Mail App Maxing Out RAM After MacOS Upgrade?

[Bazzy]

Hi All,

I have a 15" 2015 rMBP 2.8Ghz/16GB Ram/Radeon R9 M370X.

I have just upgraded from MacOS Mojave to MacOS Monterey that has Mail App V16 (3696.120.41.1.4)

Whenever I open up the Mail App, it pretty much maxes out the RAM very quickly & the whole computer starts to become very laggy & starts to freeze. I get messages saying Memory Level is Critical over & over again. The unit basically becomes unusable. The RAM usages goes to Zero & then drops down to around 7% remaining & fluctuates constantly between these two numbers.

It seems to be the Green "Compressed" Memory that suddenly shoots up so high. Please see image attached.

When I am finally able to shut off the Mail App, the computer goes back to normal. I am not tech savvy so can anyone please advise me what exactly can be done to make things normal again as currently I cannot even check emails.

Many Kind Thanks!

 

[Bigwaff]

Before launching Mail, launch Activity Monitor, select the Memory tab, and select menu View > All Processes. If possible, post several screenshots of Activity Monitor while Mail is active and consuming large amounts of memory. Would like to review what other applications and processes are running concurrently and consuming memory.

How much free space do you have on your boot volume?

 

[Bazzy]

Before launching Mail, launch Activity Monitor, select the Memory tab, and select menu View > All Processes. If possible, post several screenshots of Activity Monitor while Mail is active and consuming large amounts of memory. Would like to review what other applications and processes are running concurrently and consuming memory.

How much free space do you have on your boot volume?

Bigwaff,

Thanks for replying!

On Activity Monitor - do you wish for me to take multiple screen-shots of the visible contents on the pane that are consuming the most memory every say 2-3mins or of all of the Activity Monitor?

If the latter, how do I do that I one has to scroll down a long way to the bottom of Activity Monitor & I do not know how to capture it all - when attempting to print & save as PDF's to post here - it is over 50 pages long!

If this is what you require, please can you tell me how I can select all of the contents in Activity Monitor & copy to paste here?

I have 191GB free on a 1TB space.

Many Thanks!

 

[Bigwaff]

Sort by the Memory column so the largest numbers are at the top. Screenshot that view.

 

[saudor]

It's a glitch. macOS 12+ have random memory leaks that gobbles up tens of GB of RAM.

 

[Isamilis]

Hi All,

I have a 15" 2015 rMBP 2.8Ghz/16GB Ram/Radeon R9 M370X.

I have just upgraded from MacOS Mojave to MacOS Monterey that has Mail App V16 (3696.120.41.1.4)

Whenever I open up the Mail App, it pretty much maxes out the RAM very quickly & the whole computer starts to become very laggy & starts to freeze. I get messages saying Memory Level is Critical over & over again. The unit basically becomes unusable. The RAM usages goes to Zero & then drops down to around 7% remaining & fluctuates constantly between these two numbers.

It seems to be the Green "Compressed" Memory that suddenly shoots up so high. Please see image attached.

When I am finally able to shut off the Mail App, the computer goes back to normal. I am not tech savvy so can anyone please advise me what exactly can be done to make things normal again as currently I cannot even check emails.

Many Kind Thanks!

View attachment 2328668 View attachment 2328677

I suspect, its just Mail app is reindexing all messages after system updates. Just wait for a few days to complete (subject to how many emails).

 

[Bazzy]

Sort by the Memory column so the largest numbers are at the top. Screenshot that view.

Hi Bigwaff!

Did the best I could with all the slowdowns - please see screen-shots below:

Many Thanks!

 

[Bazzy]

It's a glitch. macOS 12+ have random memory leaks that gobbles up tens of GB of RAM.

Hi saudor,

Wow, if this was a known glitch, was there a solution found for it please & do you know what it was? Surely, Apple must have resolved it as millions were using Monterey for quite some time?

Many Thanks!

