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M1 iMac running out of memory

AM I THE ONLY PERSON ON THE FACE OF THE EARTH WHO DOESN'T KEEP A BUNCH OF CRAP RUNNING?

Y’all sound like my mother, who closes the app window and thinks it’s quit, but there’s all these dots along her dock.
 
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I want to see what one of these warnings looks like. In my last 15 years of using a Mac not once have I gotten an "error message" saying I am low on memory. Low on hard drive/SSD space? Yes, I got that before. But memory (RAM)? Never.

I truly wonder if that is a system message or a third party utility. And as others pointed out, it doesn't appear like the screenshot posted indicates a system being bogged down by low memory. Not to mention the stated use case isn't particularly memory intensive either.
 
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I am experiencing this as well (M1 iMac, 16GB RAM like OP) and it's worrying.

I've never gotten a low memory warning but the memory pressure consistently punches well into the yellow zone. Upwards of 10GB of swap under "light" use: 15 Safari tabs, Discord, Mail, Messages, and Preview. No particular app is using excessive memory and it only goes down to green after I quit nearly everything. It goes right back up to yellow after I open anything else.

As of writing I'm doing design work so I have Safari, Photoshop, Illustrator, Logic, Mail, and Discord open. I have 23GB of swap and some slowdown but no low memory warning.
 
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primarycolors said:
I am experiencing this as well and it's worrying.

I've never received a low memory warning but the memory pressure consistently punches well into the yellow zone. Upwards of 10GB of swap under "light" use—maybe 15 Safari tabs, Discord, Mail, Messages, and Preview open. No particular app is using excessive memory and it only goes down to green after I quit nearly everything. It goes right back up to yellow after I open anything else.

As of writing I'm doing design work so I have Safari, Photoshop, Illustrator, Logic, Mail, and Discord open. I have 23GB of swap and some slowdown but no low memory warning.
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And what is your configuration? M1 Mac mini with 8 GB of RAM?
 
primarycolors said:
I am experiencing this as well (M1 iMac, 16GB RAM like OP) and it's worrying.

I've never gotten a low memory warning but the memory pressure consistently punches well into the yellow zone. Upwards of 10GB of swap under "light" use: 15 Safari tabs, Discord, Mail, Messages, and Preview. No particular app is using excessive memory and it only goes down to green after I quit nearly everything. It goes right back up to yellow after I open anything else.

As of writing I'm doing design work so I have Safari, Photoshop, Illustrator, Logic, Mail, and Discord open. I have 23GB of swap and some slowdown but no low memory warning.
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Doesn’t Photoshop normally use swap extensively?
 
I get out of memory warnings when I play Path of Exile. I tried shutting down various programs and found that it only happens when Safari is running. Now I shut down Safari before playing and I don't get them any longer unless the system tries to index, the other memory hog with Macs.

Also, a couple of other programs I've found that are memory hogs and I don't run them unless I need them:

NordVPN
Slack
Outlook
Any webpage pointing to JIRA
 
Gregintosh said:
In my last 15 years of using a Mac not once have I gotten an "error message" saying I am low on memory. Low on hard drive/SSD space? Yes, I got that before. But memory (RAM)? Never.
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Me too. Usually the Mac will start beach balling with the pizza of death. The apps will become very slow and some will show as "not responding". And finally the only thing I'm still able to do is move the cursor and watch the clock tick in the menu bar. Don't get any messages for this. The only fix is a reboot via power button and lose all the stuff I'm currently working on.

You'd think Apple would have a more elegant way. Like suspending apps you're currently not using and writing their RAM to the SSD and release it, then throwing up a warning that you should start closing apps and list them in descending order by the amount of memory they're hogging. This doesn't seem to have occurred to the minds of the talented (sic) people that Apple has working on macOS. An even simpler solution would be to just have Safari unexpectedly quit, since that will usually release tons of RAM.
 
rpmurray said:
An even simpler solution would be to just have Safari unexpectedly quit, since that will usually release tons of RAM.
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If the browser is telling you a web page is consuming too much memory, one should try a different browser, or in Safari example a newer version that works better than what's being used. Yes upgrade your OS if you can. Not use 11.3 that came with your new iMac.

That example of multiple cached web pages in that console memory usage image earlier is a good example of spotting the obvious before you have problems. :)
 
alinah said:
You should install a best mac uninstaller and clean your memory, a mac uninstaller can delete unwanted application and junk files or make your memory clear, and fast the speed of you os.

I can prefer for some mac uninstaller :

CleanMyMac X

Advanced Uninstall Manager

CCleaner for Mac

MacBooster 8

In Advanced Uninstall Manager you can Remove multiple programs in one go.
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Not good advice. None of these apps is a requirement, at least some of mentioned apps have a very bad reputation. For good reasons. I would stay away
 
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People are forgetting that it's a unified memory architecture. The graphics chip does not have its own VRAM; that "video RAM" is taken from your main system RAM. Something graphically intensive may cause more RAM to be used. As of now, the Activity Monitor does not have a way to account for this that I can see. I can think of some third-party programs that would allow you to see how much RAM is allocated for graphics, but I'm not sure how you would do it with Apple's own tools.

Granted, we'd need more information from the original poster to get a sense of whether that may explain his memory pressure bar, or if there's something else. It's a possibility.
 
