This is the best description of Memory Pressure. I have the M2 MBA with 8GB ram and have noticed lately with a few tabs open, UA-cam, Music and Safari tabs, the pressure would turn to red. Which is very frustrating. Then there are other days when I will have similar tabs open and the pressure remains in green and there is no lag. Which of course means I should be doing less at one time but then again I feel that having 3 tabs open is not much at all. Keep up the great work and thank you for breaking down this feature and what to do and what not to do.
My god Gary, thank you! From the bottom of my dark soul. I own a 2020M1 MB pro with 8GB and 512GB SSD. And i was paying exactly attention with having few apps running with 6GB consumed. I was torn when other blogger basically were like, get 16GB and also said themselves: “Uuuh i son’t see difference”. I know now my Mac will do it’s tasks, my email and spreadsheets and tv shows. And serve me long time. Thank you for explaining and not attempting to sell me more than i need.
I came across this video while looking for an explanation how RAMs are getting consumed and this is the best and easy to digest tutorial I have seen by far. Thank you, Gary! Keep it up!
This is exactly what I expect in a video, where unlike other videos its not just talks, however some demonstration to back up the talk. Why do useful content don't receive any appreciation and the views that they deserve, while the contents which are just used from one video to the other get millions in views. Anyways.. great video and thanks for the information. Subscribed!!
Fantastic explanation. Glad to learn this! Thank you. My 8GB M1 MacBook Air can run A LOT more at once than I knew. I have to push it on purpose and even then it's hard to slow it down. In normal use, even heavy, it never slows.
Really love this video! Great information Gary! Reminds me of reading a news group article (when I used to peruse through news groups) that stated that Unix will try to load and use all memory available for greater efficiency. I do not worry about all of the memory being loaded because of this.
There was a time when I regretted getting a MacBook 8 gigabytes of ram. But, shortly, I realized that having less ram encourages you to manage it better. As a result, your future mac with even more ram will "thank you" for not overwhelming it with highly demanding unused stuff.
Finally a proper explanation for this topic. I really hesitated to buy M1 8GB MBA especially that 8GB on windows wasn't really enough for the programs I use (app development). The 8GB on macos have been more than adequate for the work I do (memory pressure rarely goes to red).
This video is perfect to show people who insist that base Macs with 8GB are basically worthless for anything but very simple uses. MacOS is very good at memory handling, and it can be shocking just how well it will run doing even intensive tasks with very "little" memory.
That's what I thought but basic video conferencing in Chrome and sharing screen with 10 tabs open frequently temporarily freezes my video feed. Never had to deal with this previously when I had 16gb
@@ramzizaz Chrome is notoriously poor at memory management, especially if running certain extensions. Check and see if the same happens in Safari. Safari is the most battery efficient for Macbooks and the system controls its memory usage.
Great video and fantastic explanation, earlier for few weeks I regreted for picking up the base variant of m3 macbook pro with 8gb ram , it’s been two months since I bought, until now I haven’t faced any slowness and the latest chip is having a dynamic cache feature , I tried running a docker app with some heavy llm , which took around 9gb of swap memory and never turned to red and not even a heavy fan sound. Now I understood the concept behind the memory management.
Another great video that answered my question about how to read the Activity Monitor. I always keep this open, but was unsure just how to understand it. Thanks, Gary.
So, I have a "new" M1 2TB 16GB iMac and typically run several tabs along with Mac Mail. I lave less than half the tabs you had open in your explanation and yet I too often notice lagging and get notifications that several of the tabs are using a lot of memory. They are hardly any different than what you demonstrated but I am constantly running in the 'Red' with the Activity Monitor. I feel I should have never "upgraded" from my 2017 iMac w/2TB and 32GB of memory. I could have 50 tabs open and never run into any slow down or lagging as I see now. I totally realize that this is more of complaint and I apologize for that. I do want to thank you for all that you publish. I find so much of it very helpful and educational. Thank you sir.
Thank you, I have an M1 MacBook Air. I found that an app called Log+ Options was using nearly 2 GB of ram just sitting idle. This is the app for my MX Keys and MX Master Mouse. I only need it when setting up the keyboard and mouse. Yep. I killed that app. Memory pressure went way down. I run my whole crappy UA-cam channel on an M1 MacBook Air. I will not upgrade it until I need to. Right now, it runs Lumafusion, Kdenlive, Canva, notes, pages, etc just fine. I even use Safari to access the UA-cam channel. I haven't opened Chrome up in weeks. Anyway, thanks Gary. Your channel has taught me a lot. (I have been a Mac user since 2011 or so)
Great video, great explanation! I’m using a MacBook Pro 16 M1 Pro 16ram for video editing, 4K 60fps HDR combined with some drone, GoPro and Insta360 shots sometimes. Never heard the fans in this Mac 😀. Sometimes, when exporting or rendering some complex effects or transitions I saw include 10GB ram swap and is in orange zone, but is working very well, no complain at all. Sometimes I see a short red bar in the graphic but in general and most of the time is green.
The best information I've heard on UA-cam about how Mac uses memory, you forgot to say that the architecture of the operating system says unified memory. Since I use Lr , Ps and some plugins, I ordered a Macbook Air M1 with 16 gb of memory & 512 gb SSD. Thank you for clarify this issue. No noise in my studio and it doesn't get hot. Beautiful machine.
Thank you very much. Now I know: I was so wrong all the time - and always bought the 64GB RAM MacBook Pro 🤣. It uses a little bit of swap (some 100 MB) - but the pressure diagram is always green and very low. Even when Xcode is running and consuming more than 1GB.
Little tip coming from Unix world, if you need to free up some cached files, just open terminal and write "sudo purge", enter your admin password and the cache will be cleaned. Really nice video, as always! Thanks a lot!
Don't do that. It shouldn't cause any harm, but cache is useful for speeding things up. When you purge the cache it is basically asking apps to rebuild their caches again. This will slow things down in your apps in the short term, and make no difference in the long term as the caches will just come right back.
@@johnvodopija thnx for quick reply. can you tell me please how much macos sequoia use Ram of 8gb MBA? In my country M3 MBA 8/256 is only 1000usd but 16/512 is 2100usd. IT'S VERY expensive to upgrade ( ill use it for office work light editing to add something in presentations and blender for small animation) is 8gb m3 MBA enough? For this jobs for at least 3 year.
