Originally published at: Crash Caused by Apple Mail’s Previous Recipients Window and Editing in Contacts - TidBITS
Mail will crash if you open its Previous Recipients window and then edit a contact in Contacts. This bug has existed since macOS 12 Monterey and continues to plague the betas of macOS 15 Sequoia.
As others have reported, this is triggered in the Public Beta of Mac OS 15 (and again, is not triggered with BusyContacts syncing to iCloud in Sequoia nor Ventura.) I do have a Mac running Mojave, and the bug is not there, or at least I cannot get Mail to crash.
This is very timely, as I’m going to help a client with a Previous Recipients problem later this week. Thank you!
I’m running Sonoma 14.5 on a MacBook Pro. Having looked at Previous Recipients (without editing it) and then closing it, I opened Contacts. Deleted a few old ones – without any fuss by Mail – then entered a note on one Contact, which caused Mail to promptly crash.
Curious. I believe at least a couple others besides myself have filed Feedback reports on this. Has anyone’s Feedback “Recent Similar Reports:” been incremented to show that others have reported this? Mine has not. I do not believe I have ever had a report incremented, though many reports I’ve made have been noticed by others (the local Cal/Contacts syncing among others).
I concur with Seth, this bug is not replicated when making an edit in BusyContacts.
You can add one more user to the long list of folks who’ve experienced, reproduced, documented and notified Apple about this bug - going on years now. The bug also occurs editing a contact with an open email being edited to that same contact, although this appears to be intermittent. We also routinely delete Recent Contacts just to try and cut down on the mishaps.
Yes, deleting a contact won’t trigger the bug. You need to click the Done button that comes up whenever you’re editing a contact (which is part of adding one).
To answer my question, Apple actually incremented the “Recent Similar Reports” to “Less than 10.”
I’m seeing that too, and more promisingly, I forwarded to a friend who said he could get it in front of the right team at Apple. Fingers crossed!
Not exactly surprising given how bad Contacts in particular “works” these days, but I had not seen it before myself, but also sent in a crash report. I have several reproducible bugs in Contacts that Apple won’t do anything about – is there even anyone reading reports from Feedback Assistant these days? Last time someone noted they had read a bug report was in Mountain Lion for me – maybe I am blacklisted as I find too many problems.
If you have reproducible bugs, particularly crashes, in Contacts, start a new topic here so the rest of us can double-check and avoid them in the future, and if they’re appropriate, I’ll do an article.
Hi Adam,
There is of course a chance some of the problems I have encountered are due to my contacts database having some problem and have not taken the time to try and rebuild it in maybe a new user account, but will see if I get some spare time and write about it. Most annoying lately are the spinning beach ball after searching for a contact and trying to copy some information from a card (only happen like 50% of the time …).
Otherwise most annoyed what happens when trying to open and edit contacts from Mail … two consistent inconsistencies arise … .
All the best,
Jerry (via iPhone)