Why is my M4 Pro using so much RAM?

[chfilm]

Something with the M4 chip that Adobe doesn't like. Or Adobe thinks your should not like. Adobe tends to want the world to run their way as in their minds they are always 100% correct and the only app that should run.

I say this because I had a problem with Parallels that worked perfectly with the M2 chip but failed with the M4 chip.

Gosh I hate Adobe with every fiber of my body 🤪I’m just working on an ad for Adobe express and they are the WORST, most disorganized and slow client ever! And their Programm keeps crashing while I’m using it to make an ad for them 😞

 

[bousozoku]

Yes will have to get used to that. Much different from windows 11.

My Windows 11 machine drives me nuts. After I stop using an application, it's often still taking up resources. My machine will stop responding for no visible reason, especially after the !@#$ updates from Microsoft. Restarting is helpful.

I can leave my Mac going without any undue attention for weeks.

 

[ignatius345]

No, actually, it's not.

Imagine you're alone in a room and have been tasked with working on a project. It's just you, so you spread out your papers and supplies and get to work. More people start coming into the room. At first, there's plenty of space, so you don't feel a need to consolidate. But as more and more people come in, you start pulling your supplies closer to you, maybe stacking things up or combining things on two sheets of paper into one, so you use less space. Everyone still has enough space to get their work done.

As more and more people come into the room, however, everyone might start asking one another: How important is what you're working on? The people working on the most important projects start spreading out again, and the people with less important projects consolidate even more. Maybe some of the least important projects are even sent out of the room, told to wait in the lobby until someone else is done and doesn't need their space anymore. There's just the one room, so everyone tries to use it as efficiently as possible.

This is how all UNIX-based operating systems (like MacOS) manage their memory, more or less. Windows is the outlier, not the standard.

This is a great, intuitive metaphor for the whole thing.

 

[DeepSix]

I don't think so. It uses RAM to save more applications and files you're working on, so as to maximize responsiveness. If more is available to do that, it uses it rather than let it sit idle and useless.

If you're low on RAM and you open a ton of documents, browser tabs, etc. in different apps, inactive things will get saved off to a temporary paging file on the SSD. When you start actively working on them again, there will be a little disruption in responsiveness as they reload from the SSD into active RAM. (This used to be an awful process when we all had HDDs, and you could literally hear the drive crunching away while you looked at a beachball on screen. But it's much less noticible now that we're all running off fast SSDs.)

On the other hand, if you have more RAM available, the OS will just cache more of your applications' open documents in RAM, so when you switch back they're immediately responsive and available. In iOS this is really apparent when you open an app or a browser tab you haven't used in a bit and you can see the whole thing reload from scratch -- versus seeming "already open" when you switch back to it on a more capable (more RAM) device.

Honestly I can't tell any difference between stuff loading from cached RAM compared to SSD swap. Both are equally as fast, just SSD swap puts wear on the drive. I read the other day that Apple uses enterprise grade SSDs in the MacBooks, is this true?

 

[DeepSix]

Putting aside the whole how does Mac manage memory issue, few notes from your screenshot:

• You're not litterally running nothing -- you have several websites open (in I'm guessing Safari), Apple Mail, Messenger, and a few background processes (e.g. Creative Cloud Core Service)
• Ignore Cached but Memory Used is relatively high for what you are doing. In particular, App Memory and Compressed.
• I am surprised how much memory is consumed in modern web browser by some websites that resemble BBS of the 80s and guessing that relates to various monetization schemes behind the scenes (e.g. tracking technologies). As such I would look into ad blockers and the like.
• Apple Mail usage looks high to me but I am not on Sequoia and therefore its Apple Mail. Up through earlier macOS, my Mail thanksfully consumes 50-150 MB even with large IMAP/Google mailboxes. Since I am not sure your Mail's RAM usage is something particular your mail setup or Sequoia, can't offer much advice at the moment. If the latter, your alternative is to find another e-mail program and there's none I can recommend (I also use Thunderbird and find it less efficient than Apple Mail).
• Since you've still got plenty of headroom, I would grab any easy wins now but not worry about overall usage. Understanding where RAM is wasted and addressing thing you can't justify will make it easier to run anything big when the time comes.

Everyone says that Safari is the browser to use for low ram usage which I found to be the opposite. The browser will consume more RAM the longer it's open. After 4-5 days I will force quit it and re-open to get the RAM usage down. And just keep doing this over and over. I have an Adguard plug in on Safari for my ad blocker.

And Im not sure why Apple Mail uses so much ram either. I could probably just open a tab in safari on gmail.com and it would likely use less RAM.

 

[DeepSix]

No, actually, it's not.

Imagine you're alone in a room and have been tasked with working on a project. It's just you, so you spread out your papers and supplies and get to work. More people start coming into the room. At first, there's plenty of space, so you don't feel a need to consolidate. But as more and more people come in, you start pulling your supplies closer to you, maybe stacking things up or combining things on two sheets of paper into one, so you use less space. Everyone still has enough space to get their work done.