Useful info, thanks. I'm planning to upgrade to an M1 MacBook Air in the next week or so. Trying to decide whether I need 16Gb. Looks like 8Gb will be fine.
Hi Gary, thanks for these helpful videos. I'm going to buy a MacBook Air soon, but I only have the option for 8GB RAM. I'm sure I'll be just fine with 8 gigs since I'm not planning to do demanding tasks on it, but I'm concerned about longevity of it since I think the need for RAM of apps will increase over time and my Mac will get laggy a few years later. I'm planning to keep my device for 5 to 6 years.
That's conventional wisdom: You'll need more memory in the future. But it isn't necessarily true. Depends how long you want to keep it. If you want to use it 10+ years from now, then maybe. But then you are just spending money today, rather than in 7 years when you could upgrade.
Go for 16gb, apple has horrible web browser support, if you plan to use chrome or anything based on its browsing engine, it will suck your memory like a vampire
I watched a number of videos before this one trying to figure out how my MacBook was using it's 8GB of RAM and they all gave generic explanations which didn't help at all. One guy spent half the video explaining what RAM was and then ran a benchmark on an 8GB and 16GB model which had nothing to do with RAM. Thanks for making this video 👍🏻
Very informative video. I recently upgraded my MacBook Pro M1 Pro with 16 GB of RAM because I run a Windows 11 VM through Parallels, and I noticed the memory pressure frequently in the yellow. I was torn between 32 and 64GB for the replacement, but this video makes me feel better about 32. I’ve been using an application from Trend Micro to monitor my RAM usage, but that looks at overall usage and not memory pressure. It would show I was using 90% of the RAM, which pushed me to review the memory pressure.
Your videos are just always so useful. May I request a few topics for the future: 1) which screen colour profile to use? (sRGB, P3, standard RGB, etc) 2) battery usage of safari vs other browsers 3) best way to run windows on a mac
1) Use the default unless you are a video or graphics pro of some sort and need something else. 2) Not sure what to say about that, you can test for yourself but browsers are constantly getting updates. Safari is generally considered the be best. 3) With the new M-class processors you can't run Windows anymore, unless you count testing betas of ARM-based Windows in virtualization software. But not something a typical user would do.
This is truly FASCINATING stuff!!!!! So technology truly has come very far, it seems it's just very subtle and well hidden. I love it. I can't believe they optimise everything!!! Having apps 'negotiating' with the system for memory is absurdly fantastical. I've always thought every app only used a certain amount of memory and that was that. Thank you for the video!
Thanks, Gary. A very informative video. I am puzzled by a couple of points you raised. One is you referred to the SSD for file swapping. My 27" iMac is not what I would call old. It is from 2019. But it only came with a HDD as standard. I think probably one of the last models to do so. At the time I needed to replace my 2009 iMac (which still runs reasonably well, by the way) an SSD model wasn't an option and I couldn't wait another year until they became available. I'm sure there are many other users with HDDs in their machines and yet you only referred to SSDs as though HDDs went out with the ark! The second point is that I use Logic Pro and having loaded a large set of orchestral samples I find the app often comes to a stop when playing tracks because the information is more than it can handle. I am about to order a memory upgrade which is commercially available. There is an access door at the rear of the iMac which, when removed, I can slot in new memory cards. So I am puzzled why you said that it is no longer possible to add more memory to Macs.
Aside from Mac Pro, iMac is the last machine that lets you upgrade your memory. All the laptops and even desktops now have the memory soldered into the board and thus it's not possible to upgrade it.
You have one of the last Macs that could come with a HDD (there was an SSD option). You can't buy a Mac with an HDD anymore. It will definitely be slower because of this. But it was also one of the last Macs where you can upgrade the memory, so doing that will help.
He was talking about the current Apple computers to not be able to be upgraded with additional hardware like memory modules or hard drives. He was not talking about Apple computers sold years ago who had that opportunity.
you've put my worries at ease my friend and I am so thankful for you're hard work and please do continue posting good quality videos. I was so worried because I got the MacBook Air with only 512gb ssd and 8gb of ram and it was showing that my MacBook was using 5gb to 6gb of ram to run these app and I was so scared because I threw the original packaging away. I'm still watching the video but the little that I've watched so far its putting my worries at ease. thank you so much
now that I've watched the video I can confidently say that I'm happy with my MacBook Air M2 purchase that I made. the creator of this video open 40 to 50 tabs on safari had some other apps on the background, all I can is that i only use 3 to maybe 6 tabs a day and I have nothing running on the background so I'm stress free and the faster storage of the 512gb ssd that has double the speed on the base ssd on the MacBook Air which is 256gb will help out a lot when multitasking. a lot of UA-camrs tested the base model MacBook air which has 8gb/256gb and said that it was great for them.
@@macmost here's what I think, if UA-camrs can get buy with the base model m2 MacBook Air with just 256gb/8gb and they say its great for them than Im good to go. Because I don't do anything intensive, i just open 2 to 3 tabs using safari. 1 tab is for reading a book, the other one is for Spotify, UA-cam and that's it for me. I know that you do more things that i do that are way more intensive than I do and you have the same specs as I do, so I don't have to worry. thanks for making the video and replying to my comment.
Great explanation! I recently got an M3 Max MacBook Pro with the 36GB of memory. I am in yellow for memory pressure some of the time, especially when doing WPF Windows development, via Parallels, running a Windows 11 Virtual Machine (VM) for my software engineering job. It concerns me especially if I ever need more memory for running more than 2 Operating Systems at once, am running many docker containers, or Linux VMs in addition to a Windows VM instance. 36GB still feels like enough to run my daily workflow smoothly and I have not noticed instability while using the computer. Good to know that compression and swap can still be used to push my Mac's memory even further but I still think 8GB for a MacBook Pro is bad, especially as a professionally oriented machine, and since you can't compress or allocate swap for virtualization software the 8GB would be completely unusable to me with my current workflow. Not to mention the memory is shared between the cpu/gpu and you can't upgrade the memory later, which I also think is ridiculous for a computer that can cost over $7k.
Yes, running a development environment in a VM uses a lot of memory. But in the yellow is fine. It shouldn't concern you any more than driving at highways speeds in a car: your Mac is built for it. The vast majority of MacBook Pro users are NOT working with WPF or a VM. Most don't even know what those are. That's why Apple makes the base model available. One of the reasons the Mac is so fast is the way the memory and SoC are integrated closely together. The market slice would be small for wanting: upgradable but slower RAM, not wanting that RAM at the start but years later, keeping the Mac for many years even though they want top-of-the-line.
