Agree with you LV426....Should be a sticky in RED on this, since it is asked almost daily.
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Yosemite uses a lot of RAM....
- Thread starter nickskaar
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Agree with you LV426....Should be a sticky in RED on this, since it is asked almost daily.
My first MBA with 10.5 was not able to manage 2 cores, it was used to start get very warm. Only on later updates they could solve this issue... exactly when I sold it... 
I think they'll find a way to decrease the usage of RAM for the OS but be sure that 4 GB RAM are very entry level nowadays...
I think they'll find a way to decrease the usage of RAM for the OS but be sure that 4 GB RAM are very entry level nowadays...
Yup. And the entirely worthless "Memory Clean" utility is still showing up as #2 popular free download in the App Store. That's a scandal, since the best it can do is mess up the way that the OS handles memory. No doubt fuelled by people who *think* they've got a memory problem when they really really don't.
My first MBA with 10.5 was not able to manage 2 cores, it was used to start get very warm. Only on later updates they could solve this issue... exactly when I sold it...
I think they'll find a way to decrease the usage of RAM for the OS but be sure that 4 GB RAM are very entry level nowadays...
4GB is entry level because it's cheap now. Doesn't necessarily mean that people need this much RAM.
Up until a couple months ago I had a MBA with 2GB RAM and it was fine. Ran Photoshop, XCode, etc. and still showed "green" memory pressure.
Of course more memory is better and in some cases people NEED more memory, e.g., to run virtual machines or work with enormous images. But you might be surprised at how little memory you actually need to have a good experience running your software.
I agree motrek, I run several servers with linux with less memory than 512 MB RAM... it always depends on what are you looking for...
There are two issues here:
1. The OS using nearly all the RAM in the system.
-- This is normal behavior. This is expected behavior. This is just fine. An OS should make the best use of the resources available to it. Often, especially on lower-RAM systems, this means using all RAM to cache as much as possible. The OS releases this RAM to applications as soon as it is asked for.
2. The OS is laggy and takes a long time to load apps.
-- This is worrying, and likely has nothing to do with #1. This is likely either an OS issue, or a configuration issue. An OS issue would need to be fixed in a patch. A configuration issue would necessitate a reinstall, or possibly even just the creation of a new user profile.
If you're reading this thread looking for help, but haven't downgraded (as the OP did,) create a new user profile and see if the issue continues for that user profile.
If it does, and you're willing to try a "clean slate," try doing a fully clean install of the OS, not an upgrade from Mavericks. This should clear up any configuration issues.
Note: I'm running Yosemite on the oldest system it is capable of running on - a mid 2007 iMac. It has a slightly-upgraded CPU (2.6 GHz,) and max RAM (6 GB,) along with a 1 TB spinning-platter hard drive. But it is by no means a speed demon. Yet Yosemite runs better than Mavericks did. I've found that the latest OSes (with RAM compression) make my 6 GB system far more usable than older OSes did.
1. The OS using nearly all the RAM in the system.
-- This is normal behavior. This is expected behavior. This is just fine. An OS should make the best use of the resources available to it. Often, especially on lower-RAM systems, this means using all RAM to cache as much as possible. The OS releases this RAM to applications as soon as it is asked for.
2. The OS is laggy and takes a long time to load apps.
-- This is worrying, and likely has nothing to do with #1. This is likely either an OS issue, or a configuration issue. An OS issue would need to be fixed in a patch. A configuration issue would necessitate a reinstall, or possibly even just the creation of a new user profile.
If you're reading this thread looking for help, but haven't downgraded (as the OP did,) create a new user profile and see if the issue continues for that user profile.
If it does, and you're willing to try a "clean slate," try doing a fully clean install of the OS, not an upgrade from Mavericks. This should clear up any configuration issues.
