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Disable Dictation to get 1GB RAM back

nutmac

nutmac

macrumors 603
Original poster
Mar 30, 2004
6,059
7,332
Even though my rMBP has 16GB RAM, it frequently taps in to swap memory. So I started cracking down on apps and processes running the background. One oddity was "com.apple.speech.recognition" eating up nearly 1GB of physical memory (even after a reboot).

So I turned it off completely by going to "System Preferences | Dictation & Speech | Dictation -> Off & Shortcut -> Off".

Voila, I got 1GB RAM back.
 
Partron22

Partron22

macrumors 68030
Apr 13, 2011
2,655
808
Yes
nutmac said:
Voila, I got 1GB RAM back.
Click to expand...
I got 995.9 MB back on my Mac, after a restart. That's with "Enhanced Dictation" initially turned on.
There doesn't seem to be any discernible memory footprint at all when dictating with "Enhanced Dictation" turned off.

Perhaps Apple'l fix this hoggishness when they come out w "Enhanced Dictation" 1.0.1.
 
P

peoplevoice

macrumors member
Aug 19, 2008
73
1
The process is not running in my computer and I have Enhanced Dictation ON for English and Spanish.
 
D

divincem

macrumors newbie
Sep 6, 2009
8
0
I only noticed the memory usage after using dictation however it is using 1GB of RMA on my system. I have tho fierce quit it each time to get back the RAM even after turning off enhanced dictation
 
T

tigerintank

macrumors 6502
Jun 16, 2013
271
47
dictation on with enhanced ticked here.

don't have that process running at all.

there are a couple speech related processes using minimal memory;

com.apple.preference.speech.remoteservice 19.6 MB
com.apple.speech.speechsynthesisd 11.0 MB
 
Futurix

Futurix

macrumors 6502a
Nov 22, 2011
591
684
Strasbourg, France
In order for this process to start you need to trigger actual dictation at least once. Although in my case it consumes 'only' 543.4 MB :eek:

EDIT: It did go away after restart though.
 
Last edited:
LV426

LV426

macrumors 68000
Jan 22, 2013
1,835
2,262
nutmac said:
Even though my rMBP has 16GB RAM, it frequently taps in to swap memory. So I started cracking down on apps and processes running the background. One oddity was "com.apple.speech.recognition" eating up nearly 1GB of physical memory (even after a reboot).

So I turned it off completely by going to "System Preferences | Dictation & Speech | Dictation -> Off & Shortcut -> Off".

Voila, I got 1GB RAM back.
Click to expand...
Is this actually a problem, or even an issue? If the blurb is to be believed Mavericks will happily max out your available RAM as a matter of course. High priority running tasks will then make priority use of uncompressed memory, and low priority tasks will have their RAM (virtually) compressed. As a last resort – new to Mavericks – stuff gets written to swap.

Unless your usage is showing high 'memory pressure', a much better metric, I'd say there isn't an issue,
 
nutmac

nutmac

macrumors 603
Original poster
Mar 30, 2004
6,059
7,332
LV426 said:
Is this actually a problem, or even an issue? If the blurb is to be believed Mavericks will happily max out your available RAM as a matter of course. High priority running tasks will then make priority use of uncompressed memory, and low priority tasks will have their RAM (virtually) compressed. As a last resort – new to Mavericks – stuff gets written to swap.

Unless your usage is showing high 'memory pressure', a much better metric, I'd say there isn't an issue,
Click to expand...

No, because enhanced dictation can't be compressed all that much. So when your Mac runs out of RAM and cannot be swapped anymore (with compression), it will start to page out. And once your Mac pages out, it will thrashing and your Mac will run much slower, even if you quit all the apps. The only recourse at this point is reboot your Mac entirely to get page out-free performance back.
 
LV426

LV426

macrumors 68000
Jan 22, 2013
1,835
2,262
nutmac said:
No, because enhanced dictation can't be compressed all that much. So when your Mac runs out of RAM and cannot be swapped anymore (with compression), it will start to page out. And once your Mac pages out, it will thrashing and your Mac will run much slower, even if you quit all the apps. The only recourse at this point is reboot your Mac entirely to get page out-free performance back.
Click to expand...

What evidence do you have that enhanced dictation can't be compressed much? And even if that is the case, if its memory gets written to swap, that's where it will stay unless it is actually being used – that in itself will not result in 'thrashing'.
 
nutmac

nutmac

macrumors 603
Original poster
Mar 30, 2004
6,059
7,332
LV426 said:
What evidence do you have that enhanced dictation can't be compressed much? And even if that is the case, if its memory gets written to swap, that's where it will stay unless it is actually being used – that in itself will not result in 'thrashing'.
Click to expand...

Because I frequently use around 12-14GB of physical memory (excluding cache and dictation). I use "vm_stat" from Terminal to verify actual page outs and swap outs, and while I can't verify how "compressible" enhanced dictation is, turning on dictation when I am close to maxing out physical memory triggers page outs.
 
LV426

LV426

macrumors 68000
Jan 22, 2013
1,835
2,262
nutmac said:
turning on dictation when I am close to maxing out physical memory triggers page outs.
Click to expand...

Of course it will. What does your graph of Memory Pressure look like? The thing that really matters.
 
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