JulianSchrader.de

Speed up your Mail.app

If youre using Mail.app on your Mac, you may have noticed that it was a little faster when you first started using it — depending on how much you use it, it works more or less slower, but after a certain time in use, it’s getting slower in any case.

The question here is, why? Mail.app stores your e-mails in an SQLite database, that’s likely to get terminally corrupted — no big deal that could knock out the application, but it definitely slows it down a little.

These partial damages can be repaired easily. So if you are someone who uses Mail.app a lot, you could benefit in terms of speed by quitting Mail.app and typing the following into a new terminal window:

You may want to create a backup of your Mail data first so that you can revert to the original status easily in case you mess things up while hacking in the terminal. Just navigate to the Library folder inside your user’s home folder and copy the whole Mail folder over to your desktop — never fear, it’s only temporary lying about there.


cd ~/Library/Mail
sqlite3 Envelope\ Index
sqlite> vacuum subjects;


Remember to press [Return] after each line!

After a little while of processing your command, you’ll see a new line with sqlite> beneath the code you typed before — everything’s done and your Mail.app should be a little snappier than before.

Repeat this every now and then — for example once a month — and you’re done.

Disclaimer: I found this technique in the comments on this post on hawkings.net and it worked well for me — don’t forget to backup!