Macbook Pro Ram Usage

Gangster · 1 Aug 2023 at 08:45

Hi,

Just wanting to check that this is correct. I've restarted my MBP, Specs are 15'' 2018 16gb ram.

See this screenshot below...

Is this saying that I am using 11gb out of my 16gb? I've got Firefox with 8 tabs open, messages, mail and discord open.

Just a bit alarmed as I never thought it would be that high, I had imagined that those basic tasks would be around 8gb or so.

Asking because I'm looking at a new macbook and debating whether I need 16gb or 24gb (macbook air). Also needing the 512gb to help with speeds just incase swap is being used... looks like my machine here is going into that? Which I never thought would happen... I thought 16gb would be plenty.... It's nothing intense I am doing so I am not sure why its 11gb out of 16gb usage? Any ideas?

ChrisD. · 1 Aug 2023 at 08:55

Close Activity Monitor, and stop worrying about it.

Also, use Safari, it's really underrated.

Feek · 1 Aug 2023 at 09:10

It's all about memory pressure. Yours is green, there's absolutely nothing to be concerned about there.

Gangster · 1 Aug 2023 at 10:19

Thanks for the replies. Asking for two reasons, is that 11gb out of 16gb actually being used or is Mac different to Windows how it shows actual usage?

And two, I'm looking for a new macbook air so deciding whether to get 16gb or 24gb... If 11/16gb is used I'm leaning towards 24gb?! (Even though I've no idea how a few tabs and apps can accumulate to that). I also plan on using Parallels (and 11/16 at the moment is without parallels even running).

Thanks

ChrisD. · 1 Aug 2023 at 10:58

Gangster said:
Thanks for the replies. Asking for two reasons, is that 11gb out of 16gb actually being used or is Mac different to Windows how it shows actual usage?

And two, I'm looking for a new macbook air so deciding whether to get 16gb or 24gb... If 11/16gb is used I'm leaning towards 24gb?! (Even though I've no idea how a few tabs and apps can accumulate to that). I also plan on using Parallels (and 11/16 at the moment is without parallels even running).

Thanks

VMware Fusion Tech Preview is free, it's not quite as polished, but performs the same if not faster.

I used 8GB in an M1 Air, and it only swapped a handful of times. 16GB should be plenty, unless you are planning on running many VMs.

Don't look at memory and assume it works the same as Windows.

visibleman · 1 Aug 2023 at 11:57

Gangster said:
Just a bit alarmed as I never thought it would be that high, I had imagined that those basic tasks would be around 8gb or so.

To aid performance, MacOS will typically allocate as much RAM as possible to services, apps etc. As @Feek mentions, Apple's 'pressure' metric is the one to worry about as that will determine if you have RAM/memory issues.

Gangster said:
Asking because I'm looking at a new macbook and debating whether I need 16gb or 24gb (macbook air).

Personally, more the merrier if you can afford/justify the cost; i certainly wished my M1 16GB Mini at work had 24/32GB as performance noticeably drops with a few Windows VM's open.

GMac11 · 1 Aug 2023 at 16:36

ChrisD. said:
Close Activity Monitor, and stop worrying about it.

Also, use Safari, it's really underrated.

Can't recommend this comment enough. I appreciate some users require an element of cross platform functionality (I know I did when I was still running a desktop PC alongside my MacBook) but since I moved to the MacBook full time Safari has been excellent.

HACO · 2 Aug 2023 at 11:59

Gangster said:
Thanks for the replies. Asking for two reasons, is that 11gb out of 16gb actually being used or is Mac different to Windows how it shows actual usage?

And two, I'm looking for a new macbook air so deciding whether to get 16gb or 24gb... If 11/16gb is used I'm leaning towards 24gb?! (Even though I've no idea how a few tabs and apps can accumulate to that). I also plan on using Parallels (and 11/16 at the moment is without parallels even running).

Thanks

There's no point in having more ram if it's not being used so all modern OS (Windows included) will try to utilise as much of the available ram as possible to maximise performance, but they also have the ability to scale the usage back if memory is necessary for other tasks. I have 64GB on mac Mac and my ram usage during typical usage is often over 35GB. But as others said memory pressure is very low so nothing to worry about. If I run a memory intensive task the OS scales the prior usage back to make more available.

If you run VMs it's probably a good idea to get more ram. And for future proofing's sake I do recommend getting 24GB as these laptops are going to be used for many years.

Gangster · 2 Aug 2023 at 17:20

So just so I've understood, 11 out of 16gb in my case is being used meaning there is no way with what I am doing I could drop down to 8gb? Is that the right way to read it.

ChrisD. · 2 Aug 2023 at 17:35

Gangster said:
So just so I've understood, 11 out of 16gb in my case is being used meaning there is no way with what I am doing I could drop down to 8gb? Is that the right way to read it.

No, 8GB will likely be fine unless running VMs. The OS will use what it can.

visibleman · 2 Aug 2023 at 17:42

Gangster said:
So just so I've understood, 11 out of 16gb in my case is being used meaning there is no way with what I am doing I could drop down to 8gb? Is that the right way to read it.

MacOS will use what it can but, if you plan to run high RAM loads (VM's, compiling etc) then you're likely to become a bit unstuck.
As said, with a M1 16GB Mini i notice a drop in performance with a few Windows VM's open alongside the usual array of Office apps, Slack, Visual Code et cetera et cetera; i certainly don't feel i could the same with an 8GB system.

If you can justify the extra expenditure for 16 or 24GB then opt for that, especially given Silicon doesn't allow for upgrades. As @HACO says, it gives you a little wiggle room for the future.

