Should my Macbook Air be using this much swap?

Nosrettap · Sep 17, 2012

I was recently using my 2012 MacBook Air and I noticed this strange anomaly:

As you can see, my computer has used an extremely high amount of swap; however, there is plenty of free memory.

The story behind this photo is: I went to check my mail (Apple Mail program) and I noticed a sever slow down. The only other programs that I had open at the time were Safari and Notes, however I wasn't doing anything intense with either of them.

Should this be happening? Why is my computer swapping so much memory when there is so much free memory left? Thanks

simsaladimbamba · Sep 17, 2012

How long ago did you restart? And even though you might have enough free RAM, often a small SWAP file is created nonetheless (64 or 128 MB).

Nosrettap · Sep 17, 2012

simsaladimbamba said:
How long ago did you restart? And even though you might have enough free RAM, often a small SWAP file is created nonetheless (64 or 128 MB).

I restarted probably between 1 to 2 days ago.

And yes, a small SWAP file may be created; however, 1 GB is hardly trivial.

gnasher729 · Sep 17, 2012

Nosrettap said:
Should this be happening? Why is my computer swapping so much memory when there is so much free memory left? Thanks

Your computer isn't swapping anything at all. Look at "Page ins" and "Page outs", that's what it is actually swapping.

Mail can slow down for the simple reason that the mail server at your ISP is slow.

Nosrettap said:
And yes, a small SWAP file may be created; however, 1 GB is hardly trivial.

1 GB _is_ trivial.

Nosrettap · Sep 17, 2012

gnasher729 said:
Your computer isn't swapping anything at all. Look at "Page ins" and "Page outs", that's what it is actually swapping.

Mail can slow down for the simple reason that the mail server at your ISP is slow.

1 GB _is_ trivial.

So is swap just Page Ins + Page Outs? If not, what is the difference between page out and swap? I always though that swap was what you should look at to see if your computer has enough RAM

tiwizard · Sep 17, 2012

Nosrettap said:
So is swap just Page Ins + Page Outs? If not, what is the difference between page out and swap? I always though that swap was what you should look at to see if your computer has enough RAM

I'm not 100% sure, but according to the wording on the Apple Support Document, this is the *amount* written to swap, not the current usage.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1342?viewlocale=en_US

(See bottom of the article)

Mrbobb · Sep 17, 2012

gnasher729 said:
Your computer isn't swapping anything at all. Look at "Page ins" and "Page outs", that's what it is actually swapping.

Mail can slow down for the simple reason that the mail server at your ISP is slow.

^+1

OS and apps have the nasty habit of "hogging" as much memory as they can possibly used. Swap file size seems to increase proportionally to the machine's available physical ram, regardless of what you are actually doing. There maybe a manual way for u to specify the swap file size if that really bothers u.

But ur current slow down was a coincidence.

Search

Search

Should my Macbook Air be using this much swap?

Nosrettap

macrumors member

simsaladimbamba

Guest

Nosrettap

macrumors member

gnasher729

Suspended

Nosrettap

macrumors member

tiwizard

macrumors regular

Mrbobb

macrumors 603

Our Staff