Mail activity window "writing changes to disk" slows iMac

So like many others, Mail is working very slowly with gmail. I even took my iMac to the genius bar, and I was told to just let the Mail program run. That once all the messages were copied to the iMac in All Mail then it would be done. Problem is it does this process every day. While this activity is ongoing it dramatically slows the computer. Here is what the Mail activity window looks like. It greets me each morning when I open it up.
Why does the mail program have to go through that process each day? Basically, I have to drink a cup of coffee and wait until it's done.
I'm surprised Apple would release an update with so many problems in native programs. (My Safari always crashes when I quit but I'll leave that for another day).

I've been having the same issue on my MBP since upgrading to Mavericks. Multiple times per day Mail seems to re-sync everything across my 8 Google Apps accounts (happening right now).
Nothing has resolved the issue, but here's what I've tried:
Verify All Mail settings in Google
Let it perform a full sync
Rebuild inboxes
Repair inboxes
Remove and re-add everything (they're all IMAP, so not a big deal)
Remove all Google accounts from the machine through System Preferences
Delete the entire ~/Library/Mail/ folder
Re-add accounts through System Preferences
Open Mail
Let it sync everything
Try with 1 account active versus all 8
And a few other things, I think, that I can't recall. I upgraded to 10.9 the day it was released and it's happened every day since no matter what I do.
Mavericks is great but Mail has some serious issues. I understand that Google has implemented some non-standard IMAP tricks that need to be accounted for, but I don't have any problems on my iPhone (iOS 7) with these exact same accounts -- so someone has it right in some way somewhere.
Attaching a screenshot of what it's doing right now along with the about window.

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Mail...writing changes to disk...taking forever!

My Mail has been rendered useless since Mavericks upgrade. I have installed the initial patch and the most recent Mavericks update. Same problem persists...
Mail takes forever to load
Mail is always writing changes to disk
I love Mail - but it is useless now. Frustrating.
Most of my mail accounts are Gmail.

I cannot cope with this any longer, I am using a MacBook Pro and the machine is unusable since upgrading to Mavericks. Mail is churning constantly and I cannot do anything else with the machine. Can anyone suggest a new email programme or either on Mac or PC? I am sorry Apple but you have failed me for the final time with this upgrade.

Mail program is CONSTANTLY writing changes to disk, and it bogs EVERYTHING down...

...everytime I open it, it starts redoing this (whatever it is) and it slows things down to a crawl. The other strange issue is when I send an email, esp with an attachment, it stays as a draft, even though it has been sent. Have the latest updates, and have been searching this forum regularly.
Hope they fix this, but in the meantime, any suggestions?
Cheers,
Cameron

Mavricks Mail is Writing Changes to Disk for gmail every reboot, still!
There was an update that was supposed to fix this. It hasn't. Is there some resinstall/delete prefs/stop-start I can do to get this to stop?
This needs to be fixed. I'm leaving for overseas trip and can't be sucking up bandwidth re-downloading 30,000 messages every day. Maybe I should have gmail forward to icloud, then just read icloud? WTH?

Mail Writing Changes to Disk

Why does my Mail programme keep reverting to 'Writing Changes to disk'? I can't perform any other task in Mail while this is happening. It never used to do it at all, but since re-installing my OS it does it regularly.

Why did you re-install OS X and how did you re-install it - Archive & Install or Erase & Install?
Although your OS detail indicates you are running 10.3.9, after installing Panther if your install disc does not include 10.3.9, did you use Software Update or download the 10.3.9 Combo Update to update your OS to 10.3.9?
Do you have any mailboxes that are significant in size? The recommended size limit for a Jaguar or Panther mailbox is 1GB.
Have you used the Rebuild Mailbox function previously on any mailboxes?
If not, quit Mail first and using the Finder, go to Home > Library > Mail. Copy the Mail folder and place the copy on the Desktop for backup purposes.
Launch Mail and after your account or accounts are checked for new Mail, open "In" in the mailboxes drawer by selecting the black triangle beside it pointing it down to reveal the account named Inbox mailbox or mailboxes if you have multiple accounts.
One at a time, select an account named Inbox mailbox and at the menu bar, go to Mailbox and select Rebuild.
If you have multiple email accounts, repeat for each account's Inbox mailbox and do the same under Sent for each account's Sent mailbox.

Mavericks Mail - Mail Activity Window is Eratic

Does anybody get the same problems I am having regarding the mail activity window?
If I send a single e-mail, hit send, It says it's sending two e-mails or it could be anything up to five e-mails... It keeps making me think I have some kind of virus that sending multiple e-mails out, which it doesn't appear to be when monitoring my network.
It also says it's receiving Mail when it isn't, and other very erratic messages that don't seem to make any sense at all. It's the first time I have noticed this with Mail, which has worked perfectly on previous operating systems.
Any ideas?
Thank you for any answers

This is perfectly normal. It's a bug in Mail. The number appears to be a count that increments as long as Mail is running, and doesn't properly reset to zero. When you are sending the 20th message since opening Mail, it will claim to be sending 20 messages, but it's actually only sending one. Same thing applies to receiving.