As more and more people come into the room, however, everyone might start asking one another: How important is what you're working on? The people working on the most important projects start spreading out again, and the people with less important projects consolidate even more. Maybe some of the least important projects are even sent out of the room, told to wait in the lobby until someone else is done and doesn't need their space anymore. There's just the one room, so everyone tries to use it as efficiently as possible.

This is how all UNIX-based operating systems (like MacOS) manage their memory, more or less. Windows is the outlier, not the standard.

That helps understanding it, thanks, that's a good example. It's just very different from how Windows manages ram and not what Im used to seeing. What I do like in Windows is how you can manually lower your ram usage at startup and if you dig into the services, you can get it really really low. And of course the more free available ram in Windows, the better your machine will run.

 

[DeepSix]

Windows does it essentially the same way. You just are looking at RAM like it is still 1999. When RAM went from scarce to plentiful Operating Systems adjusted to using them as caches to greatly improve performance.

Most people don't understand how RAM is used so I suggest people to not look at it unless they have a reason to look at it and understand what they are reading. Otherwise, they end up doing more harm than good. Start tweaking crap to "free up RAM" and overspending to ensure they have "RAM left free"...

This is my Windows desktop with 64GB of RAM. If you looked only at the memory tab you'd see me using almost 60% of my RAM, but if you look at the things I'm running it is almost nothing. Firefox, Bambu Studio, Steam and some background processes. An in experienced user would incorrectly think I couldn't run this same load on a machine with 16GB or 32GB of RAM. They'd be very wrong.

Apple makes it easier as they add a memory pressure graph to try and help demystify it. Windows doesn't offer any such guidance in its graphs that are easy for a lay person to grasp.


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I prefer the Activity Monitor in Mac OS compared to task manager in Windows. Apple lays it out better I find. Windows just has way too much information on the screen.

 

[ignatius345]

Honestly I can't tell any difference between stuff loading from cached RAM compared to SSD swap. Both are equally as fast, just SSD swap puts wear on the drive.

I've definitely noticed, but only at certain moments. I usually work with two separate user accounts active (one for work, one for personal stuff) and if I've got tons of stuff open on one or both of those accounts, I can get a freeze of maybe 10-15 seconds after fast user switching. I have a hunch it pushes the inactive account into swap, and there can be a bit of a delay as it all gets read back in.

But yeah, totally agree that largely these Macs stay incredibly responsive in the face of even heavy usage. I remember back in the bad old days of HDDs, opening a new application and having everything literally freeze on screen, listening to the hard drive spin up, and then things on screen moving again once the page file had been read back into RAM. We don't really get that anymore.

I read the other day that Apple uses enterprise grade SSDs in the MacBooks, is this true?

No idea, but I don't think swap space is going to appreciably wear out an SSD. I used DriveDx to check my old M1 Air that had 8 GB RAM, and it still had loads of life left on the SSD despite my very frequently pushing it quite hard (and thus using plenty of swap space). If you're curious, try it. The free version will do what you need I think.

 

[joeblow7777]

I have literally nothing at the startup. On my M3 Air with 8GB, it has the same stuff at startup but it only uses 6.0GB. Now on the Pro it's using more than double? Seems rather high.


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As others have mentioned, a computer will use the RAM that's available to it, which is good, otherwise it's just wasted. The important thing to look at is the memory pressure, which as you can see is very much in the green. Your Mac is basically just using the RAM because it's there and not doing anything else, but it can do a LOT more with it if it needed to.

 

[bzgnyc2]

Everyone says that Safari is the browser to use for low ram usage which I found to be the opposite. The browser will consume more RAM the longer it's open. After 4-5 days I will force quit it and re-open to get the RAM usage down. And just keep doing this over and over. I have an Adguard plug in on Safari for my ad blocker.

I am not sure if there is any browser that uses little RAM these days. I am not sure if its the websites loading up lots of things or the engines are trading space for time (i.e. using more RAM to get more speed) or everyone's given into browsers being so complicated that memory leaks are inevitable.

For now, I've accepted proactively rebooting my browser -- at least every few days and sometimes as soon as I finish a session. I use Orion which starts out using relatively little memory and has a pretty good restore all windows functionality. Plus builtin ad-blockers as well as support for non-Safari extensions like uBlock Origin.

Note I wouldn't get in the habit of force quitting Safari. That doesn't give it a chance to exit cleanly and can leave its runtime files in an inconsistent/corrupted state. Which itself can make things less stable / use more resources over time.

And Im not sure why Apple Mail uses so much ram either. I could probably just open a tab in safari on gmail.com and it would likely use less RAM.

Curious -- if you create a test Mac account and start up Mail, does it still use that much RAM?