iPad Pro Knowing RAM Used vs Occupied ? And what ?

[augustya]

So guys there is this APP called USAGE on the App Store that someone pointed me to, it basically is an APP which can also work as Widget in your Widget area it basically can tell you how much RAM is right now your iPad using and how Much RAM is free !

I am trying to understand from a User Point of View. How can such can Info help an User ? Lets say I see in that APP how much is the RAM currently used on my iPad and how much is free ? but then what ? What do I do about it ? There is nothing that I can take advantage of that information ? isnt it ?

Can someone give me a use case or a scenario where I can take advantage of this information. And apply it where and do what this info ?

 

[secretk]

So guys there is this APP called USAGE on the App Store that someone pointed me to, it basically is an APP which can also work as Widget in your Widget area it basically can tell you how much RAM is right now your iPad using and how Much RAM is free !

I am trying to understand from a User Point of View. How can such can Info help an User ? Lets say I see in that APP how much is the RAM currently used on my iPad and how much is free ? but then what ? What do I do about it ? There is nothing that I can take advantage of that information ? isnt it ?

Can someone give me a use case or a scenario where I can take advantage of this information. And apply it where and do what this info ?

It definitely depends on the end user. Not everyone would find this info helpful. For me it is because it tells me where I am in terms of RAM usage compared to what my device can take. This is helpful if I decide to buy new device and there are devices available with more RAM than the current one I have.

If I had an overview of which app takes a lot of RAM it might even help me further. Like say there are is an app that consumes a lot of RAM and I can replace it with something else (that serves the same function). I would replace it. If I can't replace it I would ask myself do I really need this app and how much I need it. Is it enough to cause apps/tabs reload? If it is not, I would deinstall it.

But then again I hate apps/tabs reload. This is bottleneck for me when it comes to using/seeing the iPad as productivity machine.

I honestly do not think that most iPadOS/iOS users care about this as me so most probably they would not install such app as like you said there is nothing they can do with it.

 

[augustya]

If I had an overview of which app takes a lot of RAM it might even help me further. Like say there are is an app that consumes a lot of RAM and I can replace it with something else (that serves the same function). I would replace it. If I can't replace it I would ask myself do I really need this app and how much I need it.

No so this APP that I am talking about just gives you your Total RAM used and what is Free in your device ? It does not give a bifurcation of which APP is using How much ? Will it be still any useful ?

I honestly do not think that most iPadOS/iOS users care about this as me so most probably they would not install such app as like you said there is nothing they can do with it.

Absolutely that is what I am asking everyone else also here, that what do I do ? What can I do with this info ? Nothing !!

 

[TheRealAlex]

So guys there is this APP called USAGE on the App Store that someone pointed me to, it basically is an APP which can also work as Widget in your Widget area it basically can tell you how much RAM is right now your iPad using and how Much RAM is free !

I am trying to understand from a User Point of View. How can such can Info help an User ? Lets say I see in that APP how much is the RAM currently used on my iPad and how much is free ? but then what ? What do I do about it ? There is nothing that I can take advantage of that information ? isnt it ?

Can someone give me a use case or a scenario where I can take advantage of this information. And apply it where and do what this info ?

Don’t use the app save RAM. Don’t use Today on Home saves tons of RAM. Problem solved.

 

[secretk]

No so this APP that I am talking about just gives you your Total RAM used and what is Free in your device ? It does not give a bifurcation of which APP is using How much ? Will it be still any useful ?

Then the only thing that could be used is to check what is the RAM consumption and is it useful for me. I mean if you install this app on multiple devices with different RAM configuration you will see that on all of them there is roughtly the same percentage of free memory. It kind of makes sense. So the question would be what works for me as an end user. As an example I have regular 2018 iPad with 2 GB RAM, iPhone 8 with 2 GB RAM and 2018 iPP with 4 GB RAM. For my usage honestly 2 GB RAM just does not work.

I can safely say that the regular iPad is great if you have pure tablet needs but I do not. I do not consider myself pro user but honestly the amounts of tabs/apps reload is so big and it just hinders my end to day usage. With the iPP 2018 things are tolerable now. There are still reloads but it is less frequently. The question is would the new iOS version make this worse.

 

[ericwn]

I don’t see this as being useful for the average person. Sure maybe for a misbehaving or crashing app maybe it can help with pointers but other than that iOS manages this stuff by itself.

 

[augustya]

I don’t see this as being useful for the average person. Sure maybe for a misbehaving or crashing app maybe it can help with pointers but other than that iOS manages this stuff by itself.

Like I said this APP does not tell you in Particular which APP is creating problem. It just gives you a general idea of how much RAM used and how much is free.

And on top of that one YouTuber that I follow said that if you open the Camera APP and close it just doing this activity itself frees your RAM with a great margin ! Again why do I need to do this ? I dont understand ?

 

[ericwn]

Again I don’t find this useful.

YouTube features mostly narcissistic individuals acting as if they have knowledge. Especially in the “tech” scene. Go and ask that person directly.

And the camera app need plenty of RAM and will likely put the majority of the rest on the back burner with two or three video streams coming in and image stabilisation and HDR and other calculations going on in real time.

 

[secretk]

And the camera app need plenty of RAM and will likely put the majority of the rest on the back burner with two or three video streams coming in and image stabilisation and HDR and other calculations going on in real time.