 

[Bazzy]

I suspect, its just Mail app is reindexing all messages after system updates. Just wait for a few days to complete (subject to how many emails).

Hi Isamilis,

Thanks for the insight - if this is the case, do you know how long it may take - I do have many thousands of emails accumulated over the many years.

Thanks Kindly!

 

[Bigwaff]

Interesting... Mail memory usage is certainly out of control. It's probably the reason for the excessive size of swap file as well. Let's try this..

Launch Mail and immediately open menu Mail > Settings > select Accounts tab. One by one, select each account on the left sidebar. To the right, make sure Account Information is selected and uncheck "Enable this account". Once you have done this for each account on the left sidebar, close the Settings window and quit using menu Mail > Quit. Give it a few minutes then shut down your MBP.

Restart in Safe mode by immediately pressing and holding the Shift key until you see the login window. Login and let the system settle down. Sometimes it takes several minutes to boot into Safe mode as the system deletes and recreates data caches. Let the system run for 5-10 min in Safe mode and then shut down your MBP.

Restart normally. Once the system is up, launch Activity Monitor and relaunch Mail. Since all accounts have been disabled, obviously you won't be able to access you email yet. We are checking to see how Mail behaves and how much memory it consumes. Let Mail run for 5-10 min and watch Activity Monitor. Report back whether Mail consumes large amounts of memory. Take a screenshot of Activity Monitor as before (just a view that has Mail in it will suffice). Depending on how Mail behaves at this point will determine which troubleshooting steps come next. Let's hope Mail does not consume large amounts of memory.

 

[kitKAC]

Hi Isamilis,

Thanks for the insight - if this is the case, do you know how long it may take - I do have many thousands of emails accumulated over the many years.

Thanks Kindly!

Mail doesn't index your email, Spotlight does (which will appear as a separate process in Activity Monitor) so that's not the problem.

I'd try using the Rebuild option (under the Mailbox menu), maybe there's some corruption causing Mail to behave badly?

 

[Fishrrman]

Just a thought, may not be useful, but...

I have my own Mail.app set so that it doesn't automatically load "remote content".

I'm wondering if the OP's Mail settings are set to load such content, and something is going wrong in the process and loads and loads of old, unneeded "content" is being gobbled up by the Mac...?

 

[Bazzy]

Interesting... Mail memory usage is certainly out of control. It's probably the reason for the excessive size of swap file as well. Let's try this..

Launch Mail and immediately open menu Mail > Settings > select Accounts tab. One by one, select each account on the left sidebar. To the right, make sure Account Information is selected and uncheck "Enable this account". Once you have done this for each account on the left sidebar, close the Settings window and quit using menu Mail > Quit. Give it a few minutes then shut down your MBP.

Restart in Safe mode by immediately pressing and holding the Shift key until you see the login window. Login and let the system settle down. Sometimes it takes several minutes to boot into Safe mode as the system deletes and recreates data caches. Let the system run for 5-10 min in Safe mode and then shut down your MBP.

Restart normally. Once the system is up, launch Activity Monitor and relaunch Mail. Since all accounts have been disabled, obviously you won't be able to access you email yet. We are checking to see how Mail behaves and how much memory it consumes. Let Mail run for 5-10 min and watch Activity Monitor. Report back whether Mail consumes large amounts of memory. Take a screenshot of Activity Monitor as before (just a view that has Mail in it will suffice). Depending on how Mail behaves at this point will determine which troubleshooting steps come next. Let's hope Mail does not consume large amounts of memory.

Hi Bigwaff,

Thank you for the detailed instructions - I will endeavour to try them out when I have sufficient time since I have to take my sister to hospital for treatments & also as the computer is slo slow & non responsive things take an absolute age so I think I will need to find a full spare day to implement your notes - please kindly give me some time & I will get back to you as soon as I am able.

