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How are you all Getting by with 8gigs?
- Thread starter getmac
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- Your MacOS may have memory leak issues.
- Maybe try a fresh reinstall. I had a LOT of slowdowns do to memory pressure going in red all the time. After a reinstall it seems much better. Of course if I open too many apps on top of Chrome (like PS and Final Cut), it will start to slow down again. I will definitely try and sell my 8gb in the near future and get a 16gb model.
Your M1 MacBook Air is new so a bad battery shouldn't be the problem, but as I learned in this thread below, a problematic battery will cause macOS to slow the CPU to 1GHz. Your mention of "getting spinning beach balls, and everything freezes" was the same problem I had when my previous MacBook had a bad battery. I didn't know that was the problem and nothing I tried work:
Perhaps try to find something to show you the real-time GHz speed of your M1 chip, and something that can diagnose a bad battery, to rule out these possibilities? Then you know it's got to be a memory issue as others have suggested
Perhaps try to find something to show you the real-time GHz speed of your M1 chip, and something that can diagnose a bad battery, to rule out these possibilities? Then you know it's got to be a memory issue as others have suggested
This might help?
fiplab.com
Memory Clean 3 for Mac - FIPLAB
Memory Clean 3 is the most popular app for optimizing your Mac's memory and is best used after you have finished using a memory (RAM) intensive app or game.
You're not doing anything wrong. macOS has problems with memory management (the Finder has a really bad memory leak for example,) and many apps today are just poorly optimized.
For some reason this is a polarizing topic here. As I've stated before, I'm firmly in the camp of 8GB is wholly inadequate.
My experience largely mirrors yours when using Macs with less than 16GB of Ram, and even 16GB can have issues. Some people have no problems with 8GB and I think its probably a combination of not being reliant on certain problematic apps , and lower expectations/higher tolerance for poor performance.
I will say, you should be getting at least 10 hours out of your MBA assuming its brand new. You may well have something installed/running (maybe in the background) that is exacerbating your memory issues and draining your battery.
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I can tell you 2.5GB for Music is extremely excessive. On my 16GB M1 MacBook Air, Music is using 140MB memory. So you might consider closing Music, and see if it lowers memory pressure. Grammarly is known to be a memory hog, so you might consider using it sparingly.
I have an M1 MBA with 8 GB of RAM unified memory. If I were in the market for a new laptop atm, I'd make it 16 GB, but 8 GB have not been an issue at all.
Generally, I have somewhere between 10 and 15 tabs open, I use Messages and WhatsApp, MS Word, Affinity Photo, Affinity Designer, Pixea, GarageBand, Spotify...
The only ones that are open pretty much all the time are WhatsApp and Messages, though.
Everything else is open when I need it because it loads super fast anyway - except for MS Word for some weird reason. Once I'm done with an application, I close it.
The highest I've seen swap was in the low 100s.
So, some application somewhere in the mix going a bit nuts when it shouldn't seems the most likely thing going on imo :[
Generally, I have somewhere between 10 and 15 tabs open, I use Messages and WhatsApp, MS Word, Affinity Photo, Affinity Designer, Pixea, GarageBand, Spotify...
The only ones that are open pretty much all the time are WhatsApp and Messages, though.
Everything else is open when I need it because it loads super fast anyway - except for MS Word for some weird reason. Once I'm done with an application, I close it.
The highest I've seen swap was in the low 100s.
So, some application somewhere in the mix going a bit nuts when it shouldn't seems the most likely thing going on imo :[
When I am busy with assignments for my college I have multiple spaces, 2 monitors (MacBook and external 1080p). Multiple safari windows on various spaces most of the time with 25+ tabs on each. Multiple Microsoft Word windows, connected my iPad with the pencil for drawing/notes.
Some music/podcast in the background with Apple Music on airplay to my Sonos speaker.
Downloading some torrents in the background and sometimes put a streaming service on to watch something when I take a small break.
All this on a base MacBook Air m1.
No problems whatsoever.
Sometimes I get the beachball when I don’t do anything and it needs to load something via WiFi (post above is accurate I guess).
I didn’t use computers for a couple of years, but my old high end gaming pc was struggling with tasks like this on windows (except gaming ofcourse).
Some music/podcast in the background with Apple Music on airplay to my Sonos speaker.
Downloading some torrents in the background and sometimes put a streaming service on to watch something when I take a small break.
All this on a base MacBook Air m1.
No problems whatsoever.
Sometimes I get the beachball when I don’t do anything and it needs to load something via WiFi (post above is accurate I guess).
I didn’t use computers for a couple of years, but my old high end gaming pc was struggling with tasks like this on windows (except gaming ofcourse).
I have a 8gb MacBook Pro from 2016 (the weaker one with the function keys). Even with Spark, Edge with about 40 tabs (including Youtube and Google Docs), and GoodNotes open I’m still not using as much ram as you are, nor am I seeing beach balls or any ram issues. Activity Monitor say my memory pressure is still in the green, with it only pushing up to yellow when batch exporting images in Photoshop while also leaving the previously mentioned stuff open and running.
Ironically, Macrumors is one of the worst sites that I frequently visit in terms of RAM-usage. This page alone is currently using 330 MB of memory, twice as much as any other tab that I have open.
I'm currently running an 8 GB Mac (since my 2020 Intel MacBook Pro completely died) after having had a minimum of 16 GB in all of my machines since 2011. My work is mainly CPU-intensive (molecular simulations) so I find 8 GB perfectly adequate for most use cases. At work I even use a 2014 mini with 4 GB of RAM at that works well, too, for everyday tasks in Monterey now that it has an SSD.
I'm currently running an 8 GB Mac (since my 2020 Intel MacBook Pro completely died) after having had a minimum of 16 GB in all of my machines since 2011. My work is mainly CPU-intensive (molecular simulations) so I find 8 GB perfectly adequate for most use cases. At work I even use a 2014 mini with 4 GB of RAM at that works well, too, for everyday tasks in Monterey now that it has an SSD.
that's probably because it is using probably the most trackers i have seen used on one single site.
just looked on my 8gigs machine and it showed 285MB for this thread though
No issues, working great M1 MBP 13. PS love my Touch Bar (sorry haters, but I do)
Running firefox with 3-5 tabs for work, safari for youtube music, rds to my aws server at work gives me about 10 hrs battery and only like 40mb swap for the day
MBPro M1 with 8GB i use it for photoshop, working on large wall sized files, no issues whatsoever. People worry about numbers too much, buy it and use it, period.
Another 8GB user here - actually the last Intel MacBook Air. I edit 4k in Final Cut (on an external SSD though) and use Photoshop and haven't run into any major issues.
Minor issues (which could be related to anything, not necessarily RAM):
- Pixel Film Studios plugins in FCP frequently crash.
- If I close Photoshop once it's opened and been in use for a few hours, it usually becomes unresponsive and I need a system restart.
Note that I am running Big Sur - updating to the latest OS caused my external WD drives to stop working, so I had to roll back. I also tend to close down unused apps, particularly if video editing, and don't usually have more than a few tabs open in browsers at one time.
Minor issues (which could be related to anything, not necessarily RAM):
- Pixel Film Studios plugins in FCP frequently crash.
- If I close Photoshop once it's opened and been in use for a few hours, it usually becomes unresponsive and I need a system restart.
Note that I am running Big Sur - updating to the latest OS caused my external WD drives to stop working, so I had to roll back. I also tend to close down unused apps, particularly if video editing, and don't usually have more than a few tabs open in browsers at one time.
You are doing nothing wrong. You either need 16GB of RAM or 512GB of storage. I would say ideally both.
8GB is not a lot of RAM, so the Air will need to rely more on swap to the SSD. 256GB is not a lot of storage, so you get stuck with slow swap.
