Mail app constantly downloads messages, slowing performance

Question

Level 1

6 points

Mail app constantly downloads messages, slowing performance

Mail constantly "Downloading Messages"

I know this issue is old and there are several threads related to the same problem, but I have not found an answer yet!

Long story short - Mail keeps this progress bar indicating that it is downloading thousands of messages (this number also varies, from a few messages to thousands...). While this is only mostly annoying, it also make Mail rather slow - which is a problem as I deal with many emails and different accounts.

Now:

I have the latest update
I've closed and opened Mail
I've tried deleting all accounts and adding them again (temporary fix only)
I've tried to rebuild the different mailboxes

Any usable ideas?

Thank you in advance

Posted on Dec 11, 2025 9:05 AM

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Answer 1

AlWeir

Level 5

4,947 points

Dec 11, 2025 9:13 AM in response to Pantomath

What I found that I had emails dating back almost twenty years on Gmail and it kept wanting to down load them consistently, so since I haven't looked at most of them for years I deleted everything for 23 years and it stopped doing it.

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Answer 2

Pantomath Author

Level 1

6 points

Dec 11, 2025 9:41 AM in response to AlWeir

Well, my gmail is not a problem - it has maybe 200 emails and all recent.

As for my other accounts, the really full ones are about 7 years old... And I must keep all the email, so deleting is not an option...

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Answer 3

AlWeir

Level 5

4,947 points

Dec 11, 2025 10:13 AM in response to Pantomath

Well if you can find a way of moving half of them to another email address and then delete them you might stop this stupid email behaviour in Mail on that account.

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