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Best m1 browsers for ssd longevity

G

gloryofgreece

macrumors member
Original poster
Feb 6, 2008
46
0
seattle
Hi guys,
I am a new owner of m1 mac mini. I am a bit worried about high swap memory and I used a lot of tabs on chrome. Which browser should I use (thinking about Brave) to reduce swap memory usage. Any tips to configure the browsers to reduce swap memory?
Thanks guys!
 
gloryofgreece said:
Hi guys,
I am a new owner of m1 mac mini. I am a bit worried about high swap memory and I used a lot of tabs on chrome. Which browser should I use (thinking about Brave) to reduce swap memory usage. Any tips to configure the browsers to reduce swap memory?
Thanks guys!
Click to expand...
It’s more or less fixed so just enjoy.
 
gloryofgreece said:
Hi guys,
I am a new owner of m1 mac mini. I am a bit worried about high swap memory and I used a lot of tabs on chrome. Which browser should I use (thinking about Brave) to reduce swap memory usage. Any tips to configure the browsers to reduce swap memory?
Thanks guys!
Click to expand...
As others have said you don't need to worry about this.

In the past few weeks two things happened:-

(a) someone discovered where the percentage life used value is shown in macOS. No third party involved. Using Apples percentage gives high enough lives to stop the issue being a concern. See this post for examples.

(b) 11.4 is believed to have addressed the problem.

I don't know what the person in that link, who has written 268TB in six months and used 18% of disk life, is doing, but most of us have written a small fraction of that and used up to 1-2% of life after six months. If you are like him, you probably know why your usage is so high and changing browsers is not going to affect it.
 
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Most seem to agree this is a non-issue now. If you do watch a lot of YouTube/Netflix etc, you can try disabling caching streaming media to disk. Paste this into the browser window for Brave
brave://flags/#turn-off-streaming-media-caching-always
- then enable. The same will work for Chrome, just type chrome instead of brave before ://flags. If you find this interferes with playback simply disable. This, of course, has nothing to do with swap memory, only writes to disk.
 
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For years this forum has come up with theories of SSD wear. Never been a single article posted here of people saying their Mac's SSD has worn out due to incessant memory swap. Stop worrying so much and enjoy your computer.
 
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cmaier said:
There’s a lot of weird concern around here about SSD lifespans.
Click to expand...
Not really when there's a topic about it which is always on the front page of this forum and is 100 pages+. I do wonder if topics like that should have some sort of disclaimer given how its panned out.

Just buy your Mac and enjoy using it, don't obsess over things like this or you will go slowly mad and/or never buy anything.
 
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Absolute Trainwreck said:
It may not seem like an issue now but considering many people keep Macs for years, it’s a good question to ask.
Click to expand...
You may as well wonder when the power supply will wear out, or the screen, or the keyboard, or any other part. Concentrating all of your worry on the SSD is just silly.
 
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Really this whole thing was pretty much a case of internet hysteria. Swap is not some kind of evil spectre and Macs have used it differently than Windows machines for years. Yes 11.4 changed some behaviors but for a lot of us (including myself) there was no problem occurring in the first place.

For an example of a real issue, Chrome and its Keystone hidden update (and who knows what else) program were one. A number of us (and it is recorded in the forums) experienced significant performance jumps when we removed Chrome and Keystone.
 
ascender said:
Not really when there's a topic about it which is always on the front page of this forum and is 100 pages+. I do wonder if topics like that should have some sort of disclaimer given how its panned out.

Just buy your Mac and enjoy using it, don't obsess over things like this or you will go slowly mad and/or never buy anything.
Click to expand...

You just proved my point. The fact that there is a topic about it with 100+ pages is “a lot of weird concern.”
 
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Absolute Trainwreck said:
www.macrumors.com

M1 Mac Users Report Excessive SSD Wear

Over the past week, some M1 Mac users have been reporting alarming SSD health readings, suggesting that these devices are writing extraordinary...
www.macrumors.com www.macrumors.com

It may not seem like an issue now but considering many people keep Macs for years, it’s a good question to ask.
Click to expand...
If you've read the mega thread surrounding this issue, especially the last few pages, then most have had their issues fixed on macOS 11.4. A user found a direct way to read smart data (SSD metrics) using Console (system app). To summarize it all, your SSD would last way longer than any other component on your Mac, unless you are doing hardcore activities day in and day out, completely using up your RAM completely, and/or downloading huge files 24/7. That issue has potentially been put to rest for most users.
 
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Joelist said:
Really this whole thing was pretty much a case of internet hysteria.
Click to expand...
Not sure the person in the thread I linked, who has 268TBW and used 18% of life in six months would agree with that. That would have been 100% in less than three years if (in his case) macOS 12 hadn't stopped it. He is not the only one. But it does seem to be only a very few people at this level.

Certainly a lot of others became concerned unnecessarily so you could call that internet hysteria.;)
 
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