accountsd (mail) process and CPU usage.

[Helloha]

OMG, why is the accountsd (mail) process using all CPU resources when there is no wifi connected? As soon as I enable wifi CPU usage drops to nothing...

This has been an issue for me for the past month or so (I think since updating to catalina) .

Am I the only one?

Thanks for any input!
K.

 

[mdmitris]

No, you are not the only one. The same here. Very disappointed with this Catalina update.

 

[lpuerto]

I'm in the same boat as you… I guess that the only workaround is to close mail everytime you close the lid, because I caught my mac also woke up with the lid closed and with fans full speed because this issue.

 

[lpuerto]

This is specially dangerous if you have power nap on and the connection drops after go to sleep —at it should even more in some cases like when you are doing tethering— you can wake up or come across a quite nosy and overheating mac. It juts happened to me tonight. Let's hope 10.15.2 fix this issue.

 

[mdmitris]

So you buy a Mac for 3k and then have to worry about Mail not working properly. Bravo, Apple!

 

[lpuerto]

Digging down a little bit more, the issue seems related to exchange account. At least in my case. That's probably why some people was also reporting it if they keep calendar open.

PS/ I can confirm that if you disable exchange account there is no issue. In other words perhaps apple is not the culprit.

 

[mdmitris]

The same here. If you disable exchange, everything works fine (POP3/IMAP). As a temporary measure, I had to switch from Exchange to IMAP to connect to the Office 365 tenant. Hopefully it will be fixed soon.

 

[lpuerto]

I guess this is quite difficult to notice, because not everyone has a exchange account on mail —a lot of people is using outlook for work accounts— and we live in an hyperconnected world where usually there is internet everywhere. So, no network situation is quite rare. I was able to notice because I was in hospital with the computer and there I needed to use tethering for internet… so I had the issue when closing the lild with the computer connected to power and power nap fired up.

I really hope the issue is fixed on 10.15.2 and we can forget about this.

 

[mdmitris]

macOS 10.15.2 is out and it still not fixed.

 

[lpuerto]

Yep! It's true, it's still not fixed…

 

[elnbrg]

Sad but true. Moving to IMAP instead of Exchange. Very disappointed in Apple not fixing bugs that are critical for business. They add useless emojis and fix bugs in the News app - the app that is used by only a small percentage of users, but they don't care about mission-critical apps like Mail. I am starting to think that Thunderbird and Outlook for Mac will work better on my Mac than the stock Mail app.

 

[lpuerto]

Sad but true. Moving to IMAP instead of Exchange. Very disappointed in Apple not fixing bugs that are critical for business. They add useless emojis and fix bugs in the News app - the app that is used by only a small percentage of users, but they don't care about mission-critical apps like Mail. I am starting to think that Thunderbird and Outlook for Mac will work better on my Mac than the stock Mail app.

The thing is, have you reported the bug? I've done now twice. I really think it's a pesky error, since most people is connected all the time to internet. Probably test at Apple are like that, they are connected to the internet all the time and they haven't noticed. It's not an excuse, since you have to test your system in&out and upside&down, but… probably is the reality.

I recommend you to file a bug report https://www.apple.com/feedback/

 

[myret]

I simply stopped using mail app and went back to Spark app. I am happy no issues no extensive CPU usage and no fan noise. I think apple becomes worse and worse on Mac OS updates.

 

[lpuerto]

What I most piss off about the issue is Apple response in the official forums (https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250882630?answerId=251773971022#251773971022). So que are telling them about a bug, and instead of trying to reproduce they go and ask us to make test, that is going to take our time. When we have pretty clear that is a bug since in Mojave was not a problem and there are several people telling about the issue.

Apple is become not as good as it was in customer support. Now there are more hollow and scripted answers that only make customer lose their time.

I understand that there could be bugs, it the nature of any system, but c'mon!
[automerge]1576083560[/automerge]
This is quite common behavior in customer support, you try to show the customer that the problem is in their side so you have to fix, instead of check right away if they can reproduce and acknowledge the problem.

 

[lpuerto]

By the way, and for the sake of testing. I opened my account on safe more and also created a new user account and the results were exactly the same. When there was no connection, if mail is open and an exchange account enabled, accountsd goes berserk.

