16 GB of RAM and still using swap on new 2017 rMBP w/ TB?

[ideal.dreams]

I bought a 2017 MacBook Pro with TouchBar in June and it has 16 GB of RAM. I noticed that it's still using swap when I look at the memory details in Activity Monitor. Is this anything I should be concerned with? If so, is there a way to minimize the swapping? I know OS X likes to utilize all the RAM it can for whatever reason.

 

[kohlson]

Swap happens when you need more memory than is available in RAM. Mac OS X has made some good strides in recent years in cleaning up unused / unneeded memory (garbage collection), plus compressing that memory which may not be needed. That said, you can run out - 16GB is not "unlimited."

Take a look at Activity Monitor, in the memory tab, and click at the top of the memory column. This will show you what process(es) is the culprit. My guess: your browser. Sometimes it's a simple as closing a browser tab, and others it helps to quit/restart your browser. But Activity Monitor will tell you.

 

[burgman]

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201464
Scroll down to memory for explanation.

https://developer.apple.com/library...tual/ManagingMemory/Articles/AboutMemory.html
For a more technical deep dive.

 

[Sterkenburg]

MacOS's memory manager likes to move some inactive stuff on the disk once in a while, even with memory still available. No need to be concerned unless under the memory pressure indicator starts going yellow/red.

 

[leman]

Swapping can happen for a number of reasons (not necessarily lack of memory) and is part of normal operation of your OS. As long as swapping is not excessive, you are perfectly fine.

 

[aevan]

I bought a 2017 MacBook Pro with TouchBar in June and it has 16 GB of RAM. I noticed that it's still using swap when I look at the memory details in Activity Monitor. Is this anything I should be concerned with? If so, is there a way to minimize the swapping? I know OS X likes to utilize all the RAM it can for whatever reason.

As others have said, there will always be swap no matter how much RAM you have. Also, RAM will always be full, because macOS uses it to cache things and empty RAM is wasted RAM. People see these two things and think they don’t have enough, but both things would happen with any amount of memory. As long as memory pressure in activity monitor is green, it’s fine. For most tasks, even 16Gb is overkill. Some workflows require a lot of RAM, things like rendering or running VMs.