MINOR UPDATE:

Out of interest, I came across someone elses posts who had a similar issue after upgrading to Monterey & they found a bunch of "Recovered" Mail Folders & by deleting these, they were able to resolve fully.

I had a look on mine & lo & behold there was a bunch of "Recovered" Mail Folders as well. It took a long time due to the rMBP freezing up every few seconds for long periods of time & then quitting itself but I to was able to finally delete all the "Recovered Folders" (after checking if the contents in each were important).

The result was notable in that the rMBP is now at least useable - mail works without quitting & I can do most tasks on it. Before there would be literally 0.1% Ram free & then auto quitting with Activity Monitor showing Mail taking up about 1 GB of Memory.

Now it varies between 1%-2.6% Ram Free & about 650-700mb of Memory being used by RAM but with the fans running constantly at high speed.

It does seem there was a Memory Leak issue with Monterey on multiple fronts caused by multiple factors/issues & I believe no fix was ever acknowledged/implemented by Apple? I have the latest version & Monterey is officially the last OS my rMBP can support so I am at a loss what to do if your suggestions do not resolve - no way I can use it like this - the fans will give out after a while & the insides will get cooked.

Many Thanks!

 

[Bazzy]

Mail doesn't index your email, Spotlight does (which will appear as a separate process in Activity Monitor) so that's not the problem.

I'd try using the Rebuild option (under the Mailbox menu), maybe there's some corruption causing Mail to behave badly?

Hi kitKAC,

Many thanks for the suggestion - will try it - do you know how long this Rebuild process takes please? I have quite a few email addresses.

Many Thanks!

 

[Bazzy]

Just a thought, may not be useful, but...

I have my own Mail.app set so that it doesn't automatically load "remote content".

I'm wondering if the OP's Mail settings are set to load such content, and something is going wrong in the process and loads and loads of old, unneeded "content" is being gobbled up by the Mac...?

Hi Fishrrman,

Thank for the input & even with this specific issue apart, I genuinely think you are on to something as my mail app is an absolute mess & I have no way/skills to sort it out.

I have many multiple emails, lots of stuff on "Archive" whatever that is, Data on the "On My Mac" with many multiple emails, a combination of IMAP(?) & POP(?) email accounts (some the same), multiple bins, other folders etc.

I have an App called "Daisy Disk" & it is showing that the Mail.app is taking up a massive 217GB out of the 1TB SSD - It was higher about about 260GB when I tried manually deleting the emails but it was a nightmare process - emails even though deleted, still appeared in the system? I tried for days but got fed up trying find/delete thousands upon thousands of emails & sorting out which were relevant/important & which were not - it would have taken me many weeks if not months.

I think this a major problem as well & would dearly like it sorted out so I can free up all that wasted(?) space & streamline things so everything runs better - problem is I myself do not have the tech skills to do so without likely causing things to get worse.

As a guide, please see below screen-shots taken from the Daisy Disk Scan & see if you can identify the issues/culprits please? Hopefully, we can then resolve?

Many Kind Thanks!

 

[sgtaylor5]

Are you sending or receiving lots of photos or videos in those emails? Something to investigate.

You might want to export many of your older attachments to the file system.

 

[Fishrrman]

OP:

Daisy Disk isn't the tool to use.
You should use DiskWave instead.
Download DiskWave from here:

DiskWave Homepage

It's small in size and free.

Open DiskWave and go to the preferences.
Put a checkmark in "show invisible files".
Close preferences.

The DiskWave window shows you all your volumes and drives in plain English (no ridiculous graphical formats).
Click on any item "on the left".
Now, you'll see what's ON the volume, listed in order of "largest to smallest".
You can easily locate what's eating up your space.

 

[SaSaSushi]

I don't think the app is the problem here.

DaisyDisk shows both a graphical representation of the data on the drive as well as a list of the files from largest to smallest in any selected folder.

I'm not sure why a graphical depiction of the data would be considered "ridiculous". 🤦‍♂️

But to each their own.