Mail Activity Window - Nothing showing most the time??

I am fairly new to Mail. I've used Entourage for years and switched over when i got my new imac. Sort of liking it. There are many more functions in Entourage that Mail doesn't have. For one...I could hit Command > Period to stop sending an email while it was in the process of sending. How do I do that now in Mail? I see there is a Mail Activity window but most of the time it doesn't show any status down there..? Why? Sometimes it does but not very often. There's no rhyme or reason...Just when it wants to it seems. When it DOES show the status of a sending email i see that there is an "X" to cancel. But that is only when it shows. Command > Period doesn't work here.
Thanks in advance.

I have found an acceptable solution to this until the real thing comes along...
Under Window in the task bar, select Activity. This moves a small box onto the desktop. Make it as small as you can and drag it to somewhere on your desktop where it's out of the way.
Press Get Mail as you used to and all the activity is shown in the - ahem - activity panel.

Mail Activity Window shows activity on defunct accounts

I just opened the Activity window on the Mail.app, and discovered that in addition to my existing accounts, it was trying to log into 3 defunct accounts! They're not listed as accounts under preferences anymore (one is over 10 years old), but somehow the program is looking for them. If I can't see them under the Accounts pref, how do I get rid of them?
Only other thought is that I do have old mail saved in Mail folders from the old accounts, for reference.
Thanks!

As far as the certificate mismatch, I have encountered this often on my support clients' Cox accounts. If you examine the certificate you get back from Cox, instead of a name like pop.west.cox.net, it will have a name like spop.west.cox.net, which is the secure side of that host. To get rid of the mismatch error, instead of turning off SSL (which will also do it, but which makes Cox's support people antsy), just change the POP host name in Apple Mail from pop... to spop... (or whatever it is the certificate says, I'm doing this from memory). It's the same host, and matching the name in the certificate makes the error go away.
As far as the header-only mail fetching, I can't help you with that, because I don't have a Cox account myself to experiment with. Sorry. But maybe see if fixing the server name match solves the problem anywayy.

Mail activity window seems to be stuck

Using the latest version of Mail, latest OS version, etc. Two "activities" seem to be stuck in my Activity window...
1. [Apple Mail To Do] Reconciling To Do's
Comparing notes with server...
2. Synchronising with server
STOPPING: Getting unread counts
These are both to do with my MobileMe account and are DEFINITELY not doing anything, even slowly. They are stuck.
Funny thing is, everything else is working, and I can even synchronise the affected account/___sbsstatic___/migration-images/migration-img-not-avail.png It's just that these two stay there in the window and don't move.
Oh yes, and they prevent me from quitting Mail, because the Mac thinks Mail is still doing something. Even after a "force quit" these two are still there.
Any ideas?
(And I managed not to mention Apple's spelling mistake in the word "Do's"
Pete Bell, UK

I seemed to solve this problem by going to the MobileMe preferences pane and Signing Out of MobileMe.
I was then able to launch and quit Mail without the hanging you decribe (although my messages where about comparing with the server and updating the cache).
I then signed into MobileMe again and again was able to launch and quit without any hanging.

Mail Activity windows shows strange/inaccurate information

Occasionally when I am sending or receiving mail, the MAIL ACTIVITY pane in the Mail app will show the status bar and then some information that seems to be inaccurate, e.g. "Sending 3 of 3" when I'm only sending one message, or "Incoming 5 of 5" when I only have one or two new emails. As far as I can tell, it's harmless, but I'm just curious as to what it means.

Matt Clough wrote:
Occasionally when I am sending or receiving mail, the MAIL ACTIVITY pane in the Mail app will show the status bar and then some information that seems to be inaccurate, e.g. "Sending 3 of 3" when I'm only sending one message, or "Incoming 5 of 5" when I only have one or two new emails. As far as I can tell, it's harmless, but I'm just curious as to what it means.
Matt, I haven't noticed message inaccuracies like when sending but when I've seen it for Incoming, it usually turns out that the extra messages have gone to a Spam or Junk folder.
However, I have seen some bizarre messages in my activity window:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2014667&tstart=45
So it wouldn't surprise me if other inconsistencies arose.
Chip

Why Mail on Mavericks keeps Writing changes to disc all the time?

I have updated my MacBook Pro (early 2011) to Mavericks and now my IMAP Gmail account on Mail is having a huge endless "Writing changes to disc" on +/- sometimes with up to 50.000 messages, almost freezing my computer all the time! My Inbox, only has aprox 50 messages, I always move mesages to other folders!
Everything just worked fine on Mountain Lion and now my Mac is very slow because of this. Only if I close Mail than I have my Mac back... but I need to work with Mail open, so thats not an option.

