Memory Leaks in Monterey?

[zarathu]

WindowServer around 1gb I think is normal if you have a number of things open- that process is what holds graphic elements of windows on the display in ram.


Just quit the process in activity monitor and it will automatically reopen. Doesnt perfect solve it since I don't think it will clear the swap/cache right away, but it opens up free ram and reduces memory pressure if the swap process has been using a huge amount of ram.

Window server at 1GB would only be normal if you had a huge number of apps open. Shouldn’t get more tyhan 400MB or so even when I have 6 or seven windows open.

And, of course, monitoring in Activity Monitor doesn’t solve the problem automatically: you have to take a personal action.

 

[zarathu]

My WindowServer is at 32.68 GB now, and I do watch youtube in firefox. I'll see what happens if I don't.

Either restart, or force quit window server.

 

[zarathu]

Anyone figure out the control center memory leak? Tired of having to re-boot the computer to get everything sorted out again. I'm getting to the point where I'll just send back the system and wait for a fix. 👎 product feedback to Apple sent.

Please read above. Rebooting is not necessary. Just keep Activity Monitor open in an unused desktop, and forzce quite any app or process that gets out of hand.

 

[zarathu]

Can confirm this has worked for me.

Turning off auto brightness. I have never had auto brightness on, and it has had no effect in stopping the memory leaks.

 

[3Rock]

Please read above. Rebooting is not necessary. Just keep Activity Monitor open in an unused desktop, and forzce quite any app or process that gets out of hand.

Tried that a few times and no worky for me. Only thing that did work was to reboot it. I ultimately fixed the issued by sending back the system and waiting for the 27 inch 2022 iMac. Perhaps by that time Monterey will be fixed.

 

[Smoothie]

I think I found one thing that triggers the WindowServer issue on my M1 Pro. I just turned off ProMotion and now I can watch a 4K YouTube video on Firefox and WindowServer stays at around 250 MB.

 

[zarathu]

Tried that a few times and no worky for me. Only thing that did work was to reboot it. I ultimately fixed the issued by sending back the system and waiting for the 27 inch 2022 iMac. Perhaps by that time Monterey will be fixed.

So in other words, you threw out the baby with the bathwater.

 

[3Rock]

So in other words, you threw out the baby with the bathwater.

Yes I did. I’m more of a desk Computer type anyway. Larger screen better for my age and eyes and as a bonus perhaps Monterey would be better. No hurry

 

[macedes]

I think I found one thing that triggers the WindowServer issue on my M1 Pro. I just turned off ProMotion and now I can watch a 4K YouTube video on Firefox and WindowServer stays at around 250 MB.

yes i can confirm that. I can finally use firefox as my main browser.

 

[Wilson1313]

Has anyone tried the Monterey 12.1 RC to see if it fixes these issues?

 

[Robeckhard]

Has anyone tried the Monterey 12.1 RC to see if it fixes these issues?

Been using it since its been out. Haven't noticed anything unusual currently. Main culprits for me were ControlCenter and callservicesd, both of which haven't seen huge numbers since installation. 🤞🏼

 

[cubbie5150]

I'm coming from a 2014 15" MBP that was still running Big Sur. Using my new M1Pro 16" MBP for 24 hours...and yeah, watching YouTube is a no-go for me, hahaha! WindowServer process just starts eating up CPU cycles and memory. The only times the fans have kicked on, and the area above the function keys got warm/hot, was after watching YouTube last night. I had to restart.

Looking forward to 12.1's release.

 

[Smoothie]

Firefox 95.0 was just released. The release notes include: "We’ve reduced CPU usage on macOS in Firefox and WindowServer during event processing."

I don't know whether this impacts memory usage for WindowServer.

 

[Rimmsi]

My Mid 2015 also has problems with high CPU usage, it is often randomly high usage even when idle. In my case, however Safari and Mail use the CPU the most.

 

[rads1]

Is this a normal amount of ram usage for these apps? I am using a 16" MBP M1 with 16 GB. I'm no media content creator and am basically using the computer for basic productivity. I'm dipping into yellow memory pressure occasionally and I feel like my use case should be trivial for such a new machine.

 

[DaveFromCampbelltown]

I am running a late 2015 27" iMac, 8Gb RAM, 2TB Fusion Drive, with macOS Monterey 12.01, Official Release.
A couple of times I got a warning from CleanMyMac that I was running out of memory.

Checking the Activity Monitor, it seemed to be that News was the problem, running at over 1.5Gb. Along with a couple of browsers, Brave and Google Chrome and VNC Viewer to monitor my RPi. Really not all that much.
Quitting News fixed the problem.

News is just a fancy browser. Why does it need to use so much RAM?

Anyway, I have since switched over to an external drive with Monterey 12.1 ßeta 5. I have tried to replicate the problem, but I can't. I suspect something in 12.1 has fixed the problem. It seems that News is also using much less RAM. Overall, everything seems to be using much less RAM.