@@macmost I agree that the kind of workloads I do with my Mac are not typical and professionally oriented users will know when purchasing a new Mac the kind of memory, storage, and performance demands that may be needed at the time of purchase. The MacBooks using an SoC has clear advantages with the increased performance and efficiency it can deliver. Definitely a factor in why I purchased my MacBook over another laptop. But Apple has been selling the 8GB model for many years now, ram demands have only grown with time, and the ram limitation has only been made worse with the M series chips since the memory is shared between the cpu and gpu. I think Apple should move the base model into being 12GB or 16GB as that would give everyone more room to work with and not cost much extra from Apple. But I am also not a casual user and would not buy a computer with 8GB of memory knowing that would not be sufficient to my usage. The 8GB can still be sufficient for many users.
Thanks Gary. Does tab groups also use the compressed memory principle, or is there another method? Could you please explain the memory usage of tab groups?
Nice content as always. I would like to know why doesn’t mac release the swap memory used to zero completely after all programs are ended. I need to restart the mac to get the swap used back to zero!
You don't need to restart your Mac. No need to "get the swap used back to zero." Just let the system handle the memory. By trying to manually manage it yourself you are getting in the way of its optimizations. There is never am "all programs are ended" on a computer as it is already running the system, Finder, background tasks, management, etc.
Not really. I mean any time you press a key on your keyboard (mechanical movement) or do anything with your Mac (heat generated) it produces some wear. But you didn't get your Mac to put it in a sealed envelope in a drawer, right? You bought it to USE it to get things done.
Thank you very much for this video. I have had a Macbook 2009 until two weeks ago and i sold it (2GB RAM lol). Still worked fine. Now i want to make this air m1 8/256 last for 10 years or so, from now. Do you think in the future 8GB could be a problem? The most RAM usage will be for editing some HD video once in a while. Thanks again.
Thanks for the explanation. I still don’t understand why Spotlight indexing after every system update causes red memory pressure and annoying slowdown for 10-20 minutes. I have 8 gb RAM and about 300 gb free swap space. Can’t they make Spotlight smarter about memory use when I’m trying to work?
Depends on your machine, drive and what files you have. Also what else you are doing during it. I haven't noticed an indexing slowdown in years when it is happening. Always best to do major system updates at the end of the day so it can take care of this overnight while it sleeps.
Hi Gary, another great “just the facts” description on a complex topic, very helpful. I have a question, though. I have noticed that Finder, I think since Monterey, has been using more and more memory over time when I am either searching large drives or using quick look on video files. Closing the windows doesn’t help, I need to restart (alt right click) Finder to clear it. Eventually, I will get into the yellow even when all other apps are closed. Have you ever noticed this? Or any other thoughts?
Yes, this is a widely known issue with searching in Monterey. Doesn't affect most people, but it sounds like you do enough searching to have it affect you. Hopefully fixed soon with Ventura.
The use of memory of some apps seems to grow like Apple Mail. For example, it was taking up 214 MB. I closed it down and opened it up again. It is now at 101 MB. It may be that some apps have poor memory management where heap memory is not being deallocated when it is not being used anymore.
Memory doesn't work like that today. Unused memory is wasted memory. It isn't using X MB of memory because it needs to, but because it is available and it would make this faster or smoother for you. That's why memory pressure is more important and how much memory is being "used."
My 8gb Macbook Air 15 has exceeded my expectations despite only having 8gb of RAM, but I wish I got the 16gb but it's not readily available. Right now my swap is at 11gb but the system remains reasonably responsive. Memory pressure mostly stays at yellow and occasionally spikes red.
First of all, thanks for your explanation. Secondly, I have this doubt: I have an early 2015 macbook pro with 8gb of ram. Ram pressure is always green (usage of 6,5gb ram at most), but CPU sometimes hit the 60 percent, mostly when seeing youtube, and get a little laggy. My question is, if 7 years ago, when I bought it, if I had bought it with 16gb of RAM, I would have seen now the diference? I mean, how proof time afects this kind of stuff?
No. If your memory pressure is green now, then more memory isn't the solution. Laggy video is probably your Internet connection, or any point between you and the server (UA-cam in that case).
Gary, what is a good guide for selecting the amount of memory to purchase on a new machine M1 or M2 and do they use memory differently than prior processors?
Very good video. I just missed your comment on whether or not memory swap should be avoided because it could cause wear and tear to my ssd. Is that true?
Don't worry about that. The SSD is built for this. That's like not driving your car anywhere because you don't want to put wear and tear on the engine.
I am by far no computer guru; just asking this question for learning purposes: Is it correct to say that SSD memory is Virtual Memory. and the Mac's Memory Pressure=our blood pressure?
Your Mac has actual memory (RAM) which is very very fast and small (8 GB on low-end MacBook Air and iMac, for instance) and virtual memory (AKA "swap") that is stored on the internal Solid State Drive (SSD) which is storage (not memory) which is still fast, but not nearly as fast as RAM. These both work together while you are using your Mac to do things. Saying memory pressure is like blood pressure is kinda stretching the metaphor a lot. If you want to find a metaphor that includes the word "pressure" I would say it is like being under pressure at work when a lot of tasks need to be performed at the same time and you get frustrated and less productive.
@@marqdx Don't stress about it. If you are doing a lot on your Mac and things seem slow, you can always check Activity Monitor for Memory Pressure and if you see it in the red, then maybe quit some apps or close some windows/documents. Besides that the only thing to worry about is to keep at least 10% of your internal drive empty for swap space.
@@macmost USB-C to display port. WindowServer is always using 2GB or above. My minimum memory pressure with Safari open is in the yellow. Safari closed it is at the top of green.
@@dickwestheimer Be interesting to experiment with that. Try different Desktop backgrounds (maybe a solid color). Try have no windows or apps open and see if one or two screens makes a difference. See if the 4K screen at different resolutions makes a difference. Things like that.
Excellent video, when I run Pathfinder, Devonthink, photos, chrome my system often gets very laggy. Now I know at least for Tamara regarding memory, working with Apple Engineering they had me uninstall Acronis backup software as they said it was regularly crashing. CleanMyMac regularly reports low memory and now I know how to verify it. Thanks for a great video. Amy idea on how an average user can see what apps are crashing?