Edit - I mean, you could make use of Apple's return policy, grab an 8GB system and hammer it for a week and see if it does what you want...

HACO · 2 Aug 2023 at 23:29

Gangster said:
So just so I've understood, 11 out of 16gb in my case is being used meaning there is no way with what I am doing I could drop down to 8gb? Is that the right way to read it.

It means the OS has determined that allocating more ram to some of the sources would increase performance, not that the same job can't be done with 8 or even 4GB. The experience wouldn't be as good though, which may or may not be noticeable to you as the user.

Gangster · 5 Aug 2023 at 11:59

Thanks for all of your input.

Zeebedy · 6 Aug 2023 at 15:24

My M2 MBA with 8gb, is always sitting around 6-7gb usage, with little memory pressure..and i have seen no drops in performance or such doing basic tasks at once (safari, discord, spotify, mail etc..).

Combat squirrel · 9 Aug 2023 at 09:12

As people have said, stop worrying about it & overthinking it - Mac OS is generally an excellent OS, leave it to it - you'll know if you don't have enough as things will grind to a halt, which nearly never happens........I'm not sure you've actually said what your doing on your Mac - most stuff is fine at 16gb for day to day stuff, only go 32 or more if doing video editing, photo editing, 3d modelling etc.

Rainmaker · 9 Aug 2023 at 14:44

Remember, macOS is Unix. Noobs who switch to Linux often have the same alarm. Years ago, someone made a website to explain, and it turns out it's still up - Linux ate my RAM!

Look at your screenshot again - over 4GB of that 'used' 11GB is just disk cache. Your actual usage looks closer to 3GB. The more RAM you have, the more macOS will eat up as cache/compressed. Idle RAM is wasted RAM, because why buy it and not use it? The moment you open an application that needs more RAM, some of that hoarded/cached RAM will be freed and given to it. More recent Windows releases seem to have a similar behaviour, though not as full on as *nix.

As others said, your memory pressure is the one to actually watch (i.e. how much your RAM is really full). Yours is low and well into the green, so nothing to worry about. With the same workload, an 8GB machine wouldn't have 11GB 'used' RAM. Firefox does like to eat memory in its more recent versions, though. I used Firefox from literally its first release, but lately I've been using Brave more where I'm not using Safari. You do have some swap usage, which isn't ideal when there's still free RAM available. That's a macOS foible though. In Linux and *BSD you can at least change the vm.swappiness system variable to stop using swap before the RAM is x% full, but no such ability with macOS. Try a reboot (to flush the swap and any used memory) and use a different browser - preferably Safari - for the day and see if it recurs. You have nothing to worry about though.

andshrew · 9 Aug 2023 at 17:00

Rainmaker said:
Remember, macOS is Unix. Noobs who switch to Linux often have the same alarm. Years ago, someone made a website to explain, and it turns out it's still up - Linux ate my RAM! Look at your screenshot again - over 4GB of that 'used' 11GB is just disk cache. Your actual usage looks closer to 3GB. The more RAM you have, the more macOS will eat up as cache/compressed. Idle RAM is wasted RAM, because why buy it and not use it? The moment you open an application that needs more RAM, some of that hoarded/cached RAM will be freed and given to it. More recent Windows releases seem to have a similar behaviour, though not as full on as *nix.

As others said, your memory pressure is the one to actually watch (i.e. how much your RAM is really full). Yours is low and well into the green, so nothing to worry about. With the same workload, an 8GB machine wouldn't have 11GB 'used' RAM. Firefox does like to eat memory in its more recent versions, though. I used Firefox from literally its first release, but lately I've been using Brave more where I'm not using Safari. You do have some swap usage, which isn't ideal when there's still free RAM available. That's a macOS foible though. In Linux and *BSD you can at least change the vm.swappiness system variable to stop using swap before the RAM is x% full, but no such ability with macOS. Try a reboot (to flush the swap and any used memory) and use a different browser - preferably Safari - for the day and see if it recurs. You have nothing to worry about though.

"Cached Files" is in addition to "Memory Used" figure, so 4GB of the 11GB isn't disk cache. The breakdown of "Memory Used" is on the right hand side. So their system is using:

7.16GB for applications - which can be swapped to disk or (possibly) compressed if the system needs more memory
2.49GB for wired memory - ie. OS usage which must stay in memory
949.7MB for compressed - I don't know with 100% certainty but this is presumably application memory which has already been compressed to save space while being retained within memory
4.14GB for cached files - which can be removed from memory as needed and are only there to potentially improve performance

In honesty if you try and put a similar workload through a machine with only 8GB of memory - and you additionally want to start running VMs - then you're going to have a bad time.

Rainmaker · 9 Aug 2023 at 19:09

andshrew said:
"Cached Files" is in addition to "Memory Used" figure, so 4GB of the 11GB isn't disk cache. The breakdown of "Memory Used" is on the right hand side. So their system is using:

7.16GB for applications - which can be swapped to disk or (possibly) compressed if the system needs more memory
2.49GB for wired memory - ie. OS usage which must stay in memory
949.7MB for compressed - I don't know with 100% certainty but this is presumably application memory which has already been compressed to save space while being retained within memory
4.14GB for cached files - which can be removed from memory as needed and are only there to potentially improve performance

In honesty if you try and put a similar workload through a machine with only 8GB of memory - and you additionally want to start running VMs - then you're going to have a bad time.

Serves me right for posting in a rush and running! My point was, your *nix machine will eat as much RAM as you throw at it and just because he's "using" 11GB doesn't mean that's active application memory. As long as memory pressure is low and he's not swapping out like mad then just leave it to it. I can't see the screenshot because Imgur very kindly started blocking VPNs recently. :rolleyes: