested, this is clearly a bug in Mail, or some underlying layer that Mail alone uses.

There's no problem (for me) with Maverick's Mail app running in Mavericks. Went back to Mavericks a month ago and had zero problems since then.

IMHO it's definitely a Yosemite related problem and I think the majority of us here agree except that there are one (or two) postings that indicate the same problem for them in Mavericks....

Not for me though, Mavericks Mail is 100% perfect, regardless of what Mail settings I run.

The way I see it is that it *is* a Yosemite Mail issue and the (minority of) users that stated they have the same problem in Mavericks are mistaken...

Not trying to start a fight or argument with them, it's a difficult problem to identify and I think they may have similar but not quite identical symptoms for some other reason...

The way I see it is that it *is* a Yosemite issue

I would just suggest the friendly amendment that it's a Yosemite Mail issue. I've never seen the issue in any other aspect of Yosemite or any other app running in Yosemite. In fact, I didn't see the issue in any of the Yosemite betas either, just the release version.

by keeping 'accessibility' in the menubar, it's easy to jump in and turn 'slow keys' on or off. again, not perfect, but works. meanwhile....c'mon apple!

No problems, have done as I never noticed the problem outside of Yosemite Mail either...

I wonder if it is possible (as suggested) to copy Mavericks Mail App over to Yosemite?

Might be worth a try but I suspect it won't work due to the many syncing enhancements in Yossie, which is where the problem lies IMHO - something in Yosemite Mail is trying to sync or 'handoff' in the background, regardless of if you have a network connection or not or an iPhone/iPad or not...

The main reason I’ve stuck with Yosemite (and this yucky typing text entry delay) is for the Markup feature in Yosemite Mail. I just can’t see moving back to Mavericks - I use Markup a zillion times a day and that single feature saves me more time than the typing delay (with Slow Keys enabled) causes me grief.

One side-effect of Slow Keys is you can’t enable Dictation with the default ‘press Fn twice’ keyboard command. Has anyone figured out a way to invoke Dictation while Slow Keys is enabled?

Kirk out

I have been using the Accessibility slow keys approach with the setting on "short".  So far it is working and I can type as fast as I can with no "lag".  The only downside is that some other normal keyboard things, like the "caps lock" key doesn't work.  I had thought the problem was that I had too large and mail file or that the system was looking for something, like spell check, I was seeing a spinning color wheel for an instant, but I guess not.

I've been Slow-Keying along with the rest of you.  Today, even that fix didn't work and the only way to avoid Keyboard Madness was to work in a text editor.  Here's a question -- the email I was working on was a very "deep" reply, with lots and lots of nested levels from prior messages.  Has anybody else noticed a correlation with this?  I'm going to start paying attention, but I thought I'd recruit others as well.

I did try one of the suggestions offered in this thread, namely, changing the font.

When I changed it to Helvetica, the cursor would not advance. The type would be entered and scroll out to the right of the fixed cursor resulting in Backward text. Useful if I were Leonardo DaVinci.

When I switched to Arial...everything seems to be working fine. No Lag and the text insert cursor doesn't randomly jump one character to the left.

We'll see.

BTW. It seems to only be a mail problem, not related to keyboards and probably not related to 3rd party software.

When I switched to Arial...everything seems to be working fine. No Lag and the text insert cursor doesn't randomly jump one character to the left.

If Arial really solves the problem over the long haul, that'd be ironic.

I turned slow keys on for a while, then off when I needed to be able type normally (including fast repeated delete) in another app. Weirdly, I haven't noticed the text-display lag in Mail for a day or so.