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Tahoe using too much memory doing nothing. Is it okay?
- Thread starter Fravin
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Basic75
macrumors 68030
Might be from some post-update tasks running, or do you have any other applications that automatically launch at startup or have background tasks? Give it a few hours, reboot, and then check again, and as @capamac said, please sort by size so that we can see the largest applications first.
FreakinEurekan
macrumors G3
It’s “okay” in that memory pressure is green. But I’d be curious what actual processes are using RAM. Sorting by memory usage rather than name would give you more info.
capamac
macrumors 6502a
Yeah dunno man. It might be normal. Memory pressure is in the green which is good. There's no harm in the OS using RAM if it's available. The OS can always free up RAM if necessary by paging it out or by killing processes. I do notice you've got some Google Drive-related applications that are among the more RAM-hungry processes in your system. So you could disable / un-install that software, as well as any other extra software you may have installed. You could even try disabling various macOS features (e.g. "WeatherWidget", etc.) to see if that changes anything. Perhaps open the system preferences, type "open at login" in the search, and then see if there's anything opening at login you might consider turning off.
FreakinEurekan
macrumors G3
Yeah that's looking fine now. "Don't just do something - sit there!" often resolves things like this 😉
No. It keeps that usage. Sometimes a little less.
The funny thing is I updated to Tahoe because of its memory management.
Yes, I’m using Google Drive because iCloud syncing is too slow.
While I’m Sequoia the system was using around 6gb using the same apps.
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DaveEcc
macrumors 6502
It's not really using much memory... The way they show it is very misleading.
10.27GB are "used", so you've got 5.73GB entirely free.
6.65GB are used as a disk cache. This is really also free memory. All your free memory is available to be used as the disk cache, you just haven't read more than 6.65GB of data yet.
Your real "used" memory is closer to 10.27GB - 6.65GB, or 3.62GB.
That's not how it works, DaveEcc. You can't subtract the disk cache from the memory used by the processes. The "memory used" doesn't include the "cached files".
boppin
macrumors 6502a
Works as intended. After startup 15.99 of 16 GB RAM used.
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Ben J.
macrumors 65816
Screenshots in posts 1 and 2:
fravin's total ram is 16.
capamac is 8GB.
Explains a lot. MacOS will always use more ram on a mac with more ram just to contribute to performance.
The important mesurement is the 'memory pressure' graph. Green means "relax, no problem", yellow means "might or might not be a problem", red means "Don't run so many processes at once, or get a mac with more ram".
fravin's total ram is 16.
capamac is 8GB.
Explains a lot. MacOS will always use more ram on a mac with more ram just to contribute to performance.
The important mesurement is the 'memory pressure' graph. Green means "relax, no problem", yellow means "might or might not be a problem", red means "Don't run so many processes at once, or get a mac with more ram".
Absolutely this! Trying to interpret usage numbers is pointless. Memory management is complex and macOS will always use spare RAM. That is why Apple introduced Memory Pressure.
boppin
macrumors 6502a
MacOS is designed to use ALL your RAM. Empty RAM is wasted RAM. (And with prices these days....)
Here's mine, with 32 Gb:
"Memory Used" plus "Cached files" is nearly always c. 32 Gb.
uacd
macrumors 68000
Sequoia was already too laggy for me so I downgraded to Sonoma and happily using it. In the future I will probably update to macOS 27 if it turns to be the anticipated “fix all bugs” OS
chrfr
macrumors G5
And that has nothing to do with how macOS uses RAM, which has been generally unchanged once OS X was first released.
uacd
macrumors 68000
Probably yes, I think new OS versions use more CPU and GPU, especially Tahoe with all-new effects. But if the physical size of the OS installer increased then it can also use more RAM, that’s the common rule. I don’t know if Tahoe is larger in size but I suspect that it is
chrfr
macrumors G5
No, that isn't how it works. The size of an installer, OS or otherwise, doesn't have any relationship to RAM use.
Well, never understood the Mac's RAM usage. Very nice info guys!
Nice video @boppin
Thank you very much!
boppin
macrumors 6502a
Not always. There are people who have too much RAM in their computers, see attached. Up to 48% used. Wasted RAM.
