Is 8 GB of RAM a requirement for Yosemite?

[dba415]

For a good experience. I am currently running Yosemite on my 4gb 2010 MBP. I only have Safari and Mail open and I am getting < 1GB of RAM available.

 

[saudor]

It's fine. Yosemite has a more aggressive caching thing that eats up free ram. My 8gb 2010 is mostly at 7.99 used. I think the same happens even at 16 or 24 gb ram. Just make sure memory pressure is in the green

 

[Julien]

You can also open Activity Monitor to see how much RAM the running Apps are using.

 

[milomak]

my mbp (5,3 i think) has 4GB iirc. handles what it has to do.

 

[ABC5S]

OP, this question or concern has been mentioned/raised a zillion times now on this forum, but this is now normal. Look at the Pressure Gauge instead. Is it "GREEN" ? That means you are OK. Its now a new method by Apple to tell if your memory usage is OK. More memory being used is OK.

 

[vanc]

My Mac-mini used to have only 4G memory, running Yosemite DP and it was sluggish. I upgraded to 8G and it became much more responsive, even with the same spinning disk. Even though 8G is not required, it's definitely better.

 

[cjmillsnun]

My Mac-mini used to have only 4G memory, running Yosemite DP and it was sluggish. I upgraded to 8G and it became much more responsive, even with the same spinning disk. Even though 8G is not required, it's definitely better.

Yet Apple still sell Macs with 4GB.

I bet had you replaced the HD with an SSD and left the RAM at 4GB you would've noticed a bigger speed difference.