16GB Ram usage/ allocation

[MBX]

Hi

I see that my 16GB of Ram in my 13'' nTB MBP are usually used up to 1-2GB approx even if I only have Safari, Twitter and Spotify open.

I was expecting at least 6GB of Ram to be unused with such small apps.

Should I care about it at all and let the macOS/ MBP take care of it automatically as it needs?

 

[leman]

What you should look at is the memory pressure graph. If its green, then everything is fine. If its getting yellowish, then you might have a memory leak somewhere.

More detail: the OS will often use parts of RAM to speed up disk access. So if a lot of RAM is free, it will speculatively load libraries etc. or pre-draw parts of the UI to improve your experience. Memory management is a very complex thing in a modern OS, and if the system tells you that its using 20GB it doesn't mean that its what the apps actually use.

 

[andy9l]

You shouldn't care about it. Memory management isn't a new concept, so macOS will be pretty damn good at it by now.

Don't manually try to manage memory usage. You don't work for your Mac - your Mac works for you. Also bear in mind that having large amounts of consistently unused RAM is utterly pointless.

As mentioned above, just check the memory pressure in Activity Monitor and ensure it's running green.

 

[Samuelsan2001]

Hi

I see that my 16GB of Ram in my 13'' nTB MBP are usually used up to 1-2GB approx even if I only have Safari, Twitter and Spotify open.

I was expecting at least 6GB of Ram to be unused with such small apps.

Should I care about it at all and let the macOS/ MBP take care of it automatically as it needs?

OSX uses as much ram as possible loading up frequently accessed information and leaving closed apps in the ram buffered etc so that it keeps your computer using its fastest memory as much as possible. as long as your pressure graph is green you are all good simple as that.