I would uninstall any "cleaning" software too. That would be the first thing I would suggest to anyone with a laggy system (or even if not). You don't need that. Usually if an app crashes you get a message and then the app isn't running anymore anyway. How many tabs do you have open in Chrome?
@@macmost I try and keep my chrome usage to a minimum, when I do use it I typically only have about 4 tabs open. I use Safari typically and can have 25 tabs open but they are not doing anything so I didn’t worry about their memory usage, maybe I should?
@@macmost I have watched most of Your videos but there is no video in UA-cam explaining how Mac Machine and Mac OS works internally. Can You do a video on that ?
@@AriseRayamangalam That's a very vague question. A computer is a very complex machine, and operating systems are very complex pieces of software. It would take volumes of books or years of lecture time to explain everything about them.
Then how come you can go to any apple store, look at the resource monitor of any mac, and the computer is running nothing but being idle, and uses 80%+ of memory?
I'm using Mac Air M1 base model (8/256). With my daily workflow, my memory pressure is always yellow. Should I be worry with SSD health/usage due to high swap? Or should I change my 8GB Mac to 16GB Mac?
One minor thing, when you were pointing to Pressure Memory and other things at bottom of the page you Hearing in Paired lines are in the way and you can not see what you are pointing at. Food for though.
Probably an app that is misbehaving or your storage is almost full (no room for swap). See ua-cam.com/video/8cN88fm7KS0/v-deo.html for some more ideas.
I watched this video to understand why my 8 GB ram 2002 M1 iMac was slow when running Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop together, along with other application hogs like WhatsApp and Safari. I find that I am always in the yellow with about 10GB of swap. My Apple internal SSD HD has about 480GB free, as I am using a 2TB SanDisc SSD drive as my start-up drive, and another 4 TB SanDisc Extreme SSD where I store Movies, iCloud and Lightroom images. So-- does this Mac use all three HD's for swapping or only the start up drive or the Apple HD? Would a change to a new 16 GB M1 iMac help significantly? Thanks so much for your great instruction.
So, are you using an external drive as your startup drive? That would be significantly slower than using your internal one. Swap would be from the startup drive too.
As I mentioned it is also an SSD drive so I don't know how much difference there would be--obviously some. But the number of Apps I use will not fit on the small Apple drive. You say swap would be from the startup drive too. I conclude then that both drives are used for swapping. Correct? Thanks for your reply. @@macmost
@@skydriver101 Could be a huge difference. First, Apple tends to put very fast SSDs inside Macs, which are much faster than those sold as external drives. Second, the external drive has to communicate through either USB or Thunderbolt. The latter is fast, but not as fast as being internal. No, I'm pretty sure only the startup drive is used for swap. If you wanted speed, an appropriately-sized internal drive would have been much better.
Thanks for your reply. I did not plan on using this computer as much as I am while away from home. Should have ordered the 16GB option. Hopefully Apple will come out with a new M3 iMac model in 2024. I routinely work with high resolution images that are 350MB plus so I will have to be more selective in what applications I have running. Good info--thanks.@@macmost
No, because your MacBook is always using memory swap. There is no "not using memory swap" as a comparison. Your MacBook should last more than 5 years easily (depending on whether you just want to upgrade for new features) and beyond that. If you kept using it for many years after, it would likely die from something else, not SSD problems (battery, physical damage, obsolescence, etc). Don't worry about swap affecting your SSD.
Can I ask you something? Is it okay to protect MacBook retina using screen protector/screen guard? I am so confuse, cz there are a lot of differences opinion
This is the best description of Memory Pressure. I have the M2 MBA with 8GB ram and have noticed lately with a few tabs open, UA-cam, Music and Safari tabs, the pressure would turn to red. Which is very frustrating. Then there are other days when I will have similar tabs open and the pressure remains in green and there is no lag. Which of course means I should be doing less at one time but then again I feel that having 3 tabs open is not much at all. Keep up the great work and thank you for breaking down this feature and what to do and what not to do.
My god Gary, thank you! From the bottom of my dark soul. I own a 2020M1 MB pro with 8GB and 512GB SSD. And i was paying exactly attention with having few apps running with 6GB consumed. I was torn when other blogger basically were like, get 16GB and also said themselves: “Uuuh i son’t see difference”. I know now my Mac will do it’s tasks, my email and spreadsheets and tv shows. And serve me long time. Thank you for explaining and not attempting to sell me more than i need.
I came across this video while looking for an explanation how RAMs are getting consumed and this is the best and easy to digest tutorial I have seen by far. Thank you, Gary! Keep it up!
This is exactly what I expect in a video, where unlike other videos its not just talks, however some demonstration to back up the talk. Why do useful content don't receive any appreciation and the views that they deserve, while the contents which are just used from one video to the other get millions in views. Anyways.. great video and thanks for the information. Subscribed!!
Fantastic explanation. Glad to learn this! Thank you. My 8GB M1 MacBook Air can run A LOT more at once than I knew. I have to push it on purpose and even then it's hard to slow it down. In normal use, even heavy, it never slows.
Really love this video! Great information Gary! Reminds me of reading a news group article (when I used to peruse through news groups) that stated that Unix will try to load and use all memory available for greater efficiency. I do not worry about all of the memory being loaded because of this.
This is a brilliant video Gary, A lot of complex subjects explained very understandably. Thanks
There was a time when I regretted getting a MacBook 8 gigabytes of ram. But, shortly, I realized that having less ram encourages you to manage it better. As a result, your future mac with even more ram will "thank you" for not overwhelming it with highly demanding unused stuff.
Coping hard
Finally a proper explanation for this topic. I really hesitated to buy M1 8GB MBA especially that 8GB on windows wasn't really enough for the programs I use (app development).
The 8GB on macos have been more than adequate for the work I do (memory pressure rarely goes to red).
This video is perfect to show people who insist that base Macs with 8GB are basically worthless for anything but very simple uses. MacOS is very good at memory handling, and it can be shocking just how well it will run doing even intensive tasks with very "little" memory.
