At least with more RAM, you will mitigate the issue. With 8gb, you are guaranteed to get a decent amount of swaps to the SSD with just normal web browsing. Since the SSD is married to the computer itself, if you're concern of wear failure, you can rely on an external drive. Someone else already mentioned this, but it's a good idea long term (using the Mac Mini as a hub).
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32GB Memory and Swap Used
- Thread starter MacDaddyPanda
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At least with more RAM, you will mitigate the issue. With 8gb, you are guaranteed to get a decent amount of swaps to the SSD with just normal web browsing. Since the SSD is married to the computer itself, if you're concern of wear failure, you can rely on an external drive. Someone else already mentioned this, but it's a good idea long term (using the Mac Mini as a hub).
Yea, I agree that it's not something of concern with the current tech. With only mere megabytes a day with a 16gb+ config, or even a couple gb paging on the 8GB, it'll last about 100 years assuming no flaws to the chips. (still good practice to not rely on the internal storage and using as a hub though).
That said, flash chips are becoming flimsier for the pursuit of cheaper/larger spaces. The QLC SSDs only have a quarter of the endurance of today's TLC. It would be helpful if Apple fixed this before it actually becomes an issue. With Tim Cook at the helm, we will get crappier SSD chips in due time.
My wife sent me this screenshot while working on a big library in Lightroom (on a i5/8/256 2018 Mini)
I noticed the page outs were very frequent and almost always in GBs. This prompted me to upgrade to 32 GB sooner. And like @Ploki, since the upgrade, I haven’t seen any page outs.
Considering one of her apps literally took more memory then her entire config alone, she really needed it.
That said, I'm curious if she'll still have no page outs after a couple of months (no restarts/shutdowns).
Something is doing a small amount of page outs despite not needing to, there's plenty of reports about it.
That said, I'm curious if she'll still have no page outs after a couple of months (no restarts/shutdowns).
Something is doing a small amount of page outs despite not needing to, there's plenty of reports about it.
Indeed, I am curious how it behaves as well. We use the same computer, and so far I haven’t noticed any page outs since the 32GB upgrade. Memory usage (including Cached) hovers around 20 gig or so.
I'm using a late 2013 Mac Pro that I have just upgraded to 64 GB of ram. I have seen a small amount of swap usage once or twice, but it went away upon rebooting. This may be comparing apples to oranges, as the Mac Pro is different and older hardware from your mini, and the memory is slower and ECC, but my memory pressure chart is low and green as well with or without a bit of swap usage, so it seems like normal functioning in both cases. I have also noticed that with the 64 GB of ram, my pro seems to happily slurp up as much as it wants of memory that is now plentiful, and switching between apps is very quick. When I was working with a huge .psb composite yesterday in Photoshop, it alone was using 30 GB of ram! I have nine apps open now, including 5 Adobe cc apps, Safari, Chrome and Affinity Designer and Photo, I'm using about 20 GB of ram with 0 swap. I could open this many apps before, but rarely did, and I can't say what the exact comparative usage numbers were. It always did seem to me that the swap usage was less than what I would expect. All of this is to say that I think MacOS manages memory quite well, in contradiction to some of the posts in this discussion.
Some swapping is normal. To understand why some swap was used would require a lot of investigation and instrumentation that was set up prior to the swap occurring. IOW it's unlikely you'll ever know and it's not worth worrying about.
Have you found any solution for this issue? I hate rebooting every few days…
PS: Developer bug (via feedback assistant) report sent.Should I consider 32 GB ram? My 16GB macbook pro keeps building swap like crazy. Im still on mac OS Mojave on latest update I believe for it btw. My memory pressure rarely sees yellow (98% green I would say and only hits yellow when swap builds high) and I just run office productivity apps (word, excel, powerpoint), 30+ internet tabs, pdf expert, all across multiple monitors. My 4gb vram bar steadily climbs too until almost full as well (checked with istat 6). when I got to nearly 20 GB swap it was taking about 2 minutes to load clicker for youtube tv. Everything seemed to be going slower in general. A restart fixed everything but I prefer to keep it on sleep for days at a time since I have several projects running concurrently on my different desktops over the course of the work week.
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Based on my experience with a 2014 Mini w/8GB and a 2018 Mini w/32GB, Mojave 10.14.6 swaps a lot more when booted from a spinner than an SSD. IOW it appears that Mojave avoids swapping on a SSD as much as possible and readily swaps on a spinner.
On my 2014 Mini with 8GB of RAM, Swap Used …
* is always 0 when booted from an external 1TB Samsung T5 SSD
* is almost never 0 when booted from the internal 1TB spinner
On my 2018 Mini with 32Gb of RAM booted from the 256GB internal SSD, I have never seen Swap Used > 0.
Edit: I recently installed a 500GB Samsung 970 EVO NVMe SSD in the 2014 Mini running Mojave 10.14.6. When booted from the 970 EVO SSD, the Mini now swaps like it does when booted from the 1TB spinner.
GetRealBro
On my 2014 Mini with 8GB of RAM, Swap Used …
* is always 0 when booted from an external 1TB Samsung T5 SSD
* is almost never 0 when booted from the internal 1TB spinner
On my 2018 Mini with 32Gb of RAM booted from the 256GB internal SSD, I have never seen Swap Used > 0.
