If your Mac is performing slowly or freezing all the time, you might hear suggestions that there is a problem with your RAM. When you don't have enough RAM, you can experience all sorts of problems with your Mac not working properly.
Before we go any further
Clean Up Startup Programs. Unfortunately, resolving memory issues and freeing up your RAM is not usually that easy. Over time, software you've installed and forgotten about can get embedded into your system but may not consume RAM constantly. In these cases, these programs won't show up at the top of the list in the Task Manager. Jun 01, 2011 Hi Scot, 'I was able to clean up 720MB of wasted memory thanks to this article, bringing my Empty Space Pct down to single digits.'. We had only 5% free memory. Memory Cleaner is considerably better because it uses functions built into Windows to judiciously free memory - with no performance impact whatsoever. You can now access Memory Cleaner functions from the tray icon without having to open up the main window. Jul 05, 2005 Memory Defragmenter is a software to free up wasted RAM. What is memory (RAM) fragmentation? Windows programs use RAM (Random Access Memory) for their operations, however sometimes they fail to. I don't know if version 4 of Memory Cleaner can be any better than version 3, which I just ran in a comparative test against the free Memory Clean application available at the Mac store, but in a head-to-head test, version 3 of Memory Cleaner was only able to deliver a little more than 2 GB of free memory out of 8 GB of RAM, while Memory Clean delivered 6 GB under exactly the same conditions.
You can download MacKeeper and use the built-in Memory Cleaner tool to free up the RAM on your Mac. This is the quickest and easiest way to fix lots of RAM problems since it only takes a couple of clicks.
In this article we'll show you how to fix RAM problems manually, by covering:
What is RAM?
RAM is short for Random Access Memory and it refers to a relatively small amount of memory space in a computer that is reserved for temporary files. This memory allows a computer to transfer files to and from your system drive while carrying out tasks and processes. It's essential for your computer to work properly.
RAM is usually measured in GB, and most Mac computers come with 8GB or 16GB of RAM these days, though it's possible to custom order a Mac with even more.
Don't confuse RAM with internal storage on your Mac, which is also measured in GB. Internal storage is where you keep all your documents and files, on a separate drive within your computer. You can't choose to store any files in your RAM because your computer needs to flexibly move files in and out of that memory all the time to work properly.
Think of RAM as your computer's workspace. It transfers files from long-term storage into the workspace whenever it needs to work on them. The more RAM you have, the bigger the workspace, and the more tasks your computer can handle at once.
Some apps require a lot of RAM to work efficiently, such as 3D design software, video processing apps, and graphics-heavy video games.
But for the most part, 8GB of RAM in a Mac is plenty of memory for almost anything you're going to throw at it.
5 signs you need to free up more RAM on your Mac
If your Mac tries to do too much at once, it can run out of RAM, causing performance problems. This usually happens when you've got lots of demanding apps open at the same time and they're all working hard to complete different tasks.
If you don't have enough RAM on your Mac, you're likely to see the following problems:
- A popup alert saying 'Your system has run out of application memory'
- Everything on your Mac slows down, from opening apps to playing videos
- Typing still works, but there's a delay before anything appears on the screen
- Apps freeze and become unresponsive to anything you do
- Your entire Mac freezes and the cursor turns into a colorful spinning pinwheel
Many of these issues, like when your Mac is running slow, can come up for other reasons as well, not just because you've run out of RAM. Nevertheless, they're a good indicator that you should check your RAM usage and try to optimize Mac performance.
Further reading: How to Speed up a Mac.
How to check the RAM usage on your Mac
You can check the RAM usage on your Mac using a built-in utility, called Activity Monitor. Press Command + Space to open Spotlight and type Activity Monitor to find it.
If your Mac is unresponsive, try restarting it first by going to Apple > Shut Down. If that doesn't work, hold down the Power button instead. Though you may lose any unsaved progress in your open apps if you do this.
After opening Activity Monitor, go to the Memory tab at the top of the window.
This shows a list of all the active apps and processes on your Mac along with how much memory each of them is using. At the bottom of the window, you should see a Memory Pressure chart along with a breakdown of how your memory is being used.
You might notice that the breakdown amounts show that almost all of your memory is being used by Memory Used, Cached Files, or Swap Files. This is totally normal. Unused RAM is a wasted resource, so your Mac always tries to use as much as it can and this shouldn't be causing any problems.
Having more unused RAM won't necessarily improve your Mac's performance at all.
Instead, the most important thing to look at is the Memory Pressure chart, which shows up in green, yellow, or red based on whether your Mac needs more RAM or not. This chart also shows spikes in time when more RAM is in demand by the system.
As you might expect, if the Memory Pressure chart is all green, you've got nothing to worry about as far as RAM concerned. When it shows yellow it means your Mac might benefit from more RAM, and when it shows red it means your Mac definitely needs more RAM.