That's what I thought but basic video conferencing in Chrome and sharing screen with 10 tabs open frequently temporarily freezes my video feed. Never had to deal with this previously when I had 16gb
@@ramzizaz Chrome is notoriously poor at memory management, especially if running certain extensions. Check and see if the same happens in Safari. Safari is the most battery efficient for Macbooks and the system controls its memory usage.
every modern os is very good at memory handling
@@ramzizazuse safari .
@@Sheelsindhu77907 thanks now i am always below 6gb and battery will thank me i guess. I never thought about Safari for saving ram and battery 🤦
Great video and fantastic explanation, earlier for few weeks I regreted for picking up the base variant of m3 macbook pro with 8gb ram , it’s been two months since I bought, until now I haven’t faced any slowness and the latest chip is having a dynamic cache feature , I tried running a docker app with some heavy llm , which took around 9gb of swap memory and never turned to red and not even a heavy fan sound. Now I understood the concept behind the memory management.
Another great video that answered my question about how to read the Activity Monitor. I always keep this open, but was unsure just how to understand it. Thanks, Gary.
So, I have a "new" M1 2TB 16GB iMac and typically run several tabs along with Mac Mail. I lave less than half the tabs you had open in your explanation and yet I too often notice lagging and get notifications that several of the tabs are using a lot of memory. They are hardly any different than what you demonstrated but I am constantly running in the 'Red' with the Activity Monitor.
I feel I should have never "upgraded" from my 2017 iMac w/2TB and 32GB of memory. I could have 50 tabs open and never run into any slow down or lagging as I see now. I totally realize that this is more of complaint and I apologize for that. I do want to thank you for all that you publish. I find so much of it very helpful and educational. Thank you sir.
Do you have any browser extensions installed? Is this Safari or Chrome? What is in the tabs?
a complete legit video describing not much not less , but just about how much and what's required. thanks a lot
Thank you, I have an M1 MacBook Air. I found that an app called Log+ Options was using nearly 2 GB of ram just sitting idle. This is the app for my MX Keys and MX Master Mouse. I only need it when setting up the keyboard and mouse. Yep. I killed that app. Memory pressure went way down. I run my whole crappy UA-cam channel on an M1 MacBook Air. I will not upgrade it until I need to. Right now, it runs Lumafusion, Kdenlive, Canva, notes, pages, etc just fine. I even use Safari to access the UA-cam channel. I haven't opened Chrome up in weeks. Anyway, thanks Gary. Your channel has taught me a lot. (I have been a Mac user since 2011 or so)
Another excellent video! And it was good to hear you say that it’s not all or nothing :-).
Great video, great explanation! I’m using a MacBook Pro 16 M1 Pro 16ram for video editing, 4K 60fps HDR combined with some drone, GoPro and Insta360 shots sometimes. Never heard the fans in this Mac 😀. Sometimes, when exporting or rendering some complex effects or transitions I saw include 10GB ram swap and is in orange zone, but is working very well, no complain at all. Sometimes I see a short red bar in the graphic but in general and most of the time is green.
The best information I've heard on UA-cam about how Mac uses memory, you forgot to say that the architecture of the operating system says unified memory. Since I use Lr , Ps and some plugins, I ordered a Macbook Air M1 with 16 gb of memory & 512 gb SSD.
Thank you for clarify this issue.
No noise in my studio and it doesn't get hot.
Beautiful machine.
Excellent tutorial. First time I really understand how Mac memory management works,
Thank you very much. Now I know: I was so wrong all the time - and always bought the 64GB RAM MacBook Pro 🤣. It uses a little bit of swap (some 100 MB) - but the pressure diagram is always green and very low. Even when Xcode is running and consuming more than 1GB.
Excellent presentation on how the memory pressure works!
Gary - Just came across this video. WOW, what a great in-depth video. Thank you for all the work I know you put into your videos.
Great lesson. I know I've overreacted before, and closed tabs and apps I probably didn't need to.
Man, you sure are good at explaining things, Gary. Thank you.
Little tip coming from Unix world, if you need to free up some cached files, just open terminal and write "sudo purge", enter your admin password and the cache will be cleaned.
Really nice video, as always! Thanks a lot!
Don't do that. It shouldn't cause any harm, but cache is useful for speeding things up. When you purge the cache it is basically asking apps to rebuild their caches again. This will slow things down in your apps in the short term, and make no difference in the long term as the caches will just come right back.
As a new M1 MBA user, I really liked the clear and easy to understand explanation provided. Thank you 🙏 👍😎🇦🇺
Any issue with 8gig?
Wife has an 8gig and no issues. I have the 16gig version.
@@johnvodopija thnx for quick reply. can you tell me please how much macos sequoia use Ram of 8gb MBA? In my country M3 MBA 8/256 is only 1000usd but 16/512 is 2100usd. IT'S VERY expensive to upgrade ( ill use it for office work light editing to add something in presentations and blender for small animation) is 8gb m3 MBA enough? For this jobs for at least 3 year.
Given the tasks you describe and expected 3 year lifespan personally I would not consider anything less than 16gig ram.
@@johnvodopija thnc
A very useful and informative video tutorial today! Thank you, Gary! 👏🏻❤️
A very clear, informative video Gary. Thank you.
Useful info, thanks. I'm planning to upgrade to an M1 MacBook Air in the next week or so. Trying to decide whether I need 16Gb. Looks like 8Gb will be fine.
Hi Gary, thanks for these helpful videos.
I'm going to buy a MacBook Air soon, but I only have the option for 8GB RAM. I'm sure I'll be just fine with 8 gigs since I'm not planning to do demanding tasks on it, but I'm concerned about longevity of it since I think the need for RAM of apps will increase over time and my Mac will get laggy a few years later. I'm planning to keep my device for 5 to 6 years.
That's conventional wisdom: You'll need more memory in the future. But it isn't necessarily true. Depends how long you want to keep it. If you want to use it 10+ years from now, then maybe. But then you are just spending money today, rather than in 7 years when you could upgrade.
@macmostvideo Thank you very much ❤
Go for 16gb, apple has horrible web browser support, if you plan to use chrome or anything based on its browsing engine, it will suck your memory like a vampire
Amazing video! Almost spent $500 extra moving from the 36gb ram M3 max to the 48gb M3 max due to irrational RAM worry 😂. Thank you!
I watched a number of videos before this one trying to figure out how my MacBook was using it's 8GB of RAM and they all gave generic explanations which didn't help at all. One guy spent half the video explaining what RAM was and then ran a benchmark on an 8GB and 16GB model which had nothing to do with RAM. Thanks for making this video 👍🏻
very well explained. Thanks
I think this is a really ... understandable ... explanation of what is going on. This is a really good video.
