@xee_ this is my .02 - this is NOT really an issue at all unless you are experiencing real problems.
Looking at this Activity Monitor screenshot, I do not see anything that immediately concerns me. While memory pressure is showing some yellow, it seems only mildly elevated rather than heavily stressed. Yellow does not necessarily mean the machine is struggling; rather, it indicates that macOS is actively managing memory resources. Red memory pressure would be far more concerning.
One thing many users misunderstand is that modern operating systems, especially Apple Silicon Macs, intentionally try to use as much available RAM as possible. Unused RAM provides no benefit, so macOS aggressively uses memory for application data, file caching, browser content, and recently accessed information. The fact that this 24 GB system is showing nearly 21 GB of memory in use is not, by itself, evidence of a problem.
The large memory numbers associated with browser tabs also do not surprise me. Modern websites have increasingly become full applications rather than simple web pages. LinkedIn, Figma, Canva, Outlook, Google Docs, Netflix, and similar sites all run substantial amounts of JavaScript, maintain large data structures in memory, cache images and media, and preserve session state. Figma and Canva, in particular, are essentially graphics applications running inside a browser. It is therefore not unusual to see individual browser processes consuming 1–3 GB of memory.
Browsers also intentionally retain memory while it is available. Their philosophy is that free memory is wasted memory. Keeping data in RAM allows tabs to switch instantly, preserves scrolling positions, prevents page reloads, and improves overall responsiveness. If another application suddenly requires additional memory, macOS can request that browsers release some of those resources, compress inactive memory, or move less active pages to swap storage.
The nearly 11 GB of compressed memory may look alarming, but compression is actually one of the strengths of modern macOS memory management. Rather than immediately writing inactive memory pages to disk, the operating system compresses them in RAM, which is significantly faster than swapping. Apple Silicon systems handle compressed memory extremely efficiently, and seeing several gigabytes of compressed memory during heavy multitasking is not unusual.
Similarly, the approximately 3 GB of swap usage should not automatically be viewed as a problem. Many people still think that any amount of swap indicates insufficient RAM, but that is no longer necessarily true. The SSDs in modern Apple Silicon Macs are extremely fast, and macOS often uses swap proactively to optimize overall responsiveness. A few gigabytes of swap during a heavy workload involving numerous browser tabs, web applications, Teams, Claude, Outlook, and a virtual machine is entirely within the range of normal operation.
The virtual machine itself is using over 2 GB of memory, and there appear to be multiple active browser applications and web-based productivity tools running simultaneously. Given that workload, a 24 GB machine being largely utilized is exactly what I would expect to see.
Ultimately, the real question is not how much RAM is being used, but whether you are experiencing actual performance problems. If the system feels responsive, applications open quickly, tabs do not constantly reload, and there are no frequent beachballs or delays, then the machine is functioning exactly as Apple intended. From this screenshot alone, I would conclude that the system is behaving normally and that much of what we are seeing is simply modern browsers and macOS making aggressive use of available memory to maximize performance. Don't upgrade based just this snapshot unless you are having some of the problems I just mentioned at the beginning of this paragraph!
