OS X Memory Usage

[wndzr]

I have a little App on my Macs called 'Memory Clean' that shows the current memory usage and at the moment I seem to be averaging about 2.5GB free despite having very few Apps open.

I've had a look in the Activity Monitor and that too says I only have about 2.5GB memory free for use. I've exported the list of applications in Activity Monitor into Excel and added them all up - the total usage of the list of Apps is equal to about 2.3GB.

So, with this in mind, considering Activity Monitor says I have used 5.5GB of my memory, where is the rest of it and what is it doing?!

Cheers

 

[benwiggy]

As you've discovered, you already have Activity Monitor, which displays detailed information, so you don't need the third-party app.
Here's Apple's Support page about the types of memory shown in AM:
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1342
The BLue bit is Inactive Memory, which holds data that might be reused or might be released as free memory, depending upon what you do.

Do you actually have a problem? Are you seeing spinning wheels, slow downs, or other inefficient behaviour? If not, then you have nothing to worry about, and you should stop managing memory.

RAM is there to be used. OS X makes use of the available RAM. RAM does not need to be used sparingly. Apps that claim to "clean" your memory are a scam, if you've paid for them.