How to free up some RAM on your Mac
If the Memory Pressure chart in Activity Monitor is showing up in yellow or red, then you need to free up some more RAM for your Mac to use. There are several different ways to do this, which we'll outline below.
Restart your Mac
The simplest way to clear some RAM on your Mac is to restart it. Open the Apple menu and select Shut Down to do this. When your Mac powers off, it clears all the files from the RAM.
If your Mac is unresponsive, press and hold the Power button to force it to shut down instead. You may lose unsaved progress in your open apps if you do this.
Update macOS
It's possible that a macOS bug is causing your Mac to use more RAM than it needs to. This happens from time to time, but Apple is usually quick to fix it with a patch update.
Go to System Preferences > Software Update to check for new updates, which might fix your RAM problems.
Close some apps
RAM helps your Mac complete more tasks at once, but we usually only need our Mac to do one or two things at a time. Take a look at the Dock to see if you've got many apps open, then control-click and click Quit to close those apps.
Memory Cleaner 5 1 – Free Up Wasted Memory Mod
You might also want to kill background processes on your Mac, using Activity Monitor or a memory cleaning app.
![Wasted Wasted](https://static.macupdate.com/screenshots/268257/m/memory-cleaner-screenshot.png?v=1624310519)
Close some windows
Even if you need to keep some apps open, try minimizing how many windows and tabs you've got open. Two particularly bad culprits for using a lot of RAM are Finder and web browsers.
In Finder, go to Window > Merge All Windows to change multiple windows to tabs, then close any that you don't need.
In a web browser, like Safari or Google Chrome, close as many tabs as possible so you've only got a couple of web pages loaded at a time.
![Memory cleaner 5 1 – free up wasted memory download Memory cleaner 5 1 – free up wasted memory download](https://pics.drugstore.com/prodimg/600432/900.jpg)
Close some windows
Even if you need to keep some apps open, try minimizing how many windows and tabs you've got open. Two particularly bad culprits for using a lot of RAM are Finder and web browsers.
In Finder, go to Window > Merge All Windows to change multiple windows to tabs, then close any that you don't need.
In a web browser, like Safari or Google Chrome, close as many tabs as possible so you've only got a couple of web pages loaded at a time.
Quit processes in Activity Monitor
If something is still using a lot of RAM on your Mac, you should be able to find out what it is by using Activity Monitor.
Open Activity Monitor again and go to the Memory tab, then click the Memory column to list all the processes in order of how much memory they're using.
Take a look at the items at the top to see if there's anything suspicious going on. You might need to search online for different processes to find out what they do; some of them are essential for macOS to work, like Kernel_Task.
If you find a process that doesn't need to be there, select it and click the i button for more information about it. Then choose to Quit that process.
Scan for malware on your Mac
Computer viruses, adware, spyware, and other types of malware that can infect your Mac might use up all your RAM in the background to make your computer slow. To find out if this is the case, download a reliable malware scanner, like MacKeeper, and run a complete scan of your Mac.
Surge 2 0 – web developer tool and proxy utility. In MacKeeper, click Find & Fix in the sidebar and choose to Start Full Scan to do this.
How to use MacKeeper to clear RAM on your Mac
Wondershare pdfelement pro 6 3 2. If you're still not sure exactly how to clear RAM on your Mac, the easiest option is to simply use MacKeeper's built-in Mac RAM cleaner.
Open MacKeeper and click Memory Cleaner in the sidebar, then click Open to start using it.
The Memory Cleaner tab will tell you how much RAM is available on your Mac and how much is currently being used. You can use the Memory Usage or Apps & Processes tabs to see exactly how that memory is being used.
When you're ready to free up your RAM memory, go back to the Memory Cleaner tab and click Clean Memory. Once the cleaning is complete, your Mac should have far more RAM available and, hopefully, it'll start performing better as well.
Read more:
It is no secret that Firefox can consume quite a bit of system memory during normal usage. While the number of tabs you have open and the installed add-ons certainly contribute, even a conservatively used out of the box installation can report quite a bit of memory usage.
This has caused a few Firefox add-ons to surface which claim to free up memory the browser no longer needs, but do they actually work?
A Two Minute Overview on How Windows Handles Memory
Before we dive into examining a memory cleaner, it is important to understand a little bit about the way Windows handles memory. This will be important so we can interpret the results of our experiment.
Don't worry, we will cover this at a very high level so you don't have to be a mega-geek to follow along.
As a quick disclaimer, this is an extremely brief summary of the very basics of Windows memory management. By no means should this be considered authoritative or definitive as it is only explained to level applicable to the subject matter of this article.