Note: I'm running Yosemite on the oldest system it is capable of running on - a mid 2007 iMac. It has a slightly-upgraded CPU (2.6 GHz,) and max RAM (6 GB,) along with a 1 TB spinning-platter hard drive. But it is by no means a speed demon. Yet Yosemite runs better than Mavericks did. I've found that the latest OSes (with RAM compression) make my 6 GB system far more usable than older OSes did.
I own the 4gb MBAir and after 1 day of use when i open some tabs on safari i get the annoying beachball..... never had same issue on Mavericks. Only solution is to restart the Mac but after some use the beachball comes back...
Τhe beachball appears also when i close tabs.
Τhe beachball appears also when i close tabs.
What does the disk tab show when you open/close tabs and see the beach ball and do you see Safari itself reading/writing a lot of data?
Might want to just avoid Safari BTW anyway. I prefer Chrome.
Just opened 4 tabs
Opening one tab
Refreshing a macrumors tab
Scrolling on a webpage..... beachball appeared.
Beachball again after trying to play a youtube video added on an article.
On the memory tab with only 4 tabs opened (right now) it says safari uses 2,93gb of ram....
The beachball goes away after a fresh reboot but after some hours of usage it comes back.....
Any solution?
I ve never experienced simiral problems with Mavericks....
At the very beginning I installed on my MPRO 13'' i7 - 8 Gb RAM Yosemite for developers.
It was terrible, since it was the very first beta coming out.
I reinstalled Mavericks but the system was hanging from time to time.
After a reinstall of Yosemite final (not a fresh install) I still had some problems (beachball in some apps).
Then I did a fresh install and now everything runs really well (no more beachballs).
This is my personal experience...
I'd try a fresh install with a clean disk, not restore from a time machine backup, that's all...
It was terrible, since it was the very first beta coming out.
I reinstalled Mavericks but the system was hanging from time to time.
After a reinstall of Yosemite final (not a fresh install) I still had some problems (beachball in some apps).
Then I did a fresh install and now everything runs really well (no more beachballs).
This is my personal experience...
I'd try a fresh install with a clean disk, not restore from a time machine backup, that's all...
At the very beginning I installed on my MPRO 13'' i7 - 8 Gb RAM Yosemite for developers.
It was terrible, since it was the very first beta coming out.
I reinstalled Mavericks but the system was hanging from time to time.
After a reinstall of Yosemite final (not a fresh install) I still had some problems (beachball in some apps).
Then I did a fresh install and now everything runs really well (no more beachballs).
This is my personal experience...
I'd try a fresh install with a clean disk, not restore from a time machine backup, that's all...
I ve done a fress install too but safari is a ram eater.
This is the reason why i returned my 4gb ram MBA and swapped it for the 8gb ram.
Although 4gb works great if you close things you dont use, as soon as you have a few apps and a few windows with tabs open it clears the cache and starts compressing ram very fast.
Memory pressure is still green, but it goes up, and i don't like that.
With the 8gb of ram i usually have around 7 or 8 gb of ram used, but with 3gb of cache there is a lot more ram available before you start compressing and swapping...
Although 4gb works great if you close things you dont use, as soon as you have a few apps and a few windows with tabs open it clears the cache and starts compressing ram very fast.
Memory pressure is still green, but it goes up, and i don't like that.
With the 8gb of ram i usually have around 7 or 8 gb of ram used, but with 3gb of cache there is a lot more ram available before you start compressing and swapping...
On the memory tab with only 4 tabs opened (right now) it says safari uses 2,93gb of ram....
The beachball goes away after a fresh reboot but after some hours of usage it comes back.....
Any solution?
I ve never experienced simiral problems with Mavericks....
Have you installed the Flash plugin in Safari? That caused me tons of freezes and lockups. I ended up uninstalling it, then just using Chrome (which has a built-in version of Flash) for sites that insisted on using it
Thanks for the information!
Nick
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The beach ball was a problem on my mac too, i downgraded to Mavericks because i have never seen the ball of lag so often!