I have the same problem. Since installing Mavericks I have a major issue with Apple Mail drastically slowing my whole system down. As others have mentioned, basically Mail takes over the computer and I find myself looking at spinning beach balls for minutes at a time.
From watching the Mail "Activity Window" (accessible from the "Window" menu item), I have discovered that several times a day it starts "Writing changes to disk" (see screenshot) for no apparent reason (it's not as if I have shifted any mailboxes); and that's the time when everything comes to a shuddering halt. It takes a long time, about half an hour or so, to rewrite 27,000 messages (or some other ginormous number, it varies) to disk, and during that time I'm held up. This problem never arose with Mountain Lion.
Basically it seems to me that Mail has been messed up in Mavericks, and Apple needs to fix it.
It was suggested to me by the Apple "Support Advisor" that the fault may lie with Gmail, due to some changes Google have made. But that sounds like it's a cop-out and anyway it's no excuse. Here are two of the biggest companies in the world who are constantly talking with each other about many things. If it's true (unlikely) Apple should be able to communicate with Gmail and get it sorted.

Mail program takes forever writing changes and saving index

Over the past couple of weeks, my G3 PowerBook (recently loaded with OSX), when I go to the Mail program, has taken to spending up to a minute at a time Writing Changes to Disk and then Saving Index. Tonight it did it every time I sent a message or accessed a message. It's now impossibly slow, and I can't find any way to stop it doing this every few minutes or with every message. How do I make it stop, or do this less frequently - say, once a day? I only have 400 messages in my Inbox, so I don't think it's overloaded.

Hi again
Select the mailbox you're are having problems with - you can find the Rebuild option under "Mailbox" from the menu at the top of the screen.
You can download a fully functional trial of Cocktail from here
http://www.maintain.se/cocktail/
I should point out I don't work for Maintain or receive payment for recommending Cocktail to other users, it's just my favourite utility =0)

Hiding Mail 5 Activity window

The Mail 5.0 Activity window is acting very strange. With the Activity window visible, when the main Mail 5.0 application is hidden the Activity window remains visible. How can I hide the Activity window without closing it?
Another quirk: When the Mail app is hidden and the Activity window is clicked on, the Finder becomes the active application. This is more annoying than having the Activity window always visible and I would settle for having the Activity window always visible but invoking the Mail parent application upon click.

I've got the same bug, but maybe it's not a bug. Could be the new Mail activity window is more akin to a Help window, which are non-floating windows.
Try this. Open a program with a help menu, Safari for example. Then open the Help Center by invoking the Help menu.
Switch to a different program (Mail will work) and "Hide Others". You'll see the Help Center window from Safari is visible in Mail.
As for the second 'quirk', I'd suggest the window isn't seen by any application; therefore, it just floats visible to only the eye, unresponsive to a click in any program but Mail. Also, Expose removes all the windows to the side, but leaves this orphaned Mail activity window.
I asked on a different forum and no one else reported this anomaly.
So, figured out a cure?

Active window switches to finder

I can be in any application eg:mail or typing this post on the web site and while typing the my cursor will disappear and the active window will change to the desktop. I don't have to be doing anything, I could be just reading a page in any application or site and it changes. It's very frustrating.
Thanks

Hi
I had the same problem a few days ago.. i finally managed to fixed it by searching online.. however, there is maybe another more suitable way
i will tell you want i did
I went to the library/preferences and i deleted com.apple.finder.plist.. but it didnt really worked, somehow my pc was recreating this file.. Finally i devided to delete everything and restart immediately... it worked, my you lose all your settings.. everything is working fine but all the setting of your mac turn to the manufacter original setting.. that said , if you do it, your dock is gonna be as it was when you bought your mac. and of course any other setting on other programs..
thats how i solved the problem
hope it works
cheers

Number of mail messages does not match the number in mail activity

This is not a big deal but I have noticed that when mail arrives the Mail Activity window tells me how many incoming messages are being downloaded. This number often bears no relationship to the number that arrive. For example it might read 4 messages are downloading when in reality only 1 arrives. If I look at my webmail all messages are listed. Does anyone know what causes these inconsistencies?

I do not have any answer, but I have the same problem. AND the RSS feeds do not make up the difference; and yesterday I disabled junk mail filtering. And I've made certain that I have no unread mail left over. Yet Mail Activity reported downloading 16 messages, but I only received 8. This happens daily, but the proportion of unaccounted emails varies.

Email not downloading from server - mail activity says there is

Hi all - I have an email account with mail on the server, which i can see on by logging in through a web interface.
However, retrieving new mail yields no messages, and a mysterious progress bar in the Mail activity window that says it's downloading "280 of 280 messages" which looks like this:
http://localhostr.com/files/d2e3f0/odd.png
It comes up and then goes away within a second or to, but now messages come through.
Any ideas?
Thanks

Thanks for the suggestion of using system preferences - could you please give me a little more information on how to do that?
I went into System preferences - network - advanced then clicked on the DNS tab where i saw 2 window (DNA and SEARCH DOMAINS). If i try to past the smpt in there (in the form smtpout.xxxxxxx.net) it simply pastes this: .eceee.e
If I try the same thing into the other window (SEARCH DOMAINS) it pastes just fine.
• A development •
When I control-click and select "get account info" the panel that appears shows all 308 messages as being on my server, but they say SENDER UNKNOWN and NO SUBJECT.
Here is a screengrab:
http://localhostr.com/files/d4298e/Screenshot+2010-05-13+at08.30.122.png
Could this be a clue?

Mail activity window "writing changes to disk" slows iMac

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