I did this because apple asked me to do that on a post in the official communities, and I told them that it was bollocks! Which it is… but just to be on the safe side, I just did it, and I got the same result (of course).

 

[elnbrg]

This is a very important issue. Mail app slowly becomes an unusable piece of garbage.

 

[elnbrg]

I think I found a fix to this problem.

Please follow these steps:

1. Make a backup of Apple Mail messages if you store anything locally (like storing something On My Mac, downloading via POP3 etc).

2. Go to System Preferences > Internet Accounts.

3. Delete all Exchange accounts.

4. Delete ~/Library/Mail and ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.mail folders (this will reset Apple Mail and its preferences).

5. Restart the Mac and uncheck "Reopen windows when logging back in" to make sure Apple Mail won't start after rebooting.

6. Go to Internet Accounts, click on +, select Exchange, enter your name and email address.

7. Click on Configure Manually and enter your password.

8. Uncheck everything (like Contacts, Notes, Calendar etc) and leave only Mail checked. You will be able to add it later (see below).

9. Start Apple Mail and go to Preferences > Accounts.

10. Select your Exchange account and click on Server Settings tab.

11. Uncheck "Automatically manage connection settings".

12. Make sure both Internal and External URLs are set to https://outlook.office365.com/EWS/Exchange.asmx.

13. Close Preferences and restart Apple Mail.

14. If you need Contacts and Calendars, go to System Preferences > Internet Accounts, select your Exchange account and enable the services you need to sync.

Thats it. I was waiting for 2 days and it's been working fine so far, no CPU spikes when no connection, accountsd and Mail processes are quiet.

Let me know if it helps or if you have any other questions regarding this.

 

[AvatarMAC]

I think I found a fix to this problem.

Please follow these steps:

1. Make a backup of Apple Mail messages if you store anything locally (like storing something On My Mac, downloading via POP3 etc).

2. Go to System Preferences > Internet Accounts.

3. Delete all Exchange accounts.

4. Delete ~/Library/Mail and ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.mail folders (this will reset Apple Mail and its preferences).

5. Restart the Mac and uncheck "Reopen windows when logging back in" to make sure Apple Mail won't start after rebooting.

6. Go to Internet Accounts, click on +, select Exchange, enter your name and email address.

7. Click on Configure Manually and enter your password.

8. Uncheck everything (like Contacts, Notes, Calendar etc) and leave only Mail checked. You will be able to add it later (see below).

9. Start Apple Mail and go to Preferences > Accounts.

10. Select your Exchange account and click on Server Settings tab.

11. Uncheck "Automatically manage connection settings".

12. Make sure both Internal and External URLs are set to https://outlook.office365.com/EWS/Exchange.asmx.

13. Close Preferences and restart Apple Mail.

14. If you need Contacts and Calendars, go to System Preferences > Internet Accounts, select your Exchange account and enable the services you need to sync.

Thats it. I was waiting for 2 days and it's been working fine so far, no CPU spikes when no connection, accountsd and Mail processes are quiet.

Let me know if it helps or if you have any other questions regarding this.

This works like a charm! I've been fighting this issue since October, so HUGE THANKS!!!
BTW, I've got gmail, icloud, imap and this troublesome exchange account. It appears only the exchange was causing trouble, and Your fix has worked the magic!

 

[elnbrg]

This works like a charm! I've been fighting this issue since October, so HUGE THANKS!!!
BTW, I've got gmail, icloud, imap and this troublesome exchange account. It appears only the exchange was causing trouble, and Your fix has worked the magic!

Glad it worked for you

 

[lpuerto]

I think I found a fix to this problem.

Please follow these steps:

1. Make a backup of Apple Mail messages if you store anything locally (like storing something On My Mac, downloading via POP3 etc).

2. Go to System Preferences > Internet Accounts.

3. Delete all Exchange accounts.

4. Delete ~/Library/Mail and ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.mail folders (this will reset Apple Mail and its preferences).

5. Restart the Mac and uncheck "Reopen windows when logging back in" to make sure Apple Mail won't start after rebooting.

6. Go to Internet Accounts, click on +, select Exchange, enter your name and email address.

7. Click on Configure Manually and enter your password.

8. Uncheck everything (like Contacts, Notes, Calendar etc) and leave only Mail checked. You will be able to add it later (see below).

