[Macworld]

Post your comments for When applications consume too much RAM here

[Dotkhan]

I wish activity monitor broke down the smaller things that chew up memory. For example, list scripts being used by a web page in Safari so one can stop just the runaway script. List items by what program calls for them instead of a generic term like root.

[redgeminipa]

iStat Menus got extremely expensive. Versions before 3.0 were free. I'm glad I've stuck with 2.x and kept the installer file.

Give iCleanMemory a try. It's pretty good at freeing up RAM.

[JohnHowelljl8s]

Holy cow, what are you running that needs 20gb RAM?
I also see your iTunes also gobbles up over 1gb. I've never understood this, how much ram do you need to play frikin audio files?

[Chris Breen]

JohnHowelljl8s, on 04 March 2013 - 07:51 AM, said:

Holy cow, what are you running that needs 20gb RAM?
I also see your iTunes also gobbles up over 1gb. I've never understood this, how much ram do you need to play frikin audio files?

That screenshot was taken when an application had a massive memory leak (as described in the article). Normally it consumes far less memory.

[JacktheMac]

Quote

Give iCleanMemory a try. It's pretty good at freeing up RAM.

Or FlipLab's Memory Cleaner.

[macFanDave]

JacktheMac, it's actually Memory Clean by FIPlab. It's free and it works. It shows that Safari and iTunes are huge hogs.

[TeaEarleGreyHot]

Of course sometimes I'm analyzing datasets that really DO consume massive amounts of memory--to the point where I wish Apple had lifted the 96GB limit on RAM that OS X supports, long ago. To use the full 128GB I have in my MacPro, I need to run Linux.... And my gigantic data files aren't going to get any smaller, either. Apple really needs to fix that!

[brilor]

The FREE purge command line tool ( type purge in a terminal window ) also cleans up memory.

[brilor]

There are also free wrapper apps for the purge command <http://brilorsoftware.com/purgememory.htm>

[BrianM]

Purge and similar things don't actually "clean" memory. It just forces probably inactive processes out of active ram. This can actually negatively impact performance when those applications or processes are accessed again.
It does have a potential slight improvement when it clears the disk cache - but this may or may not help performance - depending on the usage and what ended up in the disk cache.

It is better to look and see what is taking up ram... especially web browsers which cache aggressively so can easily chew up most of your available ram. A few hours of web browsing with multple windows and/or tabs can be 1 GB+. With most web browsers now supporting a resume where left off option - or easy restore last session from a menu, it is a great way to recover some ram - when it starts up again, it'll only be using as much ram as it needs for the current pages.

(Although personally I find that in addition to the web browsers, iTunes on my Mac Pro running 10.7.5 will frequently just start eating up piles of ram - I think it is related to WiFi sync with my iPhones & iPads. I have started just running iTunes at certain times then quitting it so it doesn't climb to over 2 GB out of my 6 GB of ram)

[LiquidD]

"If you’re obsessive about this kind of thing, there’s an easier way to quickly eyeball your Mac’s memory usage. "

I personally wouldn't say obsessive, but if you run a variety of apps, this is very useful. I've used this in my dock for a few years now and it's helped a lot. I can't picture my dock(s) without it.

[JacktheMac]

Quote

JacktheMac, it's actually Memory Clean by FIPlab. It's free and it works. It shows that Safari and iTunes are huge hogs.

Thanks Dave. Sloppy writing by me, I apologise !

[jowie]

32 GB... Nische. Not so chuffed about my 16 gig rMBP now.