You can use Activity Monitor to determine if your Mac could use more RAM. To display more columns, choose View > Columns, then choose the columns you want to show. Swap Used: The amount of space being used on your startup disk to swap unused files to and from RAM. Until this memory is overwritten, it remains cached, so it can help improve performance when you reopen the app. Type in sudo purge, enter your administrative password when requested, and inactive memory is cleared immediately. Select the Compressed Memory column, then look in the VM Compressed column for each app to see the amount of memory being compressed for that app.Ĭached Files: The size of files cached by the system into unused memory to improve performance. Free Up RAM with Terminal Another quick way to free up RAM on your Mac is to use a special command in the Terminal app (found in Applications > Utilities). When your computer approaches its maximum memory capacity, inactive apps in memory are compressed, making more memory available to active apps. This memory can’t be cached and must stay in RAM, so it’s not available to other apps.Ĭompressed: The amount of memory that has been compressed to make more RAM available. CleanMyMac X has an automated CPU and memory monitors built-in, which can give you a real-time view of memory usage in your Mac's menu bar. Wired Memory: Memory required by the system to operate. Open Activity Monitor on your Mac Select an app using a lot of memory Click the stop icon in the top bar This is straightforward, but there's a better way. To the right, you can see where the memory is allocated.Īpp Memory: The amount of memory being used by apps. Memory Used: The amount of RAM being used. Physical Memory: The amount of RAM installed. Memory pressure is determined by the amount of free memory, swap rate, wired memory, and file cached memory. Memory Pressure: Graphically represents how efficiently your memory is serving your processing needs. In the Activity Monitor app on your Mac, click Memory (or use the Touch Bar) to see the following in the bottom of the window:

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