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OP,
If the memory pressure stays green most of the time, I don't see that you have a problem. I also think telling the OP to return the M1 is bad advice. There is no evidence that he needs to get the 16GB of RAM model.
 
I got this error once on my M1 iMac (1 TB, 16 GB RAM). It was about an hour after I had set it up, and I had photos open and a few other applications. I restarted, and no issues since. I attributed it to pulling down photos from the cloud, syncing my music libraries, iCloud folders, etc.
 
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Ledgem said:
Something graphically intensive may cause more RAM to be used. As of now, the Activity Monitor does not have a way to account for this that I can see. I can think of some third-party programs that would allow you to see how much RAM is allocated for graphics, but I'm not sure how you would do it with Apple's own tools.
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The RAM used for graphics would be part of Wired Memory. It has never been shown in any GUI apps. Using main RAM for graphics is not new (Intel chips with onboard graphics), just the way the plumbing works.
 
I wanna chime in here, as this is the first post I've seen actually addressing the RAM issue.

I got the maxed out M1 iMac to replace a dying 2019(!) iMac. I'm an illustrator, and primarily work with multiple high res/layered Photoshop/Creative Cloud files. (All software is current.) The processor on this thing really seems to be fantastic, but the RAM... oh man. I'm constantly getting alerts saying I'm reaching the max limit on memory and that I should close some applications. Rarely do I have anything other than Mail, maybe a minimized browser and music or podcasts open. I was told when I ordered this thing that that 16G isn't the same sort of 16G we think of in previous Macs- it reroutes the memory as needed throughout the chip so technically you're getting more than 16. But even with that, what's there just isn't enough. I remember being shocked at that number, and it looks like I had good reason. (Edit- this was a fresh install, not migrated from the old machine.)

If there's any creatives working on multiple large files at once (pretty standard), hold off until at least the 32 (or even 64, etc) is released. I'm quite sure when that happens I'll bite the bullet and just trade this one, as returning it now is out of the question.

IMHO, Apple burned way too many calories shouting about the pretty colors, and not enough with the important details.
 
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Steckley said:
I wanna chime in here, as this is the first post I've seen actually addressing the RAM issue.

I got the maxed out M1 iMac to replace a dying 2019(!) iMac. I'm an illustrator, and primarily work with multiple high res/layered Photoshop/Creative Cloud files. (All software is current.) The processor on this thing really seems to be fantastic, but the RAM... oh man. I'm constantly getting alerts saying I'm reaching the max limit on memory and that I should close some applications. Rarely do I have anything other than Mail, maybe a minimized browser and music or podcasts open. I was told when I ordered this thing that that 16G isn't the same sort of 16G we think of in previous Macs- it reroutes the memory as needed throughout the chip so technically you're getting more than 16. But even with that, what's there just isn't enough. I remember being shocked at that number, and it looks like I had good reason. (Edit- this was a fresh install, not migrated from the old machine.)

If there's any creatives working on multiple large files at once (pretty standard), hold off until at least the 32 (or even 64, etc) is released. I'm quite sure when that happens I'll bite the bullet and just trade this one, as returning it now is out of the question.

IMHO, Apple burned way too many calories shouting about the pretty colors, and not enough with the important details.
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I'm in a super similar boat—graphic designer and photographer here and bought a 16GB M1 to replace a failing 2019 32GB iMac. My 2013 iMac before that only had 16GB and worked okay for me so I figured I could make it with 16GB unified.

The last couple days I've been doing more intense Photoshop/Illustrator work on the M1 and I was about to pop in to write I haven't gotten the memory alert, when like clockwork it popped up, and now won't stop popping up!

What's surprising is that the system is still responsive and running well despite exceeding its apparent memory limit. Naturally there are frame drops but no hangs like I would constantly get on Intel. That gives me hope the RAM management can be improved in a software update, or at least the threshold before the popup can be raised.

How much swap are you seeing in Activity monitor when you hit the max?
 
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Ah, yeah- glad I'm not the only one! Funny thing was, I didn't really notice too much of a lag with all those windows open, so there's that. In running an action consecutively on each on at the very end I did get the spinny wheel, but it seems ok. 10 minutes later PS crashed... but who knows if that's related.
Can't say what the swap was, actually, good point. When I fire it up again tomorrow I'll try to replicate what I was doing and pay attention to the Activity Monitor.

Hopefully your right in wishing for a software update to address this. Fingers crossed.

Not sure if it's relevant, the the app that's showing these usage alerts in is CleanMyMacX.

Will report back on this soon- thanks!
 
I also got a low memory warning on my Mac mini M1, with memory pressure regularly in the yellow. However, I do not notice any major slowdowns so the unified memory architecture definitely makes a difference. Still, the less necessary writes to the SSD the better I suppose.

My Mac mini is 8GB so when I saw the warning & yellow memory pressure I just figured that was part of the deal. I bought what I could afford at the time and the compromise is I have to 'babysit' my Mac a bit more by ensuring only apps I'm using are open.

I'm quite surprised to see even those with 16GB having issues with the low memory warning / yellow memory pressure though. That makes me wonder if there's a wider issue at play here.

For what it's worth I've found Safari, especially when you've got YouTube open, to be a major memory hog. Usually once I close YouTube my memory pressure heads straight back down into the green.
 
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