Speed up Mail.app

  • macosx • howto • it • opensource • english • devtools
  • 232 words
Mail.app icon + SQLite logo + vacuum = BRRRRRUUUUUUUUUMMMMM!

Anyone that use Mail.app (the “official” mail client on [en:Mac OS X]) knows that the greater mailboxes become, the slower Mail.app goes. I don’t know how many email I have, but the oldest is from the 2002 (I have cutted older because they became useless).

Today, I found an interesting link on TUAW: A faster way to speed up Mail.app on Hawk Wings.

Starting from that tips, I have expanded it to vacuum every table in the SQLite3 database used from Mail.app to index our emails.

Continue to see the mini-howto.

  1. Step 01: Quit Mail.app (and backup your ~/Library/Mail - nd Nemo)
  2. Step 02: Open Terminal.app
  3. Step 03: type cd ~/Library/Mail (the configuration directory of Mail.app)
  4. Step 04: type sqlite3 Envelope\ Index (Opens the console of SQLite3 on the index-db of Mail.app)
  5. Step 05: type .table to list every table in the db (.help for help)
  6. Step 06: type vacuum X where X is the name of the table you want to optimize (every table listed in the Step 05)
  7. Step 07: CTRL+D to quit the console of SQLite3
  8. Step 08: Start Mail.app and enjoy the speed-bump!

Frankly: I don’t assume responsability of problems, damage or other things that will happen to your Mail.app if you do it in the wrong way. It’s is NOT an howto from Apple: it’s from one that knows something about [en:RDBMS].