Windows is smart enough to know that unused physical memory is wasted memory, so it loads everything it needs and thinks it will need into memory. However, only what your system actually needs (both Windows and applications) and is actively using at the current time is reported as used physical memory. The rest (what Windows thinks it will need) resides in what is called virtual memory.
Virtual memory is essentially the data which is not actively required by the OS but is ready to be loaded into active memory at any time. You can very crudely calculate the amount of virtual memory your system has at any one time using this formula:
Virtual Memory = (Total Physical Memory – Used/Active Physical Memory) + Maximum System Page File Size
So, suppose you have a system with 4 GB of physical memory and a 6 GB maximum page file. You then boot up Windows and open a few applications (Outlook, Firefox, etc.) and Windows reports that 2.5 GB of physical memory is being used. This means you have 1.5 GB of 'unused' physical memory and a 6 GB page file for a total of 7.5 GB of available virtual memory.
Remember, the OS is smart enough to know that unused physical memory is wasted memory, so it will fill the remaining 1.5 of physical memory with what it anticipates you will need so it can be accessed on demand almost instantaneously. This can be anything from minimized background program data to common OS functions.
So what happens when Windows runs out of physical memory to use as virtual memory? It writes this data to the system page file which is a huge (in our case 6 GB) file on your hard drive. While this allows for the OS to store pretty much any data it needs to keep in memory, writing and retrieving (aka a page fault) this information to/from the hard drive is orders of magnitude slower than accessing it from physical memory. This is why the more physical memory you have the faster your system can run. The less your system uses its page file, the faster it will perform.
Monitoring Firefox's Memory Usage
For our investigation we will simply be using Windows Task Manager. We will be tracking the following columns (the descriptions are defined on Microsoft's page):
- Working Set = Amount of memory in the private working set plus the amount of memory the process is using that can be shared by other processes.
- Peak Working Set = Maximum amount of working set memory used by the process.
- Memory (Private Working Set) = Subset of working set that specifically describes the amount of memory a process is using that cannot be shared by other processes.
- Commit Size = Amount of virtual memory that is reserved for use by a process.
We will be using an out of the box installation of Firefox 4.0.1 with only the Memory Fox add-on loaded. In Firefox, we will have the following tabs open and will not do anything other than scroll up and down the loaded pages.
After waiting a few moments for everything to finish loading, Windows Task Manager reports the following for Firefox.
Memory Cleaner 5 1 – Free Up Wasted Memory Mod
Now when we start the Memory Fox add-on, look at the dramatic drop in the amount of reported memory use.
Also take note that a new process is started by this add-on which is what handles the memory functions.
Leaving Firefox idle and watching the Working Set and Memory values, you can see there is a constant struggle between Firefox needing active physical memory and the memory cleaner add-on reclaiming this memory.
Here is the reported memory usage taken every few seconds while Firefox is left idle.
Note the drop in the Working Set and Memory values. This the is memory cleaner reclaiming the system memory.
After going up for a bit, you can see another drop.
Superhot 2 0 0 2 download free. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
Additionally, if you do nothing but switch tabs and scroll up and down the loaded pages, you can see the numbers fluctuate a bit more drastically which will be explained below.
Interpreting the Results
When you first look it, you would think, hey this is working great. But take a look at the Commit Size column and you can see that this value never really changes. In fact is goes up once you start the memory cleaning add-on.
Remember, the Commit Size column reports the actual amount of memory (physical + virtual) Windows needs to run the respective application. So in our example, the ~120 MB is reserved and active on the system specifically for Firefox and is residing in either unused physical memory and/or the system page file. Also remember that if the page file needs to be used, there is a noticeable performance impact because the virtual memory has to be written to and read from the hard disk which is significantly slower than physical memory.
So essentially the memory cleaner is moving active physical memory to virtual memory (because the memory is reclaims has to go somewhere). When this happens, Firefox no longer has the memory it needs to function actively available so it has to ask Windows to move the respective data it needs from virtual memory back to physical memory. And around and round we go…
At best, this process does nothing useful at all and at worst it causes a massive amount of unneeded page faults because, again, if Windows has to bring the page file into play then there is going to a noticeable performance hit. This can especially be the case on system which do not have much physical memory (where pretty much all virtual memory is kept in a page file), which is ironic because these are the systems a memory cleaner was 'designed' for.
The moral of this whole story is quite simply, memory cleaners do nothing but shift around numbers. Any OS is going to know how to handle memory appropriately, so just let them do their thing.
Managing Firefox's Memory Usage
Since we have shown that memory cleaning add-ons do not really do anything useful, what can you do about the large amount of memory Firefox uses? Here are a few suggestions:
- Remove add-ons you don't need (especially any memory cleaning ones).
- Keep the number of tabs you have open to a minimum.
- Periodically close Firefox and relaunch it.
- Add more memory to your system.
- Don't worry about it.
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