Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Any swap files on 24 GB ram MacBooks ?
- Thread starter snakes-
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
You will have anyway ram swap - because it how is working macOS. Less ram you have, the earlying mac start struggling. In some case extra +8GB RAM make almost 5 time difference in performance. So if you thinking about 24GB, you will feel diference in long time - your mac will work more stabele day to day, month after month and in multitasking not loss performance.
I last year move from 16GB to 32GB. In multitasking difference is huge - much more stable performance. But it still have ram swap, but less than previous.
Swap is not a problem, of itself. Excessive swap might be.
I have 32Gb RAM and macOS still uses swap when it needs to.
Swap is a function of how you use the Mac, not the amount of memory it has. Some people see minimal swap with 8GB and others see gigabytes of swap with 24GB (or more) RAM.
Buy the amount of RAM you need, for the way you use your computer. Or, alternatively, adjust your usage to fit the RAM you have.
BTW: The most common cause of high swap, that I’ve seen, is having a &$#@-ton of open tabs in Chrome. Obviously there are a lot of other ways to cause swap with various apps, but usually those people understand their usage. Chrome tab-hogs generally don’t, in my experience.
Buy the amount of RAM you need, for the way you use your computer. Or, alternatively, adjust your usage to fit the RAM you have.
BTW: The most common cause of high swap, that I’ve seen, is having a &$#@-ton of open tabs in Chrome. Obviously there are a lot of other ways to cause swap with various apps, but usually those people understand their usage. Chrome tab-hogs generally don’t, in my experience.
Don't blame the users: if they used a decent browser, it wouldn't be a problem.
I'm not bashing Chrome, it has its place. But it is a RAM-hog if you have a bunch of open tabs, no doubt. If a user understands that & plans accordingly (by getting more RAM) or adjusts behavior accordingly (by closing tabs when not in use), I don't have a problem with Chrome.
Personally, I'm fine with Safari. But if somebody likes a different browser - Vaya con Dios.
Comes down to usage. My 32 GB M1M never gets in to it. My 8GB M2 does all the time
If users weren’t lazy, and understood when it’s appropriate to use a bookmark instead of using a tab that wouldn’t be an issue
There is many case when bookmark not help you save a free ram. When I somesing searching on internet, I first open lot of pages(20-30), and then start watching/read them - in this case if you dont have lot of ram - Mac will be start freezing. In this case is huge differenc batwen 16GB and 32GB. And if you are multitasking user, more ram = faster work.
Foremost, to address the original question(s)… We can’t because there’s a lot of complexity, we’d need a lot more data (e.g., apps used, workflow amongst those apps). And even with more data, a “Yes” or “No” is probably not going to be sufficient.
In fact, it’s often counterproductive:
health.clevelandclinic.org
www.scienceabc.com
Last but not least, a tech-focused reasoning and approach to the problem:
lifehacker.com
By the way, this delusion extends to the rationalization “I need two/three/four displays/monitors.” Again, can there be a genuine benefit? Yes. However, the actually useful scenarios are few. It’s more about trying to portray the highest skill level.
Image credit: Warner Bros (The Matrix and Swordfish)
I won’t deny the Swordfish setup is eye-catching but that’s really where it sits, a showpiece.
At least on these forums that’s a common justification.
Are there scenarios in which having multiple sources and tools quickly accessible is beneficial? Yes, of course. However, the problem is the extent of belief.
In fact, it’s often counterproductive:
Why Multitasking Doesn’t Work
When we think we’re multitasking, most often we aren’t really doing two things at once, but instead, individual actions in rapid succession.
health.clevelandclinic.org
Can Humans Actually Multitask?
Human brain is designed to handle one task at a time, engaging in rapid task-switching rather than simultaneous execution during multitasking.
Last but not least, a tech-focused reasoning and approach to the problem:
Why You Should Never Have More Than Nine Browser Tabs Open
I often hear people complain that their browser is slow and unstable. It's easy to blame browser developers for using sloppy coding practices and not
By the way, this delusion extends to the rationalization “I need two/three/four displays/monitors.” Again, can there be a genuine benefit? Yes. However, the actually useful scenarios are few. It’s more about trying to portray the highest skill level.
Image credit: Warner Bros (The Matrix and Swordfish)
I won’t deny the Swordfish setup is eye-catching but that’s really where it sits, a showpiece.
Last edited:
My 13" M3 24 GB/1TB MacBook Air. This is with an uptime of 7 days. Used daily for 8-10 hours a day. Mostly for web app software development with React JS.
You can't avoid swap in general with macOS (unless you turn it off which is not advised for normal use.) As you can see, I currently have plenty of RAM available and no memory pressure but I still have over 1 GB of swap and 1/2 GB of compressed memory. It is just how macOS works and it isn't anything to worry about.
