Mark Twain — 'I've had a lot of worries in my life, most of which never happened.' You did the right thing by NOT buying the 8GB model, now relax.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Even 16GB of RAM is acting deceptive on my M2 Mac Mini ? Perplexed !!
- Thread starter marcusalwayswins
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Yes. If you’re new to the Mac or Apple, I’d say worry less about the numbers and be more concerned with how it feels. If it feels snappy then you’re all set, continue business as usual.
If you’re noticing sluggishness then be concerned and keep an eye out.
You have 64GB RAM and the system still uses Swap? This is super odd.
The below is from my old Intel, which is still super fast for me. When taking the screenshots it had many usall apps open and MS Edge with about 30 Tabs
I only get close to 64 gigs once I start to use VMs and containters. I have never ever noticed swap being used by the system.
You're gonna be fine. Even if you run out of RAM, most common programs perform amazingly well even under heavy SSD swap. Someone here ran a 34GB process on a 32GB Windows machine and then tried it on an 8GB M2. You can read more about it, but long story short is that the Windows process refused to run despite only lacking 2GB of headroom whereas the 8GB M2 ran successfully... a few minutes slower, but it ran.
My new MacBook Air m2 - 8gb is great
Tripped over one here the other day which was interesting which shows that architectural differences might be relevant. So I have a package I was running on windows, which I run in AWS EC2 because it requires a lot of RAM and I don't want to have a workstation lying around for it any more. When...
forums.macrumors.com
I also have 16GB and I sometimes run 5-6 browsers along with way more intense programs than you're running. And I did mean to say BROWSERS... not tabs... Firefox, Safari, Edge, Chrome, Windows Chrome, Windows Firefox.
You're gonna be fine.
Last edited:
Exactly this. I hope Apple will acknowledge this very soon, but I'm not hopeful about it.
If you want to bring RAM use down you should buy a Mac with less RAM.
Any Mac will use all of the memory it has available.
With this and your previous thread about whether leaving Bluetooth enabled harms the computer, it seems like you are looking for reasons to be anxious. How about changing your mindset to just chill out and enjoy using your computer.
Basically all RAM threads about Macs nowadays come down to this :
- 8GB is not enough and when you have this config, it's most likely the bottleneck of your computer
- How to know if you have enough RAM :
A) RAM usage is NOT an indicator in modern OSes. Don't look at this.
B) Is your memory pressure green, yellow or red?
C) Does it use a swap file and if so, how big is it?
If it uses no swap file and your memory pressure is green ➜ You have enough RAM.
- 8GB is not enough and when you have this config, it's most likely the bottleneck of your computer
- How to know if you have enough RAM :
A) RAM usage is NOT an indicator in modern OSes. Don't look at this.
B) Is your memory pressure green, yellow or red?
C) Does it use a swap file and if so, how big is it?
If it uses no swap file and your memory pressure is green ➜ You have enough RAM.
It isn’t odd at all for my usage. Swap gets bad rap from those old windows days. For Mac OS and many variations of Linux, Swap is helpful if you are not running out of RAM. There are lot of models, and configuration data that gets loaded in My mac, not everything is used actively. Mac pushes those in to Swap, just in case if the RAM needs to be cleared for more processing. I push my RAM to max with GPU, last thing I want at that time is OS to start offloading memory in to swap. Intel is no good for me, I use MBP primarily for unified memory.You have 64GB RAM and the system still uses Swap? This is super odd.
The below is from my old Intel, which is still super fast for me. When taking the screenshots it had many usall apps open and MS Edge with about 30 Tabs
View attachment 2351490
You can get your device to use swap with any memory configuration. I have 32gb and it regularly uses swap just from having too many safari tabs (~200) open.You have 64GB RAM and the system still uses Swap? This is super odd.
The below is from my old Intel, which is still super fast for me. When taking the screenshots it had many usall apps open and MS Edge with about 30 Tabs
Those YouTube videos freak out a lot of folks. I use my MBP/Workstation heavily, often pushing to the limits. Never had issues with any of my Macs even after heavy usage for years. I wouldn’t buy something I have to be anxious or baby sit every day.
Swap being twice the size of RAM is what I remember from the bad old days as well. On Linux it used to be a separate partition on the drive, now it's a file somewhere.
OP:
What really counts is that if you look at Activity Monitor, the "swap used" is at "0".
This means that all your app activity is "living in" RAM, and not spilling over into a disk swap file.