Very informative video. I recently upgraded my MacBook Pro M1 Pro with 16 GB of RAM because I run a Windows 11 VM through Parallels, and I noticed the memory pressure frequently in the yellow. I was torn between 32 and 64GB for the replacement, but this video makes me feel better about 32. I’ve been using an application from Trend Micro to monitor my RAM usage, but that looks at overall usage and not memory pressure. It would show I was using 90% of the RAM, which pushed me to review the memory pressure.
Finally a UA-camr that actually knows what they’re talking about. 🎉
Great video. I’ve learned something I’d never even considered in my 9 years as a Mac user.
Thanks so much
Thank you so much for explaining this. This is the best video out there!!
Thank you, sir, a most informative explanation. All your videos are great. Some just stand out even more because you outdo yourself! 🙂
very practical advice!
Very informative video. Thanks =)
Thanks for uploading MR GARRY
I am a great fan of you from INDIA.
Your videos are just always so useful. May I request a few topics for the future:
1) which screen colour profile to use? (sRGB, P3, standard RGB, etc)
2) battery usage of safari vs other browsers
3) best way to run windows on a mac
1) Use the default unless you are a video or graphics pro of some sort and need something else. 2) Not sure what to say about that, you can test for yourself but browsers are constantly getting updates. Safari is generally considered the be best. 3) With the new M-class processors you can't run Windows anymore, unless you count testing betas of ARM-based Windows in virtualization software. But not something a typical user would do.
Great explanation, well presented. Thank you!
This is truly FASCINATING stuff!!!!! So technology truly has come very far, it seems it's just very subtle and well hidden. I love it. I can't believe they optimise everything!!! Having apps 'negotiating' with the system for memory is absurdly fantastical. I've always thought every app only used a certain amount of memory and that was that.
Thank you for the video!
Thanks, Gary. A very informative video. I am puzzled by a couple of points you raised. One is you referred to the SSD for file swapping. My 27" iMac is not what I would call old. It is from 2019. But it only came with a HDD as standard. I think probably one of the last models to do so. At the time I needed to replace my 2009 iMac (which still runs reasonably well, by the way) an SSD model wasn't an option and I couldn't wait another year until they became available. I'm sure there are many other users with HDDs in their machines and yet you only referred to SSDs as though HDDs went out with the ark! The second point is that I use Logic Pro and having loaded a large set of orchestral samples I find the app often comes to a stop when playing tracks because the information is more than it can handle. I am about to order a memory upgrade which is commercially available. There is an access door at the rear of the iMac which, when removed, I can slot in new memory cards. So I am puzzled why you said that it is no longer possible to add more memory to Macs.
Aside from Mac Pro, iMac is the last machine that lets you upgrade your memory. All the laptops and even desktops now have the memory soldered into the board and thus it's not possible to upgrade it.
@@NeilVitale thanks. I wasn’t aware. But I can’t help thinking that’s a retrograde step.
You have one of the last Macs that could come with a HDD (there was an SSD option). You can't buy a Mac with an HDD anymore. It will definitely be slower because of this. But it was also one of the last Macs where you can upgrade the memory, so doing that will help.
He was talking about the current Apple computers to not be able to be upgraded with additional hardware like memory modules or hard drives. He was not talking about Apple computers sold years ago who had that opportunity.
Hey, Gary! You're amazing! Thanks!
you've put my worries at ease my friend and I am so thankful for you're hard work and please do continue posting good quality videos. I was so worried because I got the MacBook Air with only 512gb ssd and 8gb of ram and it was showing that my MacBook was using 5gb to 6gb of ram to run these app and I was so scared because I threw the original packaging away. I'm still watching the video but the little that I've watched so far its putting my worries at ease. thank you so much
now that I've watched the video I can confidently say that I'm happy with my MacBook Air M2 purchase that I made. the creator of this video open 40 to 50 tabs on safari had some other apps on the background, all I can is that i only use 3 to maybe 6 tabs a day and I have nothing running on the background so I'm stress free and the faster storage of the 512gb ssd that has double the speed on the base ssd on the MacBook Air which is 256gb will help out a lot when multitasking. a lot of UA-camrs tested the base model MacBook air which has 8gb/256gb and said that it was great for them.
MacBook Air/8GB/512GB is exactly what I have and it doesn't let me down.
@@macmost here's what I think, if UA-camrs can get buy with the base model m2 MacBook Air with just 256gb/8gb and they say its great for them than Im good to go. Because I don't do anything intensive, i just open 2 to 3 tabs using safari. 1 tab is for reading a book, the other one is for Spotify, UA-cam and that's it for me. I know that you do more things that i do that are way more intensive than I do and you have the same specs as I do, so I don't have to worry. thanks for making the video and replying to my comment.
Great explanation! I recently got an M3 Max MacBook Pro with the 36GB of memory. I am in yellow for memory pressure some of the time, especially when doing WPF Windows development, via Parallels, running a Windows 11 Virtual Machine (VM) for my software engineering job. It concerns me especially if I ever need more memory for running more than 2 Operating Systems at once, am running many docker containers, or Linux VMs in addition to a Windows VM instance.
36GB still feels like enough to run my daily workflow smoothly and I have not noticed instability while using the computer. Good to know that compression and swap can still be used to push my Mac's memory even further but I still think 8GB for a MacBook Pro is bad, especially as a professionally oriented machine, and since you can't compress or allocate swap for virtualization software the 8GB would be completely unusable to me with my current workflow. Not to mention the memory is shared between the cpu/gpu and you can't upgrade the memory later, which I also think is ridiculous for a computer that can cost over $7k.
Yes, running a development environment in a VM uses a lot of memory. But in the yellow is fine. It shouldn't concern you any more than driving at highways speeds in a car: your Mac is built for it. The vast majority of MacBook Pro users are NOT working with WPF or a VM. Most don't even know what those are. That's why Apple makes the base model available. One of the reasons the Mac is so fast is the way the memory and SoC are integrated closely together. The market slice would be small for wanting: upgradable but slower RAM, not wanting that RAM at the start but years later, keeping the Mac for many years even though they want top-of-the-line.
@@macmost I agree that the kind of workloads I do with my Mac are not typical and professionally oriented users will know when purchasing a new Mac the kind of memory, storage, and performance demands that may be needed at the time of purchase. The MacBooks using an SoC has clear advantages with the increased performance and efficiency it can deliver. Definitely a factor in why I purchased my MacBook over another laptop.
But Apple has been selling the 8GB model for many years now, ram demands have only grown with time, and the ram limitation has only been made worse with the M series chips since the memory is shared between the cpu and gpu. I think Apple should move the base model into being 12GB or 16GB as that would give everyone more room to work with and not cost much extra from Apple. But I am also not a casual user and would not buy a computer with 8GB of memory knowing that would not be sufficient to my usage. The 8GB can still be sufficient for many users.
You just saved me so much money. Thank you
I learn so much from you. Thanks heaps!
Excellent presentation Gary.
Thanks, clear and easy explanation
Thanks Gary. Does tab groups also use the compressed memory principle, or is there another method? Could you please explain the memory usage of tab groups?
Tab groups are just a way to organize tabs in Safari. I don't believe they are any different than having all of your tabs in one group like before.
Thank you so much for this video !!
Thanks Gary….very interesting & informative.
By the way I love those iMovie tutorials.
Thank you
Great video. Very well explained.
Amazing video! thanks a lot!
Excellent explanation! Well done : )
Great channel Gary! Cheers
Nice content as always. I would like to know why doesn’t mac release the swap memory used to zero completely after all programs are ended. I need to restart the mac to get the swap used back to zero!
You don't need to restart your Mac. No need to "get the swap used back to zero." Just let the system handle the memory. By trying to manually manage it yourself you are getting in the way of its optimizations. There is never am "all programs are ended" on a computer as it is already running the system, Finder, background tasks, management, etc.
Thanks Gary …. Really helpful info!
Thanks. Awesome video! Still wondering if all these processes tax the components too much. If so, will that affect the life of the computer?
Not really. I mean any time you press a key on your keyboard (mechanical movement) or do anything with your Mac (heat generated) it produces some wear. But you didn't get your Mac to put it in a sealed envelope in a drawer, right? You bought it to USE it to get things done.
Alright love that spirit. Thanks for the wonderful job.
That was so helpful
Wonderful explanation! 👏👏👏👏👏👏👏
Superb explainer!
Amazing video, question what hard drive space do you have 512? or 1TB?
On my main Mac I have an internal 2TB SSD.
Thank you very much for this video.
I have had a Macbook 2009 until two weeks ago and i sold it (2GB RAM lol). Still worked fine.
Now i want to make this air m1 8/256 last for 10 years or so, from now.
Do you think in the future 8GB could be a problem? The most RAM usage will be for editing some HD video once in a while. Thanks again.
Hard to say. 5 years from now some killer app could change things. But for now it works pretty well for most casual use.
Very useful, thanks
Thanks for this... I know better now
Thanks for the explanation. I still don’t understand why Spotlight indexing after every system update causes red memory pressure and annoying slowdown for 10-20 minutes. I have 8 gb RAM and about 300 gb free swap space. Can’t they make Spotlight smarter about memory use when I’m trying to work?
Depends on your machine, drive and what files you have. Also what else you are doing during it. I haven't noticed an indexing slowdown in years when it is happening. Always best to do major system updates at the end of the day so it can take care of this overnight while it sleeps.
Great video. Thanks
Hi Gary, another great “just the facts” description on a complex topic, very helpful. I have a question, though. I have noticed that Finder, I think since Monterey, has been using more and more memory over time when I am either searching large drives or using quick look on video files. Closing the windows doesn’t help, I need to restart (alt right click) Finder to clear it. Eventually, I will get into the yellow even when all other apps are closed. Have you ever noticed this? Or any other thoughts?
Yes, this is a widely known issue with searching in Monterey. Doesn't affect most people, but it sounds like you do enough searching to have it affect you. Hopefully fixed soon with Ventura.
Thanks Gary I will investigate .
The use of memory of some apps seems to grow like Apple Mail. For example, it was taking up 214 MB. I closed it down and opened it up again. It is now at 101 MB. It may be that some apps have poor memory management where heap memory is not being deallocated when it is not being used anymore.
Memory doesn't work like that today. Unused memory is wasted memory. It isn't using X MB of memory because it needs to, but because it is available and it would make this faster or smoother for you. That's why memory pressure is more important and how much memory is being "used."
My 8gb Macbook Air 15 has exceeded my expectations despite only having 8gb of RAM, but I wish I got the 16gb but it's not readily available. Right now my swap is at 11gb but the system remains reasonably responsive. Memory pressure mostly stays at yellow and occasionally spikes red.
First of all, thanks for your explanation. Secondly, I have this doubt: I have an early 2015 macbook pro with 8gb of ram. Ram pressure is always green (usage of 6,5gb ram at most), but CPU sometimes hit the 60 percent, mostly when seeing youtube, and get a little laggy. My question is, if 7 years ago, when I bought it, if I had bought it with 16gb of RAM, I would have seen now the diference? I mean, how proof time afects this kind of stuff?
No. If your memory pressure is green now, then more memory isn't the solution. Laggy video is probably your Internet connection, or any point between you and the server (UA-cam in that case).
Excellent
Very helpful
Yet another revelation. Thanks 🙂
Gary, what is a good guide for selecting the amount of memory to purchase on a new machine M1 or M2 and do they use memory differently than prior processors?
The M processors are excellent with memory. It really depends on what you use your Mac for and what you can afford.
Very good video. I just missed your comment on whether or not memory swap should be avoided because it could cause wear and tear to my ssd. Is that true?
Don't worry about that. The SSD is built for this. That's like not driving your car anywhere because you don't want to put wear and tear on the engine.
I am by far no computer guru; just asking this question for learning purposes: Is it correct to say that SSD memory is Virtual Memory. and the Mac's Memory Pressure=our blood pressure?
Your Mac has actual memory (RAM) which is very very fast and small (8 GB on low-end MacBook Air and iMac, for instance) and virtual memory (AKA "swap") that is stored on the internal Solid State Drive (SSD) which is storage (not memory) which is still fast, but not nearly as fast as RAM. These both work together while you are using your Mac to do things. Saying memory pressure is like blood pressure is kinda stretching the metaphor a lot. If you want to find a metaphor that includes the word "pressure" I would say it is like being under pressure at work when a lot of tasks need to be performed at the same time and you get frustrated and less productive.