@snakes-
The YouTube video by Alex Ziskind at
makes for interesting viewing on the subject of how macOS uses RAM, memory pressure and cache in a real-world working environment. It's not aimed at 24GB usage because he set about looking at whether money is better spent upgrading RAM to 16 or SSD to 512 from the base spec, but the tests and analysis are surprising and informative, and might help.
The YouTube video by Alex Ziskind at
I have a 64GB M1 Max, it swaps. Swap in Mac and Linux isn’t a bad thing. The Mac off loads the memory pages it doesn’t need to swap. It’s much better way, than trying to offload memory under load. Last thing you want when the machine needs more RAM is try to offload while working on intense tasks. I have a 128 GB Linux work station, which has lot of cache and swap used at times. Just enjpy your Mac and let OS optimize the memory.
I want to take this advice but I struggle with it. I'm zero percent worried about the SSD wearing out due to write/read cycles. There's no way I own my machine that long. But what bugs me is that MacOS doesn't seem to ever clear out the swap. Something about that eats at my OCD.
Is your recommendation just to totally ignore Activity Monitor and not reboot unless there's some other reason to do so? I'll admit I've never seen the memory usage impact the performance in a way that I can notice as a user so I'm probably over thinking all of this.
If you look at the Ziskind video posted above, you'll see that Activity Monitor isn't really all that useful in telling you much that's actually useful to you as a user. Yes, it fulfills the inner statistician if you have one, but macOS is very adept at memory management - indeed, overall resource management - so Activity Monitor will tell you a great deal about not much.
The video clearly demonstrate that macOS does actively manage the use of system memory, and does so quite effectively. And that for most uses, you really can just use the system and not overthink how it is running.
For me, the only use of Activity Monitor is to occasionally confirm that there is not something I don’t want or I don’t care about is running in background using a bunch of resources
Last edited:
Unless something crazy has changed, you should be able to close all applications and restart the computer and the swap file will be rebuilt.
Focus on memory pressure, if it goes red for basic/regular usage. Swap in Mac OS and most flavors of Linux is proactive in many ways than not. OS offloads some unused/not recently used memory to swap, to keep RAM ready for frequent or new processing. Mac could just remove from RAM and not use swap at all, but the next time you activate the window or start the unused app, it will have to load. In a way, swap assists in fast loading. It’s not the only factor, cache and other stuff play a role. You can close all the apps, or reboot, but for me, it's not an option with multiple apps, code, documentation and other stuff open. I may not use it for a few days, but if I need to, I don't need to relaunch stuff and wait. Reboot if you see any memory pressure issues or Apps running slow.
Here is an experiment I did by disabling the Swap. It puts more memory pressure in my case, went to Red, which I rarely see unless I have a process with 150GB Memory consumption.
Swap is not your enemy, it just is optimizing for performance and also provides a cushion when the RAM is not enough. It's not uncommon to load 175 GB with more than 100G swap when I am running intensive stuff. Apple unified memory and Swap with fast NAND has been very helpful for me, to avoid buying systems with few hundred gigs of RAM.
The point of computers is to do the work for us; not to give us more work!
Swap will always happen on macOS and Linux, it's just the way it works when using applications, especially when you go into custom hibernation/sleep modes.
However what you don't want is around 5GB-10GB daily swap that usually happens when you run low on memory.
However what you don't want is around 5GB-10GB daily swap that usually happens when you run low on memory.
gunny wrote:
"Swap will always happen on macOS and Linux, it's just the way it works when using applications, especially when you go into custom hibernation/sleep modes."
Not always.
Swap can be TURNED OFF if you want it to be off.
I've done so on both my Macs, one Intel (2018 Mini), the other m-series (2021 MacBook Pro 14").
Both continue to run fine and they don't crash.
The secret?
Don't open more applications than you need, and quit those with which you're done using.
"Swap will always happen on macOS and Linux, it's just the way it works when using applications, especially when you go into custom hibernation/sleep modes."
Not always.
Swap can be TURNED OFF if you want it to be off.
I've done so on both my Macs, one Intel (2018 Mini), the other m-series (2021 MacBook Pro 14").
Both continue to run fine and they don't crash.
The secret?
Don't open more applications than you need, and quit those with which you're done using.
That can be real bad advice to disable swap. Memory pressure on my M1 Max goes red with Swap disabled. Swap isn’t bad, it serves its purpose. I posted a screenshot earlier, my M1 Max with 64 GB in red with swap disabled but rarely happens when swap is enabled.
It’s not always possible to open one or two apps and quit, reload and wait. Let OS do its job.
Yep, I manage enterprise servers and the swap is never off just configured by default or by application requirements
With faster SDD , I appreciate swap more at times when the extra memory is needed.