I have seen lots of people get by fine with 8GB of RAM, as long as they had 512GB or larger SSD. I have also seen lots of people getting hit with lags and beach balls when just using the internet with the base RAM and SSD configuration.
I also wonder of Apple has switched to single 256GB chips of RAM for current production of the M1 Air. That effectively halves your SSD speeds, again leading to slower swap.
I have no evidence this is what is going on, but the new 13” M2 MacBook Pro uses a single chip of memory for the 256GB configuration, so maybe that is what Apple does now.
Edit: In addition to posting a screenshot of your RAM usage in Activity Monitor, try running a speed test on your SSD with something like Blackmagic Disk Speed Test (free on App Store). I really suspect the problem might be full/slow SSD speeds here.
8GB is not a lot of RAM, so the Air will need to rely more on swap to the SSD. 256GB is not a lot of storage, so you get stuck with slow swap.
I have seen lots of people get by fine with 8GB of RAM, as long as they had 512GB or larger SSD. I have also seen lots of people getting hit with lags and beach balls when just using the internet with the base RAM and SSD configuration.
I also wonder of Apple has switched to single 256GB chips of RAM for current production of the M1 Air. That effectively halves your SSD speeds, again leading to slower swap.
I have no evidence this is what is going on, but the new 13” M2 MacBook Pro uses a single chip of memory for the 256GB configuration, so maybe that is what Apple does now.
Edit: In addition to posting a screenshot of your RAM usage in Activity Monitor, try running a speed test on your SSD with something like Blackmagic Disk Speed Test (free on App Store). I really suspect the problem might be full/slow SSD speeds here.
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I have the M1 Mac Mini
and this thing is a beast. Super fast, no lag or hiccups at all and best of all......
I've never has the fans spin loudly on me; like not even once.
Get to the bottom of it OP and you'll be so glad you did and moved on to greener pastures.
and this thing is a beast. Super fast, no lag or hiccups at all and best of all......
I've never has the fans spin loudly on me; like not even once.
Get to the bottom of it OP and you'll be so glad you did and moved on to greener pastures.
I wouldn’t put it past Apple to cripple the base M1 MacBook Air by omitting a key component to cut costs.
We just saw this proven with the omission of a NAND chip in the base model M2 13” MacBook Pro.
Maybe what you are seeing is a hardware configuration issue that is only slightly related to the RAM.
Purely anecdotal: I have seen zero issues using a 13” M1 MacBook Pro with 8 GB RAM with many browser tabs and apps running, etc. However this is not the base model because the flash storage was upgraded.
I am using a Early 2015 MacBook Air with the base configuration and 4 gigs of RAM. My experience has been this: For the first 2 years or so of owning the computer, everything was fine. After that I started noticing beach balls and slowdowns with everyday tasks. I am the most minimalist user, and only web browse and edit the occasional microsoft word document. I also only use Safari with ad blocker running. I only have a max of 2-3 tabs open.. Now, It has been tough to use my MBA for these basic tasks since 2017 or so.. Whenever I launch microsoft word I get a huge delay 20-30 seconds or so before launch... Sometimes messages doesn't load or work correctly... It has been frustrating to say the least, but I am ready for an upgrade. I will be pre-ordering and purchasing the new MacBook Air with the M2 chip on July 15th. This time I am opting for the RAM upgrade so I will have 16 gigs instead of 8. Hopefully this will help carry me on for the next 5-7 years or so trouble free.
I don't mind it myself. I usually just keep it set to show the expanded control strip/function keys, but if I'm doing something in Logic Pro X, it's nice to be able to have the app controls.
Get 16gb minimum. Today with the amount of electron apps, browser usage and the poor optimization on the majority of apps, even Apple ones, 8gb for a desktop OS is a joke.
Apps like Discord or Docker to name a few, will stutter your 8gb mac easily.
Ps: We have 8, 16 and 32 mbp versions.
Apps like Discord or Docker to name a few, will stutter your 8gb mac easily.
Ps: We have 8, 16 and 32 mbp versions.