@@macmost TY. I understand, but everything you just described,is exactly what gets my blood pressure boiling. 😂
@@marqdx Don't stress about it. If you are doing a lot on your Mac and things seem slow, you can always check Activity Monitor for Memory Pressure and if you see it in the red, then maybe quit some apps or close some windows/documents. Besides that the only thing to worry about is to keep at least 10% of your internal drive empty for swap space.
very useful!
Also, connecting to a 4k monitor on a MacAir puts a lot of memory pressure on the machine.
It shouldn't. Not that much anyway. Are you connecting via DisplayPort or HDMI -- wonder if there is a difference.
@@macmost USB-C to display port. WindowServer is always using 2GB or above. My minimum memory pressure with Safari open is in the yellow. Safari closed it is at the top of green.
@@dickwestheimer Be interesting to experiment with that. Try different Desktop backgrounds (maybe a solid color). Try have no windows or apps open and see if one or two screens makes a difference. See if the 4K screen at different resolutions makes a difference. Things like that.
@@macmost Will do. If prob persists, do you offer paid tech support/consulting services on small fixes like this?
@@dickwestheimer No, I don't do that sort of thing, sorry.
Thanks
Excellent video, when I run Pathfinder, Devonthink, photos, chrome my system often gets very laggy. Now I know at least for Tamara regarding memory, working with Apple Engineering they had me uninstall Acronis backup software as they said it was regularly crashing.
CleanMyMac regularly reports low memory and now I know how to verify it.
Thanks for a great video.
Amy idea on how an average user can see what apps are crashing?
I would uninstall any "cleaning" software too. That would be the first thing I would suggest to anyone with a laggy system (or even if not). You don't need that. Usually if an app crashes you get a message and then the app isn't running anymore anyway. How many tabs do you have open in Chrome?
@@macmost I try and keep my chrome usage to a minimum, when I do use it I typically only have about 4 tabs open. I use Safari typically and can have 25 tabs open but they are not doing anything so I didn’t worry about their memory usage, maybe I should?
@@SteveUrich Use the techniques you learned from this video and look in Activity Monitor and see.
Thanks bunches
Very Well explained and very useful, Please do a video on How Mac OS Works, Thank You
Which aspect of macOS? Basically my entire channel is "how macOS works."
@@macmost I have watched most of Your videos but there is no video in UA-cam explaining how Mac Machine and Mac OS works internally. Can You do a video on that ?
@@AriseRayamangalam That's a very vague question. A computer is a very complex machine, and operating systems are very complex pieces of software. It would take volumes of books or years of lecture time to explain everything about them.
@@macmost Just curious to know that’s all, I will try other ways, Thanks
Then how come you can go to any apple store, look at the resource monitor of any mac, and the computer is running nothing but being idle, and uses 80%+ of memory?
Not sure if that is true, but did you hear the part where I say that macOS doesn't like to let memory go unused?
I'm using Mac Air M1 base model (8/256).
With my daily workflow, my memory pressure is always yellow.
Should I be worry with SSD health/usage due to high swap?
Or should I change my 8GB Mac to 16GB Mac?
One minor thing, when you were pointing to Pressure Memory and other things at bottom of the page you Hearing in Paired lines are in the way and you can not see what you are pointing at. Food for though.
UA-cam put those there. You can change the settings for those in UA-cam or remove them.
Is there any app that can inform me by showing a message that I am using swap memory?
Good video. If this is all correct then why does imac constantly gets the spinning ball syndrome? What else is causing this issue? Thanks
Probably an app that is misbehaving or your storage is almost full (no room for swap). See ua-cam.com/video/8cN88fm7KS0/v-deo.html for some more ideas.
I watched this video to understand why my 8 GB ram 2002 M1 iMac was slow when running Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop together, along with other application hogs like WhatsApp and Safari. I find that I am always in the yellow with about 10GB of swap. My Apple internal SSD HD has about 480GB free, as I am using a 2TB SanDisc SSD drive as my start-up drive, and another 4 TB SanDisc Extreme SSD where I store Movies, iCloud and Lightroom images. So-- does this Mac use all three HD's for swapping or only the start up drive or the Apple HD? Would a change to a new 16 GB M1 iMac help significantly? Thanks so much for your great instruction.
So, are you using an external drive as your startup drive? That would be significantly slower than using your internal one. Swap would be from the startup drive too.
As I mentioned it is also an SSD drive so I don't know how much difference there would be--obviously some. But the number of Apps I use will not fit on the small Apple drive. You say swap would be from the startup drive too. I conclude then that both drives are used for swapping. Correct? Thanks for your reply. @@macmost
@@skydriver101 Could be a huge difference. First, Apple tends to put very fast SSDs inside Macs, which are much faster than those sold as external drives. Second, the external drive has to communicate through either USB or Thunderbolt. The latter is fast, but not as fast as being internal. No, I'm pretty sure only the startup drive is used for swap. If you wanted speed, an appropriately-sized internal drive would have been much better.
Thanks for your reply. I did not plan on using this computer as much as I am while away from home. Should have ordered the 16GB option. Hopefully Apple will come out with a new M3 iMac model in 2024. I routinely work with high resolution images that are 350MB plus so I will have to be more selective in what applications I have running. Good info--thanks.@@macmost
Hi, will memory swap effect the SSD performance when decided to use the MacBook Air for atleast 3 or 5 years?
No, because your MacBook is always using memory swap. There is no "not using memory swap" as a comparison. Your MacBook should last more than 5 years easily (depending on whether you just want to upgrade for new features) and beyond that. If you kept using it for many years after, it would likely die from something else, not SSD problems (battery, physical damage, obsolescence, etc). Don't worry about swap affecting your SSD.
@@macmost Thank you for responding. Your answer was very helpful.
I subscribed on your channel.
Can I ask you something? Is it okay to protect MacBook retina using screen protector/screen guard? I am so confuse, cz there are a lot of differences opinion
No. Don't do that. When you close the MacBook anything extra in there could put pressure on the screen and ruin it.
Thank you so much! Now, I am sure not to do that.
And what about the hardcase ora case for MacBook, is that also not recommended?
@@aphrodite5332 An external hard case is fine if you think you need one.
@@macmost That's very helpful for me. I really appreciate your advice☺️