OS X Yosemite is supposed to make Macs run more efficiently than ever, but some early upgraders have discovered a huge memory leak that causes memory pressure to skyrocket and productivity to drop.
The updated Mail app appears to be the culprit of the memory leak that is triggered whenever multiple files are dragged into an email to be added as attachments. Over 100 hundred users have confirmed the memory leak on Apple’s Support forum with screenshots of Mail hogging up to 24GB of RAM.
It takes the Mail app only a few of seconds to eat up all the free RAM on the Mac. Once the memory leak bug effects your Mac the only way to recover is by opening Activity Monitor to Force Quit the Mail app, as the normal quit doesn’t work.
Based on reports from a number of Apple Forum users, the bug appears to effect Mac Minis, iMacs, and MacBooks. Apple support reps have suggested third-party extensions are the culprit, but most users are still affected by the memory leak after disabling extensions.
We’ve reached out to Apple for more information on whether the Mail app is truly to blame for the memory leak, but haven’t received a response yet.
Buster Hein is a freelance writer who lives in Phoenix, Arizona. Twitter: @bst3r.
41 responses to “OS X Yosemite’s Mail app is a Mac-crashing memory hog”
Not to mention the “missing” Contacts toolbar icon
“We’ve reached out to Apple..” – yes, try calling Apple and you get “Hello you have reached Apple Computers, all our agents are in China right now serving customers, have a nice day!… (click)”
Well those kind of journalism shows how stupidity is. Reaching out to some companies that doesn’t wish to respond would name the journalist as shame. Basically if this true, Apple does have PR team which they also release the statement to this related bug on Apple’s official PR statement site.
I don’t think Apple would respond directly to CultofMac. There are several notability blogs such as AppleInsider, Mashable etc… They don’t often use “We’ve reached out to Apple…” as they’re able to get direct contact with Support Agent or Senior Adviser at Apple instead of reaching to PR Team which simple solution.
Furthermore Apple support dept isn’t located in China, They have several bases around the world not only the US as well UK, Australia, Singapore and more!
When I call Apple I get to talk to someone intelligent and informed, who can usually sort out my problem, or point me to a solution. Never have to wait more than a minute.
@disqus_1MU2flt3wA:disqus No, OP referring to the PR Team not the support agent. However the Support Agents/Advisors are extremely active than PR Team..
Apple’s quality control is even worse than Microsoft’s now. That’s the whole reason I switched in the first place – to get a more robust, stable and problem free experience.
No, Microsoft’s quality control is even worsen than Apple, Thus Apple is rebuilding their support team and they’ve got 100% customer satisfaction and Microsoft got 5% of customer satisfaction this was due to that the responses are too slow nor they’re helping the users through their official forum neither through Email. Therefore Apple offers so much better support than last three years ago.
With an AppleCare you’ll be granted 3 years warranty in total!
Nobody has 100% customer satisfaction. I’m a huge Apple fan but I do not love them unconditionally. Their failures tend to be head scratchers because it’s easy stuff to fix (not intentionally crippling the Mac mini, and having a Mail app that actually works, for two examples).
Calling Microsoft tech support is nothing but an exercise in futility.
One can claim it’s annoying the little issues that bob up with Apple software, which is free btw. With MS, it’s a catastrophe, where you have to reinstall everything, and it’s software you pay hundreds of dollars for. Working with both, I know which has the worst history. Which is why I choose not to use PCs as my personal machine.
“Over 100 hundred users have confirmed the memory leak”
So that’s 100 users out of how many tens of millions ?
Activity Monitor shows Mail as hogging as massive 98MB of memory on my iMac.
Tempted to say it serves you right for having 32GB of RAM, but that would just be jealousy. So I won’t.
32GB is the virtual memory. Screenshots shows only 8GB is physical…
Sorry, I was momentarily blinded by jealousy.
Mine shows 44.9MB, so no problem here either.
“We’ve reached out to Apple”…………You couldn’t make this sort of language up could you…….or rather, it appears you can!
perhaps they should figure out why google chrome helper is running 3x and not responding ;-)
this. I have the same problem and I have a 2010 MBP, that is an intel core 2 duo… Can you believe that it used to be considered cutting edge?
MacBook Pro here, haven’t had any issues at all.
Same here – Macbook Pro and no Mail hogging at all.
Happens to me every day.
God bless early adopters.
I don’t know what folks having this issue have done, but my Activity Monitor in Yosemite on my ’13 MacBook Pro is showing my mail app to only be using 95MB of memory, and 0% of my CPU. It’s quiet as a mouse – thousands of emails live there.. this is clearly not a ubiquitous issue.
