Anyone else see lots of macOS 12.1 compressed memory usage (with Safari)?

[Fomalhaut]

I'm still running macOS 12.1 on my MBP14 and have noticed that when I start to open more than about 20 Safari tabs, that I start to get "yellow" memory pressure showing a lot of "compressed memory" usage, e.g.

You can see that swap used is still quite small (for the 32GB physical RAM) and there is still some free memory and cached files that could (presumably) be written to swap to free up memory. The last time this happened, I had to reboot to get back to "green" memory pressure.

I suspect that this is related to Safari usage, but may be a "feature" of macOS 12.1. I was planning on waiting to macOS 12.3 before upgrading the OS to allow a bit more time for OS "stabilization", which in my experience takes about 4-6 months after release.

iStatMenus gives the following:

Still showing nearly 8GB free memory, so it seems odd that memory pressure is yellow. It seems to be caused by the high compressed memory usage.

Is this a feature of macOS 12.1 that has improved in later versions?

It doesn't seem to affect performance (much) but I did see some sluggishness with some web pages in Safari. I might try using Edge and Chrome exclusively for a while to test my hypothesis that it is Safari related.

 

[MrGunny94]

Yeah I noticed quite a lot when I upgraded my M1 Air, however my 14" with 16GB is using. a lot of compressing as well.. I was actually thinking of switching to 32GB but then I noticed it also happens with the folks like you who have 32GB.

I didn't get any app crashes so I'm assuming this is MacOS behaviour.

 

[jazz1]

I had this issue for the last couple of versions of MacOS. Occasionally I get low memory warnings on my 16GB RAM, M1 MacMini. I wish Apple would fix this. I use CleanMyMac app. to free up memory. Yes, bring it on naysayers on CMM ??

 

[appltech]

I know it's kind of weird, but I also noticed that if Mac will go to sleep/hibernate for some time and then waked – similar problems starts to occur, even some apps will crash (like MS Edge)

A solution for me was enabling –> System Preferences –> Battery –> Power Adapter –> "Prevent your Mac from automatically sleeping..." as well as "Enable Power Nap"; also give a system restart every day or two (you can schedule it in the appropriate tab)

But I never used Safari as the main one, so I don't sure if this would be helpful

 

[MrGunny94]

I know it's kind of weird, but I also noticed that if Mac will go to sleep/hibernate for some time and then waked – similar problems starts to occur, even some apps will crash (like MS Edge)

A solution for me was enabling –> System Preferences –> Battery –> Power Adapter –> "Prevent your Mac from automatically sleeping..." as well as "Enable Power Nap"; also give a system restart every day or two (you can schedule it in the appropriate tab)

But I never used Safari as the main one, so I don't sure if this would be helpful

Do you also wake up with your window server taking an excessive amount of memory? I have to restart to "free" this RAM.

 

[appltech]

Do you also wake up with your window server taking an excessive amount of memory? I have to restart to "free" this RAM.

Didn't notice. But Finder is going crazy from time to time, so –> Force Quit –> Relaunch is helpful. Finger cross on 12.3 Otherwise, looks like it's a M Soc trait

 

[MrGunny94]

Didn't notice. But Finder is going crazy from time to time, so –> Force Quit –> Relaunch is helpful. Finger cross on 12.3 Otherwise, looks like it's a M Soc trait

Just got 12.3 on my 14" M1 Pro! I'll report back tomorrow

 

[pshufd]

A Reddit user reported sluggish M1 Pro MacBook Pro external monitor performance with 16 GB RAM and I asked about memory and what he was running and it had 8 GB of compressed RAM and I wondered if that was the issue in external monitor performance. Perhaps a bandwidth issue or that video RAM is getting compressed. I had about 1.5 GB compressed RAM in two systems and rebooted them to clear it up. I think that it's always better to have no swap and no compressed RAM if it is affordable. My iMac has 32 GB of RAM and my M1 mini, 16. I have a Mac Studio ready to replace the mini once I get it set up.

 

[rcprador]

That is normal, and this is the behavior since Catalina.

here a picture from Catalina

You can tell MacOS to keep the pressure below 35%~32% using these comands


On Terminal, execute these 4 commands:


sudo sysctl kern.vm_page_free_min=16000
sudo sysctl kern.vm_page_free_target=32000
sudo sysctl kern.vm_page_free_reserved=8000
sudo sysctl vm.vm_page_background_target=48000

The adjustment takes some minutes to be noticed, that is because memory management will be adapting itself to those new values entered.

You will get a noticeable performance boost overall on MacOS usage.


Obs:
(Rebooting will reset those values to defauls)

 

[gilby101]

(Rebooting will reset those values to defauls)

/etc/sysctl.conf as suggested here https://stackoverflow.com/questions...y-the-behaviour-of-filesystem-cache-in-mac-os