Speeding up Apple Mail by Vacuuming?…..

Apple Mail, especially earlier versions of Apple Mail, may start to slow down after a long period of time…

Evidently as everyone knows, it is possible to get quite a speed boost out of Mail.app by stripping all the bloat out of its Envelope index, an SQLite database Mail uses to store senders, recipients, subjects and so on.

What’s the easiest way to do this?

  1. Quit Mail.
  2. Open Terminal.
  3. Type the following:
    cd ~/Library/Mail
    sqlite3 Envelope\ Index
    An sqlite> prompt will appear.
    At that prompt, type vacuum subjects;
    After a short delay, the prompt will return. Type Control-D to exit.
  4. Restart Mail and enjoy the extra speed.

Does it work?   The first time he tried this, Rob Griffiths of macOSXHints reduced his Envelope index from 25.9MB to 4.5MB.

Okay, so that’s not the easiest way…  Instead download

Sebastian Morsch has written a script that quits Mail, runs the sqlite commands and then relaunches Mail at the end of the process. You can get the script from his web site.