Memory Leaks in Monterey?

[stumblingfalk]

I had no noticeable memory leak issues for the first few weeks with my Pro Max that came with 12.1, now on 12.2. Lately "coreaudiod" will just slowly grow and grow for days. I've seen it use over 30gb. Killing it or rebooting just restarts the process.

It seems a bit random which apps and processes gives people issues.

 

[jgbr]

Combination of buggy OS, native V. Intel apps and memory hog apps which are just lazily thrown together and based on things like electron

 

[AndyMacAndMic]

Combination of buggy OS, native V. Intel apps and memory hog apps which are just lazily thrown together and based on things like electron

Memory hog != Memory leak

 

[jgbr]

Yes if there are any dev's that feel a simple text app like whatsapp should consume GB's of memory then they need to go back to school.

 

[jgbr]

Update. My theory on eliminating Electron and intel apps failed.

Memory pressure went yellow today only running a few apps, some of the culprits already named like websites etc.

 

[Jimmy_Banks]

Update. My theory on eliminating Electron and intel apps failed.

Memory pressure went yellow today only running a few apps, some of the culprits already named like websites etc.

In my experience it seems like EVERYTHING slowly increases in memory use.

I had one <1mb pdf open, and Reader was using >1gb ram.

Web pages each taking >500mb on Safari.

Systemstats constantly over 3gb

It's horrendous.

 

[mi7chy]

It's not just Monterey that's affected by memory leaks but also happens in Big Sur and you don't have to run anything. Appears to have multiple trigger points.

 

[pshufd]

I just reboot every couple of days. Fortunately it reboots really fast. I'm not running Monterey on my other Macs until they fix the memory and WiFi bugs.

 

[Jimmy_Banks]

So one thing I noticed that seems to be constant in almost all of the recent screenshots above. Dark mode.

I set my Mac to light mode (12.2.1), and in the last two days since, the memory use has been much more normal. I used to constantly get systemstats at >3gb every 30min+. It has been steadily at 5mb over the two days.

It hasn't been long enough to be 100% sure dark mode is the cause, but so far so good.

Has anybody else investigated light vs dark mode?

 

[pshufd]

So one thing I noticed that seems to be constant in almost all of the recent screenshots above. Dark mode.

I set my Mac to light mode (12.2.1), and in the last two days since, the memory use has been much more normal. I used to constantly get systemstats at >3gb every 30min+. It has been steadily at 5mb over the two days.

It hasn't been long enough to be 100% sure dark mode is the cause, but so far so good.

Has anybody else investigated light vs dark mode?

I have the default mode turned on. Not sure if that's light or it switches back and forth. I've lately had more problems with the network bug and am rebooting more often because of that which means that I don't see the memory leak problem so much now.

 

[jgbr]

So one thing I noticed that seems to be constant in almost all of the recent screenshots above. Dark mode.

I set my Mac to light mode (12.2.1), and in the last two days since, the memory use has been much more normal. I used to constantly get systemstats at >3gb every 30min+. It has been steadily at 5mb over the two days.

It hasn't been long enough to be 100% sure dark mode is the cause, but so far so good.

Has anybody else investigated light vs dark mode?

Keep us posted on this please

Update: switching from dark to light spiked memory usage and so did going back.

Also note that memory usage for simple apple native lightweight apps are not immune to this.

Bitwarden using 1GB memory?....

 

[Jimmy_Banks]

Keep us posted on this please

Update: switching from dark to light spiked memory usage and so did going back.

Also note that memory usage for simple apple native lightweight apps are not immune to this.

Bitwarden using 1GB memory?....

I did the change immediately after a restart, to ensure the system is at a known state.

It's curious that switching caused a spike. Can you try after a restart and see if you get different results?

 

[jdb8167]

Seeing more memory weirdness on Monterey 12.2.1 right now. I'm seeing yellow memory pressure for no reason that I can figure out. I'm on a 16 GB M1 MacBook Air and I'm seeing 13.12 GB of memory used, 2.76 GB cached files, and 5.52 GB of swap. The weird part is that I'm not really running much right now and App Memory is only at 3.73 GB with 6.41 GB of compressed memory. What's being compressed and why am I in the yellow? Something is holding on to a massive amount of RAM for no reason that I can decipher.

Does this make sense to anyone else? I'm probably going to let this play out for a while to see what Monterey eventually does. It doesn't seem to be slowing down the computer in any noticeable way, it is just really odd. I don't think I've ever see this behavior on macOS before.

 

[jgbr]

I’ve also noticed ‘pressure’ from doing little or nothing too. The actual numbers do not add up.

Something is amiss.

 

[jdb8167]

I’ve also noticed ‘pressure’ from doing little or nothing too. The actual numbers do not add up.

Something is amiss.

My uptime is currently 10+ days so obviously many more applications were running previously. But when I wasn't doing anything particularly memory intensive it is odd that the system doesn't clean up memory a little and move the pressure back to green. Compressed memory just keeps on increasing. It's now at 7.12 GB. So weird.

