Speed up Mail.app

Found a great little hack last night to speed up Mail. I’ve got email going back about 5 years now on my G5. As a result it took at least 15 seconds to open up the application, then at least a further 4 or 5 seconds to open folders (depending on the number of messages). Now, after some tinkering with the internal SQLite database I’ve got launch time down to 2 seconds (from 15 originally) and shaved 50MB from the Index file.

Here’s the steps -

  1. Quit Mail (if it’s open)
  2. Open a Terminal (or iTerm) window
  3. cd ~/Library/Mail
  4. sqlite3 Envelope\ Index
  5. sqlite> vacuum subjects;
  6. When the prompt comes back, hit CTRL-D to exit

Credit to Dallas for the original instructions and Shaun Inman for finding them.

Posted 1 year, 7 months ago on 23rd February 2007.

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