7GB or more of swap memory - is this normal?

[obamtl]

I've got a 13" MacBook Pro with 8GB of memory. It's blazing fast and I'm happy most of the time, until I start opening multiple tabs of Google services (Gmail, Google Drive, Google Calendar, YouTube etc). At this point, I occasionally get a beach ball or screen lag. Looking at the memory use, the 8GB is maxed out (it always is anyway - but I believe that's by design). On top of that, it draws upwards of 7GB of swap memory running these web apps.

Would this be something to worry about? I've considered whether this might be a software bug, but I'm not sure. It's made me so nervous that I've ordered a 16GB model just in case. What I'm thinking of trying next is perhaps switching to the apple silicon versions of Chrome or Firefox for a while, to see if this excessive use of memory and performance issues continue. Thoughts from other users will be welcome.

 

[smaug]

It’s normal. The thing to check is not the size of the swap file but memory pressure - macOS (OS X) is designed to use a fair amount of swap and does so regardless of the amount of RAM used. If you’re using a browser that’s not M1 native, it could be contributing. I’ve got 8GB in my M1 Pro and see that size of swap file regularly

 

[Theozz]

I've got a 13" MacBook Pro with 8GB of memory. It's blazing fast and I'm happy most of the time, until I start opening multiple tabs of Google services (Gmail, Google Drive, Google Calendar, YouTube etc). At this point, I occasionally get a beach ball or screen lag. Looking at the memory use, the 8GB is maxed out (it always is anyway - but I believe that's by design). On top of that, it draws upwards of 7GB of swap memory running these web apps.

Would this be something to worry about? I've considered whether this might be a software bug, but I'm not sure. It's made me so nervous that I've ordered a 16GB model just in case. What I'm thinking of trying next is perhaps switching to the apple silicon versions of Chrome or Firefox for a while, to see if this excessive use of memory and performance issues continue. Thoughts from other users will be welcome.

I don't think the 8GB should be maxed out all the time but Chrome is known to be a memory hog.

Try to download the M1 native version of your apps, it could help.

 

[leman]

As mentioned above, memory pressure is the indicator you want to watch. If your system is fast and responsive, I wouldn’t worry about swap use.

 

[obamtl]

The problem is it does become unresponsive when I'm seeing those high swap memory levels in Safari, which is a native app.

 

[Leon1das]

As mentioned above, memory pressure is the indicator you want to watch. If your system is fast and responsive, I wouldn’t worry about swap use.

I second this - and am slightly surprised that OP gets beachballing only with several browser pages...

People stream 4K video in several tabs and have multiple apps open - without being able to slowdown 8Gb models...

 

[leman]

The problem is it does become unresponsive when I'm seeing those high swap memory levels in Safari, which is a native app.

Does this also happen with other browsers? Could be a Safari bug, a Google bug, or could be that you genuinely need more RAM, although I would be quite surprised with your usage scenario.

 

[nicfle]

I was playing on Tabletopia (virtual board game table) and Safari auto refresh the page (kicking me out from the site) every hour or so. Was super annoying! There was an error of significant power usage, although I had it on the wall. Nothing else was open at the time. Tried Brave (I quit using Chrome after all the fuzz) and it worked perfect. I always thought that safari handles memory better than chromium based browsers, but this seem to brake the rule.

 

[smaug]

Also, it seems macOS has rules for paging / compression that are based on AI routines that watch how you use memory. I’ve got 8GB Ram and here’s my readout - it keeps about the same pressure no matter how much I load. Probably puts tabs in the compressed / virtual pretty aggressively and keeps a lot of headroom for the active app. Leads to a very responsive machine no matter the load. But occasional small pauses that are only noticeable because everything else is so wicked quick

 

[jdb8167]

Also, it seems macOS has rules for paging / compression that are based on AI routines that watch how you use memory. I’ve got 8GB Ram and here’s my readout - it keeps about the same pressure no matter how much I load. Probably puts tabs in the compressed / virtual pretty aggressively and keeps a lot of headroom for the active app. Leads to a very responsive machine no matter the load. But occasional small pauses that are only noticeable because everything else is so wicked quick View attachment 1712755

It is paging in but not back out which means it is ready to unload data from RAM if needed but so far it hasn't been necessary. So there shouldn't be any slowdown since everything is still in RAM.

Edit: Looking at this again, the Page Ins are in the KB/s not absolute quantity. I'm not sure what that measurement is for. So disregard.