Does my Mac need more RAM?

[maplingstorie]

Is there a way to tell if your Mac needs more ram?

 

[sunapple]

Keep an eye on activity monitor and see if you run out of RAM frequently. I had a 16GB MacBook Pro (15" 2014) and ran out of memory once during heavy Illustrator / Photoshop use, but it was a rare case. So 16GB is enough for me, no clue about your needs.

 

[maplingstorie]

Keep an eye on activity monitor and see if you run out of RAM frequently.

What do I need to look out for?

 

[T'hain Esh Kelch]

If your RAM usage-meter ever goes into orange or red. But the odds are you don't need more RAM if you don't even know where to look for how it is being used.

 

[Phil A.]

What do I need to look out for?

On Activity Monitor, under the Memory tab, look at the graph at the bottom called "memory pressure". If that's green, then you are fine: If it regularly goes orange (or particularly red), you probably need more memory

Don't worry about the Memory Used figure as macOS will use memory for buffers, cache, etc but that memory is available to applications as and when they need it