Nick
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When i closed apps in Yosemite it will take long time, it wasn't like that in Mavericks,,, why?
I must be the oddball in the bunch but on my mac pro 2006 hacked to run Yosemite I have 8GB installed and the memory used is 3.62 GB. I have 6 tabs open under safari, Running App store and iTunes.
Why is mine different? I have not a clue.
Why is mine different? I have not a clue.
Huh. Unfortunately still can't really tell what's going wrong from those pictures. If you were running into memory trouble I'd expect to see your computer writing a lot to disk as it swaps out less-frequently-used pages of memory. It doesn't appear that your computer is writing very much when it's lagging but it still seems to be writing something, so I don't know.
Since it sounds like the beach ball problem is with Safari specifically in your case, might be worth switching to Chrome until Apple releases some updates.
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The amount of memory used by a tab can vary enormously depending on which page(s) are in the tab. I just checked Task Manager in Chrome and I have one page open that's using 25MB and another page open that's using 200MB.
The one that's using 200MB doesn't even appear to be that much more complicated but it is showing a couple of ads... if those download videos...
same here - yosemite is painfully slow compared to mavericks (which wasn't that fast to begin with) on a 2009, 2.53 ghz mbp with 8gb of ram - as other people are reporting better results on even older machines, it's probably our installation. i did an update on mavericks - but i will do an clean install, when i find the time.
Im not sure about OSX, but this is how Linux does it: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Readahead
I remember I would do that, reboot my computer a few times and open my usual programs so that the profiler would capture it and speed up my boot.
Mac developer documentation.
However, since most of the use of free RAM is to store data that was read from your disk drives, it would only use all of 32 GB if you read tons and tons of data from your hard drive. So in normal use, you would see the memory usage creep up very slowly.
This. And this is why I can't understand why some see 15GB RAM used on a 16GB idling system. They never reboot ? I see 2.1GB used on my 8GB system after booting, then it builds up RAM usage slowly, depending on the applications I use.
I reboot OS X at least once a day.
It runs fine for me
Hello, 2010 MBA with 2gb ram
Although waiting to upgrade, the old machine works fine for Safari, Mail, Office, Numbers all run at the same time
I had to turn off all transparencies, animation, Flash (important), launchpad (does this still exist? I turned it off since Snow Leopard), take away all notification panel and make it "do not disturb" etc etc. Now it runs smoothly for what it's worth.
I plan to keep this as a second computer for taking out to meetings, still solid.
Now thinking whether to upgrade to MacBook, MacBook Pro or Mac Mini. Any suggestions? I plan to take a lot of photos and videos in the future, no experience in editing but might try...
Hello, 2010 MBA with 2gb ram
Although waiting to upgrade, the old machine works fine for Safari, Mail, Office, Numbers all run at the same time
I had to turn off all transparencies, animation, Flash (important), launchpad (does this still exist? I turned it off since Snow Leopard), take away all notification panel and make it "do not disturb" etc etc. Now it runs smoothly for what it's worth.
I plan to keep this as a second computer for taking out to meetings, still solid.
Now thinking whether to upgrade to MacBook, MacBook Pro or Mac Mini. Any suggestions? I plan to take a lot of photos and videos in the future, no experience in editing but might try...
Hi thereHello there fellow Mac users!
I just downgraded to Mavericks again after a terrible experience with Yosemite.
It wasn't the design that was the problem it was that the OS X used all the RAM i had! It used 3,76 out of 4 GB! Am i the only one with this experience?
Don´t think so... heres from another thread.
https://forums.macrumors.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=478544&d=1403930504
GOOD JOB
i dont see the issue with macos yosemitei have it on my 2009 imac 21.5 inch and it runs just fine faster than even compared to snow leopard and it runs my fav game roblox with lag yes but on lowest graphics fine and getting more fps than my expectatoions as its the bare minimum hardware required for roblox i get around 20 to 40 fps what is definately playable so i dont understand ur issue with it