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How much does keeping mail.app open affect battery?
- Thread starter eyespii
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Don't know about power consumption, but Mail is definitely more productive and efficient than keeping three tabs open. Chrome with three Gmail tabs open will suck up more RAM than having Mail open.
Of course it's more power efficient to keep everything in the browser, since you always have it open anyway.
It doesn't bother me to keep Mail.app open though, since it hardly makes a difference.
EDIT: 3 tabs? Just tried it, stick with Mail.app. Chrome eats your RAM like there's no tomorrow.
It doesn't bother me to keep Mail.app open though, since it hardly makes a difference.
EDIT: 3 tabs? Just tried it, stick with Mail.app. Chrome eats your RAM like there's no tomorrow.
I have 6 accounts I monitor in Mail; 4 of these are Gmail or Gmail "Pro" accounts (custom domains managed by Google Apps).
I've yet to see my activity monitor showing even 1% CPU allocation for Mail.
Unless you've got it checking your wifi connection every minute, it shouldn't cause any more/less battery drain than keeping gmail tabs open in your browser. In fact, I'm betting it takes LESS CPU horsepower to do this via the Mail app than your browser.
I've yet to see my activity monitor showing even 1% CPU allocation for Mail.
Unless you've got it checking your wifi connection every minute, it shouldn't cause any more/less battery drain than keeping gmail tabs open in your browser. In fact, I'm betting it takes LESS CPU horsepower to do this via the Mail app than your browser.
I like really like the app myself. I keep it open for all six of my major email accounts and there's no hit to performance.
Yeah, I've been using Mail to monitor 5 accounts, and I still get up to six hours of battery life on the 11" MBA. Doesn't seem to use much processing (plus you can adjust how often it polls for new messages)
Mail hardly uses any CPU power. I have never seen mine go above 1-2% any affect on the battery is negligible.
Are you sure it's not because you just set it up and it's downloading everything from your inboxes?
If that's it, it'll settle down once it has everything.
If that isn't it, try having it check for mail less often (in preferences)?
As for battery life, mine's open all the time (13 inch MBA) and the battery consumption is negligible as far as I can tell.
This is most likely the reason. Especially if you have a ton of emails in your inboxes.
Yup, if you just set it up and chose IMAP, the first couple of hours can be intensive as it synchs up with your mail servers.
Right now, I've got 6 accounts live in Mail. 4 are Gmail, one is an Yahoo/AT&T account and the last is an Exchange account.
Mail is taking up 0.2% of my CPU and about 100 megs of memory.
By comparison, freaking FireFox is at 22% of my CPU. FF is a resource hog. My VPN connection (needed to access Exchange) is taking up more system resources than my Mail app it supports!
Right now, I've got 6 accounts live in Mail. 4 are Gmail, one is an Yahoo/AT&T account and the last is an Exchange account.
Mail is taking up 0.2% of my CPU and about 100 megs of memory.
By comparison, freaking FireFox is at 22% of my CPU. FF is a resource hog. My VPN connection (needed to access Exchange) is taking up more system resources than my Mail app it supports!
The "mail activity" box doesn't say anything is still downloading or syncing up any more, but the app definitely still doing something. I still see the spinning activity indicator next to my largest gmail imap account (~2gb worth of emails). I'll let mail run while I'm at work today and see if its better when I come home.
Download and install a widget called "Mail widget".
It automatically checks email and notifies you when new email arrived and you could click on it to launch mail app only when needed
It automatically checks email and notifies you when new email arrived and you could click on it to launch mail app only when needed
So I finally figured out the problem with ail. I opened up the activity monitor within mail, and turns out that mail is constantly "updating cache directory" on one of my gmail imap accounts. I have no idea why it's only doing it on one account (happens to be the largest one), and I don't know how to get it to stop.
I've searched around on this site and also on google, but haven't come up with anything conclusive. Any advice?
I've searched around on this site and also on google, but haven't come up with anything conclusive. Any advice?