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Why is my M4 Pro using so much RAM?
- Thread starter DeepSix
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Your Mac will use as much as is available. Unused RAM is wasted RAM.
This is very true. People look at usage and see oh no it’s almost used up… I need to upgrade. If you follow that strategy every Mac you’ll buy will have 64 GB of RAM.
Look at memory pressure. If it’s green, you’re good. If it’s yellow, think about upgrading. If it’s red, you need more RAM.
If pressure is green & swap is at/near zero… you have plenty of RAM
If you had 1000gb of ram, someway, somehow MacOS would find a way to use 999gb.
The bigger point is that you don't need to micromanage the RAM use at all. Just let the OS do what it wants and it'll maximize performance on its own.
Its not. Focus on memory pressure which is green instead of amber or yellow
Seems a bit odd how a system with more RAM uses more RAM. Almost seems counterintuitive
RAM management is different in macOS versus Windows. I come from a Windows environment, and this took me some getting used to as well.
The OS is using that RAM for cache. There's no point in having RAM that isn't used, so the OS holds things in RAM to improve performance. The computer will reallocate that RAM as apps need it.
I'm confused about this too. Not that it's using more RAM because I have more, but the amount of memory that I'm using. With my "normal" set of apps open, I'm hitting over 16gb of RAM usage. Coming from an Air with 8gb and low memory pressure, I'm confused. How can macOS double the amount of RAM I'm using while simultaneously claiming it's not running out of RAM.
As others have said, macOS aggressively uses caching.
Here's a great example of caching in action:
Open some folders in the Finder that contain images (preferably big, high-resolution images) and let the Finder generate thumbnails for it. Navigate around to lots of these folders. The more folders you open the more memory the Finder will use up because it's keeping these thumbnails in RAM cache so that they're instantly available if you navigate back to that folder (instead of having to re-generate the thumbnails again). But it will only use RAM that's not needed for something else, as it does this to improve performance.
Under this extreme example the Finder's memory footprint can swell to gigabytes in size. But it will only do that if the RAM is available. If memory is constrained it won't cache those thumbnails. And if you open a heavy duty app that needs lots of RAM, macOS will boot that thumbnail cache out of RAM to make way for the app that needs it.
I guess I'm just jaded by Apple constantly picking the "cheap" way out, instead of the "right" way.
That explanation does make a lot of sense. And this is a brand new MBP, so I've been moving a lot of files, in and out of a lot of folders.
That explanation does make a lot of sense. And this is a brand new MBP, so I've been moving a lot of files, in and out of a lot of folders.
Off topic, but the colors they use are exceptionally bad for people with red/green color blindness (which is a fair number of people).
I don't think so. It uses RAM to save more applications and files you're working on, so as to maximize responsiveness. If more is available to do that, it uses it rather than let it sit idle and useless.
If you're low on RAM and you open a ton of documents, browser tabs, etc. in different apps, inactive things will get saved off to a temporary paging file on the SSD. When you start actively working on them again, there will be a little disruption in responsiveness as they reload from the SSD into active RAM. (This used to be an awful process when we all had HDDs, and you could literally hear the drive crunching away while you looked at a beachball on screen. But it's much less noticible now that we're all running off fast SSDs.)
On the other hand, if you have more RAM available, the OS will just cache more of your applications' open documents in RAM, so when you switch back they're immediately responsive and available. In iOS this is really apparent when you open an app or a browser tab you haven't used in a bit and you can see the whole thing reload from scratch -- versus seeming "already open" when you switch back to it on a more capable (more RAM) device.
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macOS RAM usage is based on a decades-old Unix approach.
I still give this website, which is also a couple of decades old by now, to customers with dedicated servers from us.
https://www.linuxatemyram.com/
I still give this website, which is also a couple of decades old by now, to customers with dedicated servers from us.
https://www.linuxatemyram.com/
Putting aside the whole how does Mac manage memory issue, few notes from your screenshot:
- You're not litterally running nothing -- you have several websites open (in I'm guessing Safari), Apple Mail, Messenger, and a few background processes (e.g. Creative Cloud Core Service)
- Ignore Cached but Memory Used is relatively high for what you are doing. In particular, App Memory and Compressed.
