macOS High Sierra (10.13) ram Hog

[tHeRoomers]

I'm not entirely sure if this is only happening to me, but ever since I upgrade to High Sierra (10.13) I noticed that its been taking up a lot of ram. I have barely anything opened and 3 quarters of my 16gb is used up. I tried to do a fresh reinstall and reloaded from my time machine back-up, but it still did not fix the issue.

With my normal use on Sierra (10.12) if I was working intensively, then just half of the ram is being used up. On my light use days, i have iTunes, safari with 5 tabs opened, and the usage is barely a quarter of the total 16gb. If this is a real issue, I hope Apple will patch it up really soon. If not, can anyone out there lend my some insight as to whats wrong with my system? Thanks a bunch.

 

[Jamovik]

Nothing is wrong. It's working as intended. Modern OSes are programmed to use the available RAM to speed things up. It's the same with Windows and Linux.

 

[tHeRoomers]

Nothing is wrong. It's working as intended. Modern OSes are programmed to use the available RAM to speed things up. It's the same with Windows and Linux.

But how come Sierra doesn't nearly use as much?

 

[simonsi]

But how come Sierra doesn't nearly use as much?

Because Sierra was slightly different, its algorithms may not have been as keen to keep recently-used apps in memory or maybe those apps have changed...but unused ram is...just wasted.

 

[Cougarcat]

How much ram is your WindowServer using? From another thread there may be a memory leak in it. It was rewritten in High Sierra.

 

[tHeRoomers]

Because Sierra was slightly different, its algorithms may not have been as keen to keep recently-used apps in memory or maybe those apps have changed...but unused ram is...just wasted.

I'm not sure how you mean, but i just think something is off when i'm not doin anything a it keeps using up the ram. I'm thinking about doing a fresh install, then manually move my fils over.
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How much ram is your WindowServer using? From another thread there may be a memory leak in it. It was rewritten in High Sierra.

It gets over 2 gigs if i keep the computer running long enough.

 

[ToroidalZeus]

Same issue. 8GB user and multiple tabs in safari lag.

 

[macdos]

Nothing is wrong. It's working as intended. Modern OSes are programmed to use the available RAM to speed things up. It's the same with Windows and Linux.

You do not speed up things by writing to disk. But that is what macos does.

It is hell-bent on keeping as much old cache as possible, to the point where it rather starts compressing memory and then uses the swap than to get rid of old cache.

Real life example: unload a batch of RAW images from camera with Adobe Bridge or similar, and let it create previews of those images. Every newly created image will be cached. When you hit the end of available memory, it keeps the cache and starts compressing other stuff. After a while, it also starts swapping to disk, keeping the old cache.

When that happens, images are created with a third of the previous speed, and the OS starts to lag considerably.

You can call this ”modern” as much as you want, but it is not efficient. It is at that point you need to purge stale cache to keep it going.

Another thing is that all the useless demons used by the OS, like photoanalysisd, photolibraryd and so on, keep growing in RAM. Half the used memory is reserved for processes that are perhaps never used, since not all users are keen on using Photos, Facetime and all the crap that is mandatory. They could at least restart themselves once a day, and better yet give the user control over what to run.

 

[ToroidalZeus]

You do not speed up things by writing to disk. But that is what macos does.

It is hell-bent on keeping as much old cache as possible, to the point where it rather starts compressing memory and then uses the swap than to get rid of old cache.

Real life example: unload a batch of RAW images from camera with Adobe Bridge or similar, and let it create previews of those images. Every newly created image will be cached. When you hit the end of available memory, it keeps the cache and starts compressing other stuff. After a while, it also starts swapping to disk, keeping the old cache.

When that happens, images are created with a third of the previous speed, and the OS starts to lag considerably.

You can call this ”modern” as much as you want, but it is not efficient. It is at that point you need to purge stale cache to keep it going.

Another thing is that all the useless demons used by the OS, like photoanalysisd, photolibraryd and so on, keep growing in RAM. Half the used memory is reserved for processes that are perhaps never used, since not all users are keen on using Photos, Facetime and all the crap that is mandatory. They could at least restart themselves once a day, and better yet give the user control over what to run.

It's almost like they are trying to force older uses with less ram to upgrade to newer models with more ram.

 

[JPamplin]

Is there any way to speed this thing up?

photolibraryd is scanning my library of 6200 pics and 650 videos. I've left my 2013 Macbook Pro 2.6 i7 / 16GB / 500GB open and running for 2 weeks now. It's not hogging the RAM or CPU, and only uses 4 cores (not the additional 4 threads).

This thing won't download any new photos taken on my phone (Photo Stream), upload any pics in shared libraries, or upload any added pics to my iCloud photo library until this process is done. The last pic in my library is January 16 (2 weeks ago).

Can I assign this a higher priority, make it use all threads, WHAT can I do?

EDIT: Crickets after a full week... I guess I have my answer.