Interesting! I had not thought about this! I was left with the impression that Camera uses the CPU more (and its cores) and not so much RAM. I am not saying that you are wrong, I just never thought that the camera app would use that much RAM. I always thought that the Camera app is one of those apps that puts the CPU to its max use the most (for regular basic users). I thought that it does these calculations using the multiple cores and starting threads in each of them. It can store some of the intermediate the results in the RAM though. I see your point.

In general as far as I know iOS does not provide a lot of info on system resources and their usage (CPU, RAM etc). At least in the past even iOS Developers did not have acccess to this. It was only in the kernel and iOS as OS itself would decide what to kill and when. There might be changes of the new Swift versions but this is what I know. This is why the RAM management is a huge problem for iOS devices for me. It behaves the way it wants, you have no control over it. If your usage is basic you have no issues at all. If your usage is not, you have huge issues and there is nothing you can do but to buy device with more RAM and hope that it improves things for you.

Killing iOS apps IMO does not help. I have killed an app and then open it again and in a lot of cases it is clear that the app remembered where you were. In other words the app is not killed but suspended and it is obvious that some info was stored in RAM so that it can open itself from the point where you were previusly.

 

[augustya]

Killing iOS apps IMO does not help. I have killed an app and then open it again and in a lot of cases it is clear that the app remembered where you were. In other words the app is not killed but suspended and it is obvious that some info was stored in RAM so that it can open itself from the point where you were previusly.

But I have checked this myself firing the camera APP and killing it (Closing it) Does Free Up RAM with a Huge Margin ! It does work. But then I dont know what to do about it lol !!

 

[secretk]

But I have checked this myself firing the camera APP and killing it (Closing it) Does Free Up RAM with a Huge Margin ! It does work. But then I dont know what to do about it lol !!

I can tell you what I will do. Multitasking. I switch between apps and tabs like crazy. And I hate things getting reloaded. So freeing this RAM allows me to switch between apps/tabs withoug reloading.

 

[augustya]

I can tell you what I will do. Multitasking. I switch between apps and tabs like crazy. And I hate things getting reloaded. So freeing this RAM allows me to switch between apps/tabs withoug reloading.

So like imagine a scenario I have many APPS open in the background. I have been using it say lets say for more than an Hour. You are saying it would be a best practice to periodically jump in between do this exercise of Firing the Camera APP and Killing it Just to ensure that all the APPS that are open in the background keep going without any Hiccups. is that what you are suggesting ?

 

[secretk]

So like imagine a scenario I have many APPS open in the background. I have been using it say lets say for more than an Hour. You are saying it would be a best practice to periodically jump in between do this exercise of Firing the Camera APP and Killing it Just to ensure that all the APPS that are open in the background keep going without any Hiccups. is that what you are suggesting ?

If you have no issues I don't see why you should jump in between this to kill the Camera app. However if you experience lots of tabs/apps reloads then you can do it. I honestly do sometimes kill aps if I start experiencing tabs/apps reload issues because this annoys me to no end and it affects my efficiency and productivity.

But do have in mind that my usage is such that I can read a book in Books app and be redirected to Safari to open a link. I do this and then go back to the Books app and my book is reloaded. Like seriously WTF. And to top of it Books app had not remember where I was and usually shows me the book few pages behind where I was. This happens to me regularly.

Or say I read a book about iOS app and I jump between the book and the app (say Garageband, iMovie, Swift Playground) itself as I want to try out something. Both the app and the book gets reloaded every time I switch. And split screen does not help. It makes things worse as it seems to need more RAM than to switch between apps.

I am talking about cases like that.

 

[ericwn]

If there’s nothing wrong don’t attempt random fixes.

 

[marty1980]

RAM usage seems to be common sense to me, so no app is gonna help me. The app will just use more RAM to show me useless info.

Have more tabs open in a browser = more RAM used

Have lots of layers in a creative tool = more RAM used

High end game = more RAM used

Noticing lots of app refreshes/reloads when switching = most of the RAM is being used and may want to buy a device with more at some point.

etc.

 

[Digitalguy]

this is mostly useless... IOS does not manage RAM like Windows or Mac.... the purpose of IOS is to keep as much RAM in use as possible... so that is stays fast... and it will compress and decompress apps in ram when you multitask, instead of paging, and if necessary it will eject older stuff from RAM....it's made to work automatically... not to be managed by users... when you kill an app that takes RAM, it's probably an app that was closed and had already been compressed... so you are not freeing that much RAM... IOS RAM is made to be mostly full most of the time... this does not cause much of a slowdown unless you have so little RAM (like 2GB in total) that a good deal is taken by the system and this process starts to lag...

 

[augustya]

So in short it is of no use and will not do anything ? Just forget it !

 

[AutomaticApple]

Like I said this APP does not tell you in Particular which APP is creating problem. It just gives you a general idea of how much RAM used and how much is free.

And on top of that one YouTuber that I follow said that if you open the Camera APP and close it just doing this activity itself frees your RAM with a great margin ! Again why do I need to do this ? I dont understand ?

That doesn't sound very useful...

 

[Marlon DLTH :)]

But then again I hate apps/tabs reload. This is bottleneck for me when it comes to using/seeing the iPad as productivity machine.

That’s why I think the iPad needs swap memory as the Mac (temporarily store the data of the apps/tabs on the SSD memory to free up RAM space without losing the data)o