 

[gilby101]

Is this a normal amount of ram usage for these apps?

In Activity Monitor go to the menus and enable View > All Processes. Then you can get some idea about memory usage of background/system processes. Some of the other memory columns (e.g. Real Memory).

Your apps: Looks like you have lots of browser tabs open. Preview is surprisingly high - do you some large PDFs open? As is QuickLookUIService - much higher than mine (and I have a 64GB iMac).

The summary at the bottom looks normal. Compressed RAM is high, but macOS prefers to compress rather than swap when memory is needed.

 

[spainbran]

Firefox 95.0 was just released. The release notes include: "We’ve reduced CPU usage on macOS in Firefox and WindowServer during event processing."

I don't know whether this impacts memory usage for WindowServer.

The Firefox bug has been investigated and resolved quickly:

1735345 - Huge memory usage on macos Monterey in [NSCursor set]; macOS popup warning saying machine is maxed out. 70+ GBs of memory shown in warning

RESOLVED (nobody) in Core - Widget: Cocoa. Last updated 2022-06-07.

bugzilla.mozilla.org

It's from this code, which I added 12 years ago to work around a problem with plug-ins

Firefox 94 just came out, and it contains a change which greatly reduces the severity of the leak. But some leak still remains, and it needs to be fixed by Apple in a macOS update

FF can not resolve all the underlying problems encountered by many apps on Monterey.

And I don't see anything in the apple release notes about this.

 

[rads1]

In Activity Monitor go to the menus and enable View > All Processes. Then you can get some idea about memory usage of background/system processes. Some of the other memory columns (e.g. Real Memory).

Your apps: Looks like you have lots of browser tabs open. Preview is surprisingly high - do you some large PDFs open? As is QuickLookUIService - much higher than mine (and I have a 64GB iMac).

The summary at the bottom looks normal. Compressed RAM is high, but macOS prefers to compress rather than swap when memory is needed.

Thanks for the reply. I only have 4 PDFs open, 3 of which are books. Nothing that outrageous, I don't think.

Yeah, I'm that guy who never closes browser tabs. I've got about 20-30 going in Safari. But is that really enough to push memory pressure into the yellow? If all this is potentially normal, I guess this thing is going back to Apple. 3K is a lot of money for something that can't handle web surfing and some multitasking.

 

[DaveFromCampbelltown]

I am running a late 2015 27" iMac, 8Gb RAM, 2TB Fusion Drive, with macOS Monterey 12.01, Official Release.
A couple of times I got a warning from CleanMyMac that I was running out of memory.

Checking the Activity Monitor, it seemed to be that News was the problem, running at over 1.5Gb. Along with a couple of browsers, Brave and Google Chrome and VNC Viewer to monitor my RPi. Really not all that much.
Quitting News fixed the problem.

News is just a fancy browser. Why does it need to use so much RAM?

Anyway, I have since switched over to an external drive with Monterey 12.1 ßeta 5. I have tried to replicate the problem, but I can't. I suspect something in 12.1 has fixed the problem. It seems that News is also using much less RAM. Overall, everything seems to be using much less RAM.

I was wrong. While I haven't repeated the "Out of Memory" error, News is still taking more than 1.6GB of RAM.

Apple, I know you're not listening, but you need to fix News.

 

[AaronMT]

M1 Pro 14-inch on 12.0.1, my WindowServer is coreaudiod are both using around 2GB. I often wake my laptop up to a memory exhausted dialog and every day I have to reboot. Laptop has a default 16GB.

This machine is a week old purchased.

 

[white7561]

M1 Pro 14-inch on 12.0.1, my WindowServer is coreaudiod are both using around 2GB. I often wake my laptop up to a memory exhausted dialog and every day I have to reboot. Laptop has a default 16GB.

This machine is a week old purchased.

Hmm. I've seen Monterey's memory leak. But it's usually control center or WindowServer (which takes more than it used to). Never coreaudiod. Are you using EQ apps like Boom3D for example? Since that app has a memory bug that has been the case since Big Sur (it seems like the memory leak is from the app itself with the coreaudio driver)

 

[harrisonjr98]

M1 Pro 14-inch on 12.0.1, my WindowServer is coreaudiod are both using around 2GB. I often wake my laptop up to a memory exhausted dialog and every day I have to reboot. Laptop has a default 16GB.

This machine is a week old purchased.

12.1 released today. Not sure if resolved though.

 

[TinyMito]

We'll have to see in a few days of use. Too early to say it is fix for the memory leak.

 

[MrGunnyPT]

Got 12.1 so I'll see how it goes tomorrow during a heavy's day work.

Hopefully we can get the memory leak situation under control soon enough my Control Center was taking 4GB today and my memory pressure was sitting at 75% because yet again Window Server consuming also ridiculous amount of memory.