Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Is there a simple program that can show my current memory usage in my on main screen?

ozziegn

ozziegn

macrumors 65816
Original poster
As the title says. I'm looking for a simple program that can show my current memory usage in my upper task bar where my clock and date are? I have an M2 MBA.
 
ozziegn said:
As the title says. I'm looking for a simple program that can show my current memory usage in my upper task bar where my clock and date are? I have an M2 MBA.
Click to expand...
Just something to think about, I don’t know your use case so I could be completely wrong.. don't blow a gasket: Any app that is monitoring this type of usage will be running in the background increasing the very memory that it is trying to monitor. When you see this percentage increasing, will it not induce stress? Will that stress prompt you to go on a seek and destroy mission to close apps that are using too much memory? I’m wondering if it would be advantageous to just forget about the memory percentage and let the system do it own housekeeping.
 
  • Like
Reactions: chabig, apostolosdt and KaliYoni
ozziegn said:
As the title says. I'm looking for a simple program that can show my current memory usage in my upper task bar where my clock and date are? I have an M2 MBA.
Click to expand...
Any modern OS, macOS included, will try as hard as it can to use 100% of all available RAM. Leaving RAM unused is a waste.

Read the above three times, then think again if you need this number displayed on the screen. It is really pointless to know the total amount of RAM used unless you understand how the RAM is being used. The OS will use some tricks to make the overall user experience seem quicker, like speculatively moving data into RAM and swapping out data that has not been used in a while. It will also always try to keep a reserve of unused RAM but it is best not to keep too much of a reserve. This is too complex to show with just a single number.
 
  • Like
Reactions: chabig and Iwavvns
ChrisA said:
Any modern OS, macOS included, will try as hard as it can to use 100% of all available RAM. Leaving RAM unused is a waste.

Read the above three times, then think again if you need this number displayed on the screen. It is really pointless to know the total amount of RAM used unless you understand how the RAM is being used. The OS will use some tricks to make the overall user experience seem quicker, like speculatively moving data into RAM and swapping out data that has not been used in a while. It will also always try to keep a reserve of unused RAM but it is best not to keep too much of a reserve. This is too complex to show with just a single number.
Click to expand...
Indeed. Im coming from 20+ years of using Linux/BSD and we have a saying; “unused RAM is wasted RAM”.
 
  • Like
Reactions: chabig
Very interesting points. My recently purchased 15" MBA has 8GB of memory with 512 storage. My daily usage goes as follows: Chrome, Discord and my day trading app. The highest memory usage I've seen was around 7.2GB while using all three programs. I do this at a minimum of twelve hours a day, five days a week. I was able to do these tasks with my old M1 8GB/256 13" MBA for three years w/o a single slowdown. I'm just wondering if I should stick with what I have or possibly upgrade to a 16GB model. I bought my 8GB/512 machine for $1200 on sale from Best Buy last week. They have a 16GB model in stock that would cost me an extra $250. My total would be $1450 for a 16GB/512 machine vs Apple's price of $1700.

Just wondering if I should spend the extra money for the extra memory while I can or keep what I have for the $1200 bargain price I spent.
 
ozziegn said:
Very interesting points. My recently purchased 15" MBA has 8GB of memory with 512 storage. My daily usage goes as follows: Chrome, Discord and my day trading app. The highest memory usage I've seen was around 7.2GB while using all three programs. I do this at a minimum of twelve hours a day, five days a week. I was able to do these tasks with my old M1 8GB/256 13" MBA for three years w/o a single slowdown. I'm just wondering if I should stick with what I have or possibly upgrade to a 16GB model. I bought my 8GB/512 machine for $1200 on sale from Best Buy last week. They have a 16GB model in stock that would cost me an extra $250. My total would be $1450 for a 16GB/512 machine vs Apple's price of $1700.

Just wondering if I should spend the extra money for the extra memory while I can or keep what I have for the $1200 bargain price I spent.
Click to expand...
If it were me I would dump Chrome like a hot potato. I feel that finding an alternate web browser would go a long way towards any memory problem you might have. I remember using chrome when I ran BSD, and switching to Firefox solved almost every problem I had regarding memory and bandwidth usage. I would test alternate web browsers before I went through the trouble of returning/refunding a machine.
 
If you look into the "activity monitor" app in the memory tab it displays memory pressure. That is a good indication if you have enough memory or not. The amount of used memory or used swap doesn't say anything conclusive. The only 'problem' or 'slowdowns' you do experience when a lot of data needs to be put in the swap file or retrieved from the swap file.
When this happens the memory pressure goes to red. IF that happens you want / need more ram.
 
  • Like
Reactions: mmkerc
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back