Resolved Memory usage in Activity Monitor seems high

[TekGuy]

Hi Everyone,

Just got my Macbook Pro 15" Retina yesterday and on viewing Activity Monitor memory usage seems awful high when nothing is open except browser. Not sure how different this is to Windows but can someone tell me why screen shot shows 12.51GB in use, I barely ever used this much on a Windows machine with multiple apps open.

Either it works somewhat differently or i'm misunderstanding what i'm reading. I dread to think if I have a few apps open at same time. Memory leak maybe?



Thank you

 

[GGJstudios]

It is quite normal for all of your memory to be in use by OS X. It does not mean that you are running out of memory or that it is maxed out. OS X will manage all available memory, making it available to apps on an as-needed basis. Refer to the following Apple support article for more information on how to understand your Activity Monitor readings.

OS X Mavericks: About Activity Monitor​

The combination of Free, Wired, Active, Inactive & Used memory statistics in previous versions of Activity Monitor have been replaced in Mavericks with an easy to read "Memory Pressure" graph.
Memory pressure is indicated by color:

• Green – RAM memory resources are available.
• Amber – RAM memory resources are being tasked.
• Red – RAM memory resources are depleted and OS X is using the drive for memory.

 

[ApfelKuchen]

This is normal for OS X, and is a good thing. OS X holds onto whatever's currently loaded in RAM until something else needs the space. Then, inactive items are flushed to make room for the current need.

Why flush an item as soon as it becomes inactive, when it may be needed again? It's much faster to keep it in RAM than to fetch it from the HDD.

If you want to watch the meaningful memory stats in Activity Monitor, keep your eye on Memory Pressure and Swap Used. Memory Used will nearly always be just a bit less than Physical Memory. As long as Memory Pressure doesn't tick into the orange or red, you're doing fine. http://support.apple.com/HT201464

 

[TekGuy]

Many thanks to both of you.

I understand it now after you both explained. Seems like OS X manages memory more differently and efficiently to Windows. Makes perfect sense.

Cheers!