Does the Mail app use any space?

[gustav531]

I just got my MBA 11.6" with 64gb storage.
I loaded up my Gmail account into the Mail app and it started downloading thousands of old emails.

Is that taking up any considerable amount of space? I mean the text files probably aint so big but all the attachments etc...

What shall one do?

Thanks

 

[Hellhammer]

Delete the emails you don't need, especially ones with lots of pics.

You can see how much Mail is taking space by right-clicking Mac HD/Users/user/Library/Mail folder and selecting Show Info

 

[Fuchal]

It can use anywhere from hundreds of MB to a few GB. You can deselect "Keep copies of messages for offline viewing" and Mail will not store it locally. It will fetch it from the server when you request it. It's in the account settings.

 

[jav6454]

Barely uses 100MB on my Mac and thats when I have large attachments showing.

 

[darngooddesign]

Just compare your free space before and after to judge how much it consumes.

 

[Over Achiever]

Mine uses 4.5 GB of space. Yikes.

 

[koobcamuk]

Mine uses 4.5 GB of space. Yikes.

My email uses 3.4GB of space.

Gmail and my University email are both on there. Kind of useful though.

 

[TuffLuffJimmy]

Just use thunderbird.

 

[ryanmcd02]

When I set up my mail account, I did it offline and set the Mail app to not save any emails to the computer. This causes a lag, as each message has to download before viewing, but makes the computer only store the subject lines of emails (if I am correct).

 

[jamone13]

In mail goto Preferences, then Accounts, then select your account and select advanced. Then change "Keep copies of message for offline viewing" from "All messages and their attachments", to "All messages, but omit attachments". For me most messages are 3-40KB so even with 10k messages its only 400MB. That way reading messages doesn't require loading, it also allows full text search still. Its the attachments that kills you.

 

[alflavor]

@jamone13 good tip, that has helped me.

 

[patrixl]

Just compare your free space before and after to judge how much it consumes.

Or go in Home/Library/Mail , where you see a folder for each account you have and then you Get Info on the account to see how much space it takes for real.

Comparing before/after free space on your HD can be a bit misleading, since other things happen while it's loading the emails - browser caching stuff, temp files being created/removed, etc.

Patrix.