Edit: I recently installed a 500GB Samsung 970 EVO NVMe SSD in the 2014 Mini running Mojave 10.14.6. When booted from the 970 EVO SSD, the Mini now swaps like it does when booted from the 1TB spinner.
GetRealBro
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my macbook pro is a 2016 so it has a ssd. Im sure my experience would be dreadful if it were not for the fast ssd they use. I have had a couple issues where I wake it and it says i need to close things because of running out of application memory. I also get weird artifacts on wake from sleep. Im worried its on borrowed time but maybe its just Mojave and Caldigit firmware issues and/or radeon pro 460 driver issues? video card going out? I also get beach balls when waking from sleep
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I'd be concerned if my graphics card was frequently generating those patterns. They look reminiscent of what happened to the dreaded Nvidia 2011-2012 generation of MBPros.
Regarding 32GB: I assume you mean if you buy a new laptop?
If so, based on your usage, I think you will find it beneficial. However, swapping to disk isn't in of itself a reason to need more physical RAM. It is just something where more RAM will reduce the frequency of swaps.
For example, it doesn't actually look like you are running any active processes that actually require close to or greater than 16GB of physical, wired RAM.
Having said that, I was in the same boat as you, and was very happy to put 32GB in my 2018 mini (After 16GB in a 2011 mini). It is my main machine.
However, I am torn as to whether or not I'll put 32GB in a future MBpro purchase...because it won't be my main machine, and swaps (with a fast SSD) are not really such a big problem...more an inconvenience...although it is true that they may considerably contribute to increased SSD disk "wear"...
Its out of applecare and the 4 year keyboard warranty is coming up later this year so I have been looking closely at the 16in and considering what specs to go for when and if I make that move. is vram important for external monitors. I have 1440 and a 1080 but if I move to dual 4K’s? is the integrated igpu on the mini enough for a smooth user experience with multiple monitors?
If you are looking for a machine to last another 4+ years, and you can afford it then I think I would plump for the 8 core/1TB model and increase RAM to 32GB.
Just like in your current machine (and in all 15 inch MBPros for the past years), even though capable (e.g. the Mac mini UHD630 can do it), the integrated GPU is disabled on a MBPro when running external monitors.
EDIT: or are you considering a 2018 mini as an possible replacement?
Its used primarily as a desktop machine so a mini might be a more sensible replacement but I do like to be able to work from home sometimes on the weekends. I think I am going to keep a close eye on the refurbs section and find a 32gb 1tb spec as you suggest.
Is the swap file basically for all those times I would momentarily (in my case) go above 16GB? I routinely show memory used 8-12 GB from my casual glances at activity monitor throughout the day. Im still wondering how I am swapping to ssd. Thanks to all above for your suggestions and help by the way.
Yes. As far as I understand it, swap happens when the combined memory footprint of all open apps exceeds the physical RAM.
I believe that the first thing that happens is that inactive apps compress their RAM footprint, and then, as needed, this compressed RAM swaps to the disk.
Swaps do NOT mean you are actually running any single process that requires more than 16GB Physical RAM space. This is what memory pressure estimates. Thus you can have low memory pressure and yet still have lots of swaps. Such a situation is a symptom of having open lots and lots of relatively low memory processes. I.e. loads of tabs and apps open in the same log-in session. Which is exactly what you described.
If you want fewer swaps, then more RAM will definitely solve it. But you don't actually *need* it. On a 32GB 2018 mini, I almost never see swaps. On a 16GB 2011 mini, I did. Both had/have SSDs.
Ok, I think I understand a bit better now, Thanks. The low memory pressure was throwing me off but if I am understanding correctly since all my processes are small but cumulatively I am using most or all of my ram so I’m swapping. I figured activity monitor would have turned yellow or red at the point where it is swapping close to 20 GB but I guess not.
That's my general understanding of it as well.. But in practice, I've seen both Linux and MacOS use swap when there was no reason to.
My workstation (High Sierra) has 32gb. As I'm writing this, memory utilization is at around 20gb, yet for it's also using 5gb of swap.
It gets to the point where the performance impact is noticeable enough to require a reboot.
I'm going to try disabling swap entirely, since there's no way to reduce its usage like there is on Linux. It's frustrating to have all that RAM and never use it because MacOS can't prioritize correctly.
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What kind of processes are you running? It is possible that one active process by itself is requesting enough active RAM that it forces one of the other (inactive) processes to page to disk.
For example, what does the memory usage say for each individual process/app in activity monitor?
I went ahead and sold my 15in and got a 1TB 16in with 32GB ram. So far using similar number of productivity apps and about 20+ tabs on safari, a couple on firefox, and a few on chrome. Im using about 26GB but so far its not gone above 470MB of swap over the 5 days I have had the computer on. So far much happier with this setup than before. How long does it take for you to get the 5GB swap? Before it was relatively quick for me to get 1+GB swap. I did notice some slowdowns but it was when i was approaching 15GB swap, but the programs I use probably are more forgiving than maybe what you're running.