9. Start Apple Mail and go to Preferences > Accounts.

10. Select your Exchange account and click on Server Settings tab.

11. Uncheck "Automatically manage connection settings".

12. Make sure both Internal and External URLs are set to https://outlook.office365.com/EWS/Exchange.asmx.

13. Close Preferences and restart Apple Mail.

14. If you need Contacts and Calendars, go to System Preferences > Internet Accounts, select your Exchange account and enable the services you need to sync.

Thats it. I was waiting for 2 days and it's been working fine so far, no CPU spikes when no connection, accountsd and Mail processes are quiet.

Let me know if it helps or if you have any other questions regarding this.

Hey!

Your method also worked in my case too, but it's not a method is quite a gymkahana.

Anyhow, I hope it last and the thing goes to the toiled in the next update. It's a shame that Apple hasn't addressed the issue —as it should have— because this should have been fixed in the .1 or .2 updates of Catalina.

Anyhow, thank you!

 

[elnbrg]

Hey!

Your method also worked in my case too, but it's not a method is quite a gymkahana.

Anyhow, I hope it last and the thing goes to the toiled in the next update. It's a shame that Apple hasn't addressed the issue —as it should have— because this should have been fixed in the .1 or .2 updates of Catalina.

Anyhow, thank you!

Hopefully it will be fixed in the .3 update.

 

[Barijaona Ramaholimihaso]

I think I found a fix to this problem.

Please follow these steps:

1. Make a backup of Apple Mail messages if you store anything locally (like storing something On My Mac, downloading via POP3 etc).

2. Go to System Preferences > Internet Accounts.

3. Delete all Exchange accounts.

4. Delete ~/Library/Mail and ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.mail folders (this will reset Apple Mail and its preferences).

5. Restart the Mac and uncheck "Reopen windows when logging back in" to make sure Apple Mail won't start after rebooting.

6. Go to Internet Accounts, click on +, select Exchange, enter your name and email address.

7. Click on Configure Manually and enter your password.

8. Uncheck everything (like Contacts, Notes, Calendar etc) and leave only Mail checked. You will be able to add it later (see below).

9. Start Apple Mail and go to Preferences > Accounts.

10. Select your Exchange account and click on Server Settings tab.

11. Uncheck "Automatically manage connection settings".

12. Make sure both Internal and External URLs are set to https://outlook.office365.com/EWS/Exchange.asmx.

13. Close Preferences and restart Apple Mail.

14. If you need Contacts and Calendars, go to System Preferences > Internet Accounts, select your Exchange account and enable the services you need to sync.

Thats it. I was waiting for 2 days and it's been working fine so far, no CPU spikes when no connection, accountsd and Mail processes are quiet.

Let me know if it helps or if you have any other questions regarding this.

Being reluctant to go through all these steps, I tried the following and it seems to have been enough to solve the issue for me :
- Quit Mail, Contacts, Calendar, Reminder, Notes
- in System Preferences > Internet Accounts, select your Exchange account
- Uncheck everything (Mail, Contacts, Calendar, Reminder, Notes)
- Wait a few minutes
- Reboot
- In System Preferences > Internet Accounts, select again your Exchange account and enable the services you need to sync

 

[vincent.m.e]

Being reluctant to go through all these steps, I tried the following and it seems to have been enough to solve the issue for me :
- Quit Mail, Messages, Contacts, Notes
- in System Preferences > Internet Accounts, select your Exchange account
- Uncheck everything (Mail, Contacts, Calendar, Reminder, Notes)
- Wait a few minutes
- Reboot
- In System Preferences > Internet Accounts, select again your Exchange account and enable the services you need to sync

This worked for me as well, thanks for sharing! Outlook accounts were the issue

 

[lpuerto]

Hey!

If anyone where didn't apply the proposes workarounds… did 10.15.3 fixed the problem for you?

 

[Szilveszter Molnár]

Hey!

If anyone where didn't apply the proposes workarounds… did 10.15.3 fixed the problem for you?

Unfortunately not. I just got here on this forum digging for a solution .. I installed 10.15.3 yesterday, I hoped that this will get fixed, but clearly it wasn't ...