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Memory is maxed out?

R

Rolomoto

macrumors member
Original poster
Mar 19, 2014
45
1
Running a mac mini and I noticed my memory is maxed out. It doesn't seem that all the processes add up to 16GB. Enclosed is a screenshot of the activity monitor. I just updated java, could that be a problem?
http://screencast.com/t/pWCBqhUz
 
Are you having an actual problem? - such as obvious slow-downs, or the infamous spinning beach ball when you try to anything at all?

You may have most of your RAM in use, but there's no swap in use, and the memory pressure is quite low (as it should be with 16GB of RAM).
I should also point out that your system will try to use all available RAM, if needed, and usually is pretty good about doing just that.
Some folks here say that free memory is wasted memory. I don't know if I really agree with that view - however, I do know that OS X, particularly after Mavericks, will often use whatever amount of RAM you want to have installed, often to make YOUR experience better.
Bottom line: Your Mac has lots of memory, and it knows how to use it.
 
DeltaMac said:
Are you having an actual problem? - such as obvious slow-downs, or the infamous spinning beach ball when you try to anything at all?
Click to expand...

no, one of my apps said "memory low" and that's what alerted me to it; I haven't noticed any slow down.
 
That's a false alarm, you still have around 10G of RAM available, Mavericks just take the advantage and use most of them for caching to speed up the system. You are far from low memory.
 
h9826790 said:
That's a false alarm, you still have around 10G of RAM available, Mavericks just take the advantage and use most of them for caching to speed up the system. You are far from low memory.
Click to expand...

Thanks!:)
 
Weaselboy said:
Might help if you close some of those browsers. Looks like you have three web browsers open each with multiple tabs and two playing Flash/Shockwave material. Together those three are eating up a lot of memory.
Click to expand...

ok, thanks!
 
Problem could be thinkorswim app.

The program is a Java program. It's been a while since I've seen the particular error, but, Java itself will issue a low-memory type message for itself since one of the invoke parameters you can pass to Java is akin to "request X amount of memory for the program" (there is a relatively low default value if not passed). If the app has been running a long time or using/creating a lot of data, not freeing things, Java might be eating into its own heap of memory and warning that its running low.
 
NoBoMac said:
Problem could be thinkorswim app.

The program is a Java program. It's been a while since I've seen the particular error, but, Java itself will issue a low-memory type message for itself since one of the invoke parameters you can pass to Java is akin to "request X amount of memory for the program" (there is a relatively low default value if not passed). If the app has been running a long time or using/creating a lot of data, not freeing things, Java might be eating into its own heap of memory and warning that its running low.
Click to expand...

Thanks, make sense. I think I closed it and reopened it and the warning went away.
 
Web browser? Not Firefox I hope. Firefox is a memory hog!

I've got one iMac that occasionally has to be warm booted to get it to respond after sitting with Firefox running with multiple tabs open. Sure, it's also probably a Flash/Shockwave problem, but it gets bad... Even my Windows machine losses a lot of its memory due to Firefox.
 
On the bottom right it shows you 4.5gb is used for your programs and 9gb is stored on your ram from your hard drive for faster access.
 
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