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Crash Caused by Apple Mail's Previous Recipients Window and Editing in Contacts

   Adam Engst

   Late last year, a TidBITS reader alerted me to a reproducible bug in
   Contacts in macOS 14 Sonoma, and after I wrote about it in '[1]How to
   Recover from Contacts Freezing when Printing Lists in Sonoma' (6
   December 2023), Apple fixed the bug in macOS 14.3. Let's see if we can
   get Apple to stamp out another crashing bug associated with Contacts
   and Mail.

   This bug, [2]reported in TidBITS Talk by Will_B, is unusual because it
   requires coordinated activity in two of Apple's apps, Mail and
   Contacts. To reproduce it, choose Window > Previous Recipients in Mail.
   Then, in Contacts, add a contact or edit a field in an existing
   contact. When you click the Done button in Contacts, Mail will crash.
   Although I haven't seen any ill effects from those crashes, there's no
   telling what sort of corruption could occur depending on what Mail is
   doing at the moment of the crash.

   It doesn't matter if you leave the Previous Recipients window open or
   close it, nor does it make any difference if Mail launches before or
   after Contacts. The location of the edited contact is irrelevant; I've
   seen crashes with contacts in both iCloud and Google. Time is not a
   factor either, ensuring that users could experience Mail crashes days
   after opening and closing the Previous Recipients window.
   Interestingly, editing a contact in [3]Cardhop also triggers the crash,
   but [4]Seth Anderson reported in TidBITS Talk that [5]BusyContacts does
   not cause a crash.

   Will_B said he could reproduce the crash in macOS 12 Monterey and the
   beta of macOS 15 Sequoia, and others confirmed that it happens in macOS
   13 Ventura and macOS 14 Sonoma as well. Several people said it did not
   occur in macOS 11 Big Sur, but it's clearly a longstanding bug. A
   number of us have reported the bug to Apple.

   These crashes may not be all that common. I suspect most people seldom
   interact with the Previous Recipients window. It's an internal contact
   list that Mail maintains to help suggest or autocomplete addresses when
   you're composing messages. The main reason to open the Previous
   Recipients window is if Mail suggests an obsolete or incorrect address
   for someone'to get it to stop, you need to [6]remove that address from
   Previous Recipients. Of course, if you use the Add to Contacts button
   to add an item to Contacts and switch to Contacts to flesh out that
   contact, you'll crash Mail.

   For now, you can prevent Mail from crashing unexpectedly by quitting
   and relaunching the app after you work in the Previous Recipients
   window. Otherwise, your next edit in Contacts will unceremoniously
   cause Mail to trip over its code.

References

   Visible links
   1. https://tidbits.com/2023/12/06/how-to-recover-from-contacts-freezing-when-printing-lists-in-sonoma/
   2. https://talk.tidbits.com/t/a-reliable-mail-crash/28347?u=ace
   3. https://flexibits.com/cardhop
   4. https://talk.tidbits.com/t/a-reliable-mail-crash/28347/12?u=ace
   5. https://www.busymac.com/busycontacts/
   6. https://support.apple.com/guide/mail/remove-obsolete-email-addresses-mlhlp1113/16.0/mac/14.0

   Hidden links:
   7. https://tidbits.com/wp/../uploads/2024/07/Mail-crash.png
   8. https://tidbits.com/wp/../uploads/2024/07/Previous-Recipients.png

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