- I am surprised how much memory is consumed in modern web browser by some websites that resemble BBS of the 80s and guessing that relates to various monetization schemes behind the scenes (e.g. tracking technologies). As such I would look into ad blockers and the like.
- Apple Mail usage looks high to me but I am not on Sequoia and therefore its Apple Mail. Up through earlier macOS, my Mail thanksfully consumes 50-150 MB even with large IMAP/Google mailboxes. Since I am not sure your Mail's RAM usage is something particular your mail setup or Sequoia, can't offer much advice at the moment. If the latter, your alternative is to find another e-mail program and there's none I can recommend (I also use Thunderbird and find it less efficient than Apple Mail).
- Since you've still got plenty of headroom, I would grab any easy wins now but not worry about overall usage. Understanding where RAM is wasted and addressing thing you can't justify will make it easier to run anything big when the time comes.
No, actually, it's not.
Imagine you're alone in a room and have been tasked with working on a project. It's just you, so you spread out your papers and supplies and get to work. More people start coming into the room. At first, there's plenty of space, so you don't feel a need to consolidate. But as more and more people come in, you start pulling your supplies closer to you, maybe stacking things up or combining things on two sheets of paper into one, so you use less space. Everyone still has enough space to get their work done.
As more and more people come into the room, however, everyone might start asking one another: How important is what you're working on? The people working on the most important projects start spreading out again, and the people with less important projects consolidate even more. Maybe some of the least important projects are even sent out of the room, told to wait in the lobby until someone else is done and doesn't need their space anymore. There's just the one room, so everyone tries to use it as efficiently as possible.
This is how all UNIX-based operating systems (like MacOS) manage their memory, more or less. Windows is the outlier, not the standard.
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Coming from a 32gb M1max and now on a 36gb M4max, I noticed that the new machine seems to like to load up the Ram more than the old one. If I run the notoriously memory-hungry Adobe After effects alongside Davinci Resolve, It quickly becomes messy - After effects eats up the allocated 28gb in no time and then Resolve comes along and does the same thing- so I end up with around 17 gb in swap and 80% memory pressure or more, leading to crashes and slowness in those Apps.
I never really encountered these issues on my M1max strangely, it somehow seemed to manage the less ram more effectively.. Any ideas on why that might be? Should I allow both apps less maximum memory allocation? (Even though I often don't use them side by side and at those times everything is perfect?)
I never really encountered these issues on my M1max strangely, it somehow seemed to manage the less ram more effectively.. Any ideas on why that might be? Should I allow both apps less maximum memory allocation? (Even though I often don't use them side by side and at those times everything is perfect?)
Something with the M4 chip that Adobe doesn't like. Or Adobe thinks your should not like. Adobe tends to want the world to run their way as in their minds they are always 100% correct and the only app that should run.
I say this because I had a problem with Parallels that worked perfectly with the M2 chip but failed with the M4 chip.
As others said already that's completely normal and the way it's supposed to be. macOS is significantly better at ram utilization than windows so dont try and compare the two. Ram just sitting there when it could be utilized is wasted ram. You can still open a ton of apps and your ram usage will adjust appropriately.
Windows does it essentially the same way. You just are looking at RAM like it is still 1999. When RAM went from scarce to plentiful Operating Systems adjusted to using them as caches to greatly improve performance.
Most people don't understand how RAM is used so I suggest people to not look at it unless they have a reason to look at it and understand what they are reading. Otherwise, they end up doing more harm than good. Start tweaking crap to "free up RAM" and overspending to ensure they have "RAM left free"...
This is my Windows desktop with 64GB of RAM. If you looked only at the memory tab you'd see me using almost 60% of my RAM, but if you look at the things I'm running it is almost nothing. Firefox, Bambu Studio, Steam and some background processes. An in experienced user would incorrectly think I couldn't run this same load on a machine with 16GB or 32GB of RAM. They'd be very wrong.
Apple makes it easier as they add a memory pressure graph to try and help demystify it. Windows doesn't offer any such guidance in its graphs that are easy for a lay person to grasp.
