More On Leopard Mail.app Freezes
This is a follow up to the bit I posted last week about Mail.app hanging — usually at login/startup/wake, but then at other times for no reason in particular. My original post blamed the problem on iCal syncing To-Do’s with Mail (which I personally don’t like).
An update to that post later shifted the blame to GrowlMail. I can confirm — without a doubt — that GrowlMail has a problem with IMAP email accounts under Leopard, both on Intel and PPC based machines. While you could simply turn GrowlMail off in Mail preferences, my recommendation is to completely remove the bundle until it can be fully updated for compatibility. Note: a new version of GrowlMail was released a few days ago that supposedly addresses Leopard issues. However, my testing found it to still have lingering problems, so I promptly uninstalled it.
If you have GrowlMail installed, it can be uninstalled by removing the following files from your hard drive:
/Library/Mail/Bundles/GrowlMail.bundle /Library/Receipts/GrowlMail.pkg /Library/Receipts/growlmailPreflight.pkg
Since deleting those files, I’ve had no trouble with my IMAP account in Leopard Mail whatsoever. It should be noted you’ll probably have to authenticate as an administrator to remove the files.
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GrowlMail’s going to be in beta soon. What I think you saw was an unofficial build that wasn’t meant for public release; since that got out, I’ve fixed a number of known bugs.
We’d appreciate it if you’d send us an email telling us about your “lingering problems†so that we can fix them either in this beta or a subsequent one.
Growl Mail: what a nightmare, i have my apple mac and gmail accounts set up in mail app of leopard, i installed growl mail and i stated getting minimum 3 pop ups for same incoming mail , it is annoying.
now i removed growl mail but still my mail app freezes on its start up , and Growl Mail still exists in MAIL preferences, how do i remove grow mail preferences from apple mail preferences
@Peter – If that was a release not meant for public consumption, then my apologies. I would be very glad to help test. I’ll contact you back channel to arrange something.
@Dhiraj – My instructions above pretty much tell you what files you need to remove, but I’ll try to make them a little clearer; First quit Mail. Then double click your hard drive, then double click the “Library” folder, then double click the “Mail” folder, then double click the “Bundles” folder, and then move the “GrowlMail.bundle” file (it will actually look like a folder) to the trash. Then restart Mail. The bundle has been uninstalled, and you shouldn’t have any more hang issues.
There is definitely an issue with mail and growl, as I can’t even start mail without it completely crashing. Thanks for posting the information above, hopefully it helps!
@Peter, I’m running 1.1.2, which is currently the version on the growl site for download. This doesn’t appear to be an “unofficial build”. I’ll be sure to send my crash log when it happens again…
@Peter: Would the crash log help with debugging purposes for the growl developers? If so, it’d be nice to have a private email address than the mailing group to send that information to.
I’ve had this problem and it was driving me nuts. Thanks for the quick fix! I look forward to a Leopard-working version of GrowlMail soon
Thanks for this info. I can confirm Mail still crashes when any trace of GrowlMail is present – as soon as it starts synching to-do items with my IMAP folder. For good measure Mail has screwed up my mailbox; lots of messages have a subject belonging to the message above. Nightmare. Rebuilding now… fingers crossed.
Roderick: We ask that you send crash logs to the list, so that all our developers can read the crash log.
Everyone: I posted GrowlMail 1.1.3b1 today. This is a real public beta of the Leopard-compatible GrowlMail. It’s on our beta page, and we have a mailing list thread for bug reports.
Thanks Peter! I can’t even begin to tell you how lost I’ve been without GrowlMail…
People: follow Peter’s direction – if you have issues, send your crash logs to the mailing list.
And stick to what the beta page says – DON’T post the beta to software sites (VT, MacUpdate) or announce it elsewhere. Just evaluate it & report bugs. That’s what caused all the confusion behind this post to begin with.
Thanks for the help … I was about to pull my hair out, and that wouldn’t be cool.
Hey Peter, thanks for digging into this, i uninstalled growlmail and everything’s back to normal.
I don’t have growl and I’m still having issues with Mail not downloading emails or sending them
And thanks from me as well! Uninstalling growlmail did the trick… I couldn’t figure out why Mail.app had suddenly stopped synchronizing!
Excellent! thanks for posting! Been looking for a solution for this for quite some time!
Where is mail.appetizer!? =/
Cheers mate, thanks again.
I don’t have GrowlMail installed (I can’t stand growl). I am having issues with Mail.app at least once a week when I bring my MBP out of sleep mode.
Although its quite possible GrowlMail is making it worse, I don’t think its the underlying cause.