 

[jgbr]

Has anyone tried a full system wipe and reinstall?

 

[FNH15]

Is anyone else still seeing this on 12.3?
I’m on a 16” MBP, M1 Pro with 32GB of RAM.

 

[pshufd]

Is anyone else still seeing this on 12.3?
I’m on a 16” MBP, M1 Pro with 32GB of RAM.

View attachment 1978562

WindowServer is using 1.06 GB of RAM on my MacBook Pro 16. I recall that it was using a lot more when I used it with two external monitors and so I stopped using it with external monitors.

I checked my Big Sur M1 mini system and it doesn't have a WindowServer process.

6 GB seems excessive unless you have a ton of virtual desktops, external monitors and windows running.

 

[stumblingfalk]

I see no change between 12.1, 12.2 and 12.3 as for the coreaudio process I'm having memory leaks in.

A bit frustratring having to watch and kill it regularly lest it grows too large for comfort.

 

[Malus120]

I see no change between 12.1, 12.2 and 12.3 as for the coreaudio process I'm having memory leaks in.

A bit frustratring having to watch and kill it regularly lest it grows too large for comfort.

Yeah it's pretty frustrating honestly. I bought the 32GB MBP in part so I wouldn't have to worry as much about manually managing memory... and yet here I am constantly having to watch memory pressure in activity monitor and kill/restart apps to keep things from getting out of control :/

 

[jameslmoser]

So I haven't updated to Monterey yet partially because of this, but it appears some people are having problems with Big Sur as well? I am using Big Sur on intel Macs and have not seen this. Is this a problem with M1 macs and not intel?

Could the higher reported memory usage of the windowserver have something to do with the unified memory used by the CPU and GPU now?

 

[jgbr]

We seem no closer to answer on this, but its clear there are some memory related issues. I have found my memory usage less by not having both 4K monitors plugged in but I do think its mostly software leak.

I think there is also some argument that the memory is sharing with graphics, so 16GB just inset feasible.

Teething problems for M1 days, im sure as we get into M3/4/5 the world will have moved on from this.

 

[pshufd]

We seem no closer to answer on this, but its clear there are some memory related issues. I have found my memory usage less by not having both 4K monitors not plugged in but I do think its mostly software leak.

I think there is also some argument that the memory is sharing with graphics, so 16GB just inset feasible.

Teething problems for M1 days, im sure as we get into M3/4/5 the world will have moved on from this.

My feeling is that there were bad leaks on launch and that they have gotten better on the maintenance releases but I stopped using my MacBook Pro with external monitors so I don't know of those problems still exist. I could hook it up again to external monitors to test it and plan to do so in the next couple of days but I decided to go with separate desktop and laptop platforms so I don't have to deal with the RAM issues.

Interestingly, it seems like some of the memory leak issues were backported to Big Sur as I find that memory usage grows there as well while it didn't on Big Sur prior to Monterey launch.

I am glad I got 32 GB of RAM - memory usage is about 14 GB with my stuff running and then it slowly grows to 22 GB and I reboot the system when it gets there.

 

[jgbr]

My feeling is that there were bad leaks on launch and that they have gotten better on the maintenance releases but I stopped using my MacBook Pro with external monitors so I don't know of those problems still exist. I could hook it up again to external monitors to test it and plan to do so in the next couple of days but I decided to go with separate desktop and laptop platforms so I don't have to deal with the RAM issues.

Interestingly, it seems like some of the memory leak issues were backported to Big Sur as I find that memory usage grows there as well while it didn't on Big Sur prior to Monterey launch.

I am glad I got 32 GB of RAM - memory usage is about 14 GB with my stuff running and then it slowly grows to 22 GB and I reboot the system when it gets there.

If you could give it a go it would be interesting, thanks.

I do feel this a lethal combination of non native applications, poorly coded ones (electron web apps etc) and that the memory is shared between GPU cores and everything else.

It's early days and I wouldn't mind seeing if someone can reset their machine and do a fresh install to see if it clears the problem.

I think realistically as its early days its been missed that 32GB ram is the minimum for anyone doing serious work, 16GB for others but then those I put in 'average' could have an MBA not an MBP.

Day to Day I notice my memory usage hanging around 9GB with 1 4K monitor plugged in and I banished all non native AS apps.

 

[pshufd]

If you could give it a go it would be interesting, thanks.

I do feel this a lethal combination of non native applications, poorly coded ones (electron web apps etc) and that the memory is shared between GPU cores and everything else.

It's early days and I wouldn't mind seeing if someone can reset their machine and do a fresh install to see if it clears the problem.

I think realistically as its early days its been missed that 32GB ram is the minimum for most people.

Day to Day I notice my memory usage hanging around 9GB with 1 4K monitor plugged in and I banished all non native AS apps.

I tend to have 3 Virtual Desktops per monitor and I'd guess that that really increases GPU memory.