Whickwithy

Q: Is there any way to manually clean up the memory other than a reboot?

I find that my memory gets cluttered with a bunch of junk, even if I close all of the applications and the only way to get it cleared up is to reboot the system.  It seems that there should be a way to clean up memory without rebooting.

Mac mini, OS X El Capitan (10.11)

Posted on Jan 23, 2016 3:59 PM

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Q: Is there any way to manually clean up the memory other than a reboot?

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  • by Csound1,

    Csound1 Csound1 Jan 24, 2016 10:22 AM in response to Whickwithy
    Level 9 (50,476 points)
    Desktops
    Jan 24, 2016 10:22 AM in response to Whickwithy

    Whickwithy wrote:

     

    It's a secret.

     

    Don't bother yourself.  Really.

    I'll just assume that you have no idea where else these processes can go.

  • by John Galt,Solvedanswer

    John Galt John Galt Jan 24, 2016 10:25 AM in response to Whickwithy
    Level 8 (49,154 points)
    Mac OS X
    Jan 24, 2016 10:25 AM in response to Whickwithy

    It will just tell me where they are and it sounds more painful that just rebooting.

     

    Exactly! It's not as though anyone can fix someone else's software or poorly written website.

     

    I think it has more to do with the particular websites than the browser.

     

    Probably.

  • by Whickwithy,

    Whickwithy Whickwithy Jan 24, 2016 10:32 AM in response to John Galt
    Level 1 (68 points)
    Mac OS X
    Jan 24, 2016 10:32 AM in response to John Galt

    Thanks for all of the help, John.  I'll just be rebooting.  As I said, I wouldn't touch some 3rd party "cleanup" program.  And, antivirus has never made sense to me.  It's kinda like closing the barn door after the cows are gone.

     

    I'm sure 4G works fine but, really, I may change my  mini-mac (w/ 16G) in the future to a MacPro with 64GB of memory....unless

    1.  Apple finds a way to clean up leaks or

    2.  Safari adds cookie control and there are no leaks.

     

    Thanks, again, John.

  • by Csound1,

    Csound1 Csound1 Jan 24, 2016 10:37 AM in response to Whickwithy
    Level 9 (50,476 points)
    Desktops
    Jan 24, 2016 10:37 AM in response to Whickwithy

    Whickwithy wrote:

     

     

    .unless

     

    1.  Apple finds a way to clean up leaks or

    2.  Safari adds cookie control and there are no leaks.

     

    Apple surely won't want to lose an SA of your vision,

  • by BobHarris,

    BobHarris BobHarris Jan 24, 2016 12:40 PM in response to Whickwithy
    Level 6 (19,457 points)
    Mac OS X
    Jan 24, 2016 12:40 PM in response to Whickwithy

    1.  Apple finds a way to clean up leaks or

    2.  Safari adds cookie control and there are no leaks.

    Apple cannot fix leaks in other developer's software.

     

    Apple does not control the Javascript web sites send to the browser.

     

    If OS X refuses to give the memory an app or Javascript is requesting, then the app will break.  Then users will complain that Apple broke their app.  And even if you thought that was a good idea, where do you draw the line.  An app that does next to nothing need very little memory, but a movie editing app can consume all the all the RAM in your future 64GB Mac Pro.  How does OS X decide a request for RAM is too much?

     

    I'm saying this as a software developer.  It is easy to say these things and much more difficult to create a policy that works and is pain free.

     

    And if you are going to suggest each app have a controllable limit, the pre-Mac OS X (Mac OS 9 and below) had this feature, and it was a pain to administer.  And most likely generated lots of support calls to Apple and developers, especially when you consider that sometimes the amount of memory an app needs is a function of what the use does with it.

  • by Whickwithy,

    Whickwithy Whickwithy Jan 25, 2016 4:20 AM in response to Whickwithy
    Level 1 (68 points)
    Mac OS X
    Jan 25, 2016 4:20 AM in response to Whickwithy

    Well, I found two of the culprits: Pages and Finder.

  • by coltrane58,

    coltrane58 coltrane58 Jan 25, 2016 4:37 AM in response to Csound1
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Mac OS X
    Jan 25, 2016 4:37 AM in response to Csound1

    have you tried purge?

  • by Whickwithy,

    Whickwithy Whickwithy Jan 25, 2016 5:08 AM in response to coltrane58
    Level 1 (68 points)
    Mac OS X
    Jan 25, 2016 5:08 AM in response to coltrane58

    What's purge?

  • by coltrane58,

    coltrane58 coltrane58 Jan 25, 2016 5:17 AM in response to Whickwithy
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Mac OS X
    Jan 25, 2016 5:17 AM in response to Whickwithy

    it is a terminal commad. you must run it as root so you must have root enabled. Then open a terminal window and run:

    sudo purge

    it will prompt you for the root password.

    To enable root see: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204012

  • by BobHarris,

    BobHarris BobHarris Jan 25, 2016 6:11 AM in response to Whickwithy
    Level 6 (19,457 points)
    Mac OS X
    Jan 25, 2016 6:11 AM in response to Whickwithy

    Whickwithy wrote:

     

    Well, I found two of the culprits: Pages and Finder.

    If you have found memory leaks in Apple's Pages and Finder, then file a bug report

     

    BugReporter

    <http://bugreporter.apple.com>

    Free ADC (Apple Developer Connection) account needed for BugReporter.

    Anyone can get a free account at:

    https://developer.apple.com/register/index.action

  • by Csound1,

    Csound1 Csound1 Jan 25, 2016 6:47 AM in response to Whickwithy
    Level 9 (50,476 points)
    Desktops
    Jan 25, 2016 6:47 AM in response to Whickwithy

    No, you haven't.

  • by Csound1,

    Csound1 Csound1 Jan 25, 2016 6:47 AM in response to coltrane58
    Level 9 (50,476 points)
    Desktops
    Jan 25, 2016 6:47 AM in response to coltrane58

    coltrane58 wrote:

     

    have you tried purge?

    Why would I?

  • by BobHarris,

    BobHarris BobHarris Jan 25, 2016 7:39 AM in response to coltrane58
    Level 6 (19,457 points)
    Mac OS X
    Jan 25, 2016 7:39 AM in response to coltrane58

    coltrane58 wrote:

     

    it is a terminal commad. you must run it as root so you must have root enabled. Then open a terminal window and run:

    sudo purge

    it will prompt you for the root password.

    To enable root see: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204012

    You DO NOT need to enable 'root' in order to use the 'sudo' command.  Disabled 'root' just means it does not have a valid password and you cannot login to the account.  However, the 'root' account is still there, and there are many processes already running as root.

     

    sudo ONLY needs your admin account password, and will then elevate you to root privileges.

     

    Unless you really have a need to have a root GUI login, you should NOT enable root.  It is a well known account name and frequently gets probed by script kiddies to try and break into Unix systems.  Your username is not will known, so script kiddies would need to guess your username and then guess your password.  That is a much larger name space to explore.  Keep root disabled.  Use sudo when you need to be root.

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