I can assure you this is a real issue! I just came from my second trip to the genius bar this morning, where they did a complete reinstall of Yosemite on my 2013 Macbook Pro in hopes of fixing this. A few hours later, the same exact problem. Even when I run the mail app alone, it often shows it taking up 125% – 150% of my CPU usage. My computer is running out of application memory every 15 minutes or so, requiring me to force quite and and hard reboot computer to get back into mail. This is a real and extremely frustrating problem.
What accounts do have synced into Mail? I only have iCloud and my work e-mail (which uses Exchange Server). Perhaps if you have G-Mail or some other account synched in, the problem exists in that pipeline. As a diagnostic experiment, disable all but one of your accounts (start with iCloud if you have it), restart your computer, launch mail and observe the activity monitor. If stays sane, re-anable another account, restart and repeat until you find the culprit.
I’m not saying the Apple Mail application isn’t at fault, but since it isn’t happening for everyone finding the common ground can go a long way to ward uncovering the solution.
I have 4 accounts, including one iCloud, one gmail, and 2 imap accounts. Same 4 accounts I have had for years with no problems on previous mac operating systems. There is a current thread on the apple board with people having the same exact issue after upgrading (https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6608416?start=0&tstart=0).
I suppose it could be a gmail or imap issue, but there is nothing that has changed on my end from what I was doing prior to using Yosemite.
Mail was just using 63 gigs of memory according to my Activity Monitor. I’ll take a photo next time it happens. I’m using a brand new (2 week old) maxed out Macbook pro with virtually nothing on it.
the main reason i dont jump on the bandwagon to adopt the newest os releases, i normally wait till the first patch has been released
I haven’t experienced Mail.app going further than 277Mb (via Activity Monitor) in Yosemite on 2 different MacPro’s (2009/2012), an iMac (2009) and a MacMini (2012). All are running the same version of OS X. The tower’s have 16Gb & 32Gb ram, the other two have just 8Gb each. Might be a third party add-on causing the leak? (I have 9 different email accounts in one of the MacPro’s Mail.app, otherwise mostly 2 or 4 in the others.) The MacPro’s and the MacMini also have the latest Xcode.
Cult of Mac is taking more processing power than Apple’s Mail application.
Mine shows as 39,1mb either, no problems on mine, and mine isn’t a fresh install, just upgraded from Mavericks
Guys, this issue is real. I have the same problem. I have a brand new 2013 Mac book Pro decked out to the max, I spent over $2k for the computer. I never had a problem until I updated to Yosemite. Apple Mail is hogging all of the memory, there is a stacking problem in their memory. The more you open and send messages with attachments, the faster and quicker the GBs building up in activity monitor. The issue has been reported all over apple blogs. I get about 15 mins out of mail, before my system locks up. I have done nothing to my computer except upgrade to Yosemite. I went to the genius bar, and they could not help me. They did put in an engineering ticket. The rep told me to take his card and check back with him in 1 week. This is typical apple, they know the issue is there (they keep their own employees out of the loop to avoid known issues and make you look stupid) and will try to fix it with an update rather than admitting it and helping people now or at least saying “we are aware of the issue and are working hard to reslove it.” This would be find with me, rather than telling me I must have done something to my computer to cause the issue. They do not want PR nightmares. My quick fix, was to install 2011 MS Office for Mac and use Outlook, leaving mail closed until the problem gets resolved.
Mail taking over 60GB,.. have had to force quit three times today. :-(
It happens to mine for business. Now I have to use my webmail. Pain in the butt! I hope they fix this VERY soon!
It still doesn’t work properly (i.e. at all) for me with Gmail. I used Mail for years with Gmail without a problem. Mavericks destroyed that. Yosemite still doesn’t fix it. I have used Airmail for the last year and it works perfectly. It’s still ridiculous Apple can’t get their own mail app to work.
Don’t make me go back to Mavericks!
Here’s my contribution. 50GB. Can anyone beat that? Next post @cultofmac, the stinking ChromeHelper issues…
Yes, I beat it easily with 77.40 GB, this really sucks (RAM). I had to reboot just to get Mail to launch again, even though I Force Quit in Activity Monitor, it still won’t start or Force Quit. Also, what’s with all the (Not Responding) processes now?
Screenshot
Mad e the big switch a year ago from PC to 27″ iMac. NEVER saw the beach ball until upgrading to Yosemite. I love everything about Yosemite EXCEPT the mail memory crash which is now happening several times a day. It has become a nightmare. The only way I can proceed is to hold the power button until shut down. VERY frustrating. Fix it Apple!!!!!
Was having this issue like crazy on my iMac and then it suddenly stopped. Never had the issue on my MacBook pro and now literally anytime I open Mail, the computer takes a huge dump and I have to force quit. Took up all but 4mb of my RAM on my 12 GB iMac and literally wipes my MacBook. This needs to get fixed.
77.40 GB and a useless copy of Mail.