What really counts is that if you look at Activity Monitor, the "swap used" is at "0".
This means that all your app activity is "living in" RAM, and not spilling over into a disk swap file.
As someone who's literally about to swap one 8gb MBP for a 16gb MBP because of swap file chugging ( Firefox 10 tabs, excel, word, obsidian, drafts, raycast, rectangle)...
Thanks?
Thanks?
...the mere existence of a swap file isn't a problem. What matters is the swap rate - i.e. how frequently the computer is needing to swap memory in and out from SSD - which is what slows things down. ISTR there used to be a swap rate rate indication in Activity Monitor - but these days it is rolled up in the "memory pressure" readout.
This is not true. Swap isn’t just about enough RAM or living in RAM. If you have processes, apps that are inactive/not actively using memory. MacOS and most of Linux variants will offload that to Swap, ready to reclaim the RAM if it needs for more intensive active process. This ensures that OS isn’t swapping in real time when it is busy. It also acts like hot standby as the memory is mapped.
Apple does not choose how much RAM we put in a new box. We do.
Obviously we do not know your situation, but IMO moving to just 16 GB on a box new in 2024 is short-sighted thinking.
Question:
When you're on a trip and you enter the bus, train or plane—what do you do when it's empty and you sit down with no one around you?
Answer:
You spread out! You take up three seats—not just one. You sit on one seat, you put your bags on a second seat and your books, food, or phone on a third seat because it's now like a little table for you. You're sort of reserving two more seats (than you need) for yourself, but you do it to be comfortable and operate optimally.
Question:
What happens when the bus, train or plane makes a stop and picks up more passengers, filling up and no longer empty?
Answer:
You consolidate your stuff back into your bag, but the bag under the seat in front of you (or the overhead compartment, or your lap) and you go back to taking up only one seat, because that's all you're entitled to.
This is what observing Activity Monitor is like. When your RAM is abundant, apps will reserve more RAM for itself because, "why not? It's free space." And this makes the software operate optimally. Memory pressure is GREEN.
When RAM is becoming scarce and running out of free space, macOS requests that these apps give up RAM, which those apps will do as best they can. Memory pressure is Yellow.
When macOS requests even more space but apps have given up all they can, macOS starts using storage to store data temporarily as it makes room in RAM for the apps that urgently need it. Memory pressure turns RED. And your CPU/GPU is slowing down to accommodate this process.
Conclusion: If you're in GREEN, you're fine and the apps are just taking up more memory than it really needs. Your Mac is operating optimally.
In 2017, Apple decided that all MBA's must have 8 GB RAM, and not 4 GB RAM any longer. We couldn't choose.
Techno explained:
"Swap isn’t just about enough RAM or living in RAM. If you have processes, apps that are inactive/not actively using memory. MacOS and most of Linux variants will offload that to Swap, ready to reclaim the RAM if it needs for more intensive active process. This ensures that OS isn’t swapping in real time when it is busy. It also acts like hot standby as the memory is mapped."
OK.
But I have VM disk swapping DISABLED on both my desktop (2018 Mini) and laptop (2021 MBP 14") Macs.
And they still run just fine.
"Swap isn’t just about enough RAM or living in RAM. If you have processes, apps that are inactive/not actively using memory. MacOS and most of Linux variants will offload that to Swap, ready to reclaim the RAM if it needs for more intensive active process. This ensures that OS isn’t swapping in real time when it is busy. It also acts like hot standby as the memory is mapped."
OK.
But I have VM disk swapping DISABLED on both my desktop (2018 Mini) and laptop (2021 MBP 14") Macs.
And they still run just fine.
I am always maxing out my 8GB Mac mini. You just start a program like Firefox and next thing you know it’s using 5GB+ of system memory. Same thing with Finder. I open a few windows and before long Finder is using 3-5GB of system memory. I’m not sure what is causing this but the fact that Apple still insists on selling computers that only come with 8GB of ram is ridiculous. I refuse to buy another Apple computer until they start coming with 16GB of ram and a 500GB SSD drive. People say that’s what the system is supposed to do. Use the memory for cache and then free up memory for when it needs it but mine doesn’t. The swap file will get progressively bigger and the computer will bog down. It used to be where my Windows computer I had to restart it every 2 or 3 days because it would get slow but my Apple computer would run for over a week without any slow down but lately it seems like things have flipped. My Windows computer runs a lot longer before it slows down and I have to restart it but it seems I have to restart my Apple computer every 3 days due to it slowing down.
Last edited: