i noticed my 2012 retina has a particularly high amount of app memory usage right from starting up
this is all that's open, and there's like multiple GB of unaccounted for memory, what can i do here? thanks in advance
MacBook Pro 15", OS X 10.11
i reinstalled 10.11 and now everything's "back to normal" and how it used to be
thanks for the replies but everyone was completely unhelpful... idk how you said things were "perfect" when using 6 GB of ram just to turn on the computer is very much not perfect
Clearly you are not understanding what we are saying about modern systems' memory management. And our attempts to help you have not been successful, sorry about that.
The system tries to use most all the available memory as cache as long its not needed otherwise. It is only caching things it can re-purpose almost instantly. This speeds up your computer significantly. Having unused memory is of no value.
It's simply an amount taken by the memory management system for assignment as needed. The MM system takes control of all available RAM in order to control its usage as needed. There is nothing here to be concerned. MM functions much differently today than when you are last used to seeing it. As I stated at the beginning, there is nothing about which to be concerned.
Your operating system uses all available memory as needed to improve performance. What were you planning on doing with unused RAM? Unused RAM is wasted RAM. You show all green for memory pressure.
Memory pressure is in the low green level which is perfect. Memory is fully accounted for. Your concerns are unfounded.
Read the following articles. They will help you understand AM better.
How to use Activity Monitor on your Mac
Welcome to Activity Monitor on Mac
View cache activity in Activity Monitor on Mac
Because it is using that RAM in anticipation of what it will need to run next. This speeds up performance significantly.
also... no one else is signed in (i'm the only account), the root user is disabled, i did a reset of the pram and smc, and a safe boot just to see what would happen... the safe boot lowered usage a bit but not drastically
in the past it's always had about 12.5 - 13 GB free once it's finished logging in and everything's settled down, but in the past few days there's about 3 extra GB being used and activity monitor doesn't give any indication of what be using it
how is the memory fully accounted for? the active processes don't add up to nearly 4 GB
i've read those already, and the last two don't even apply since i'm on 10.11
i understand what you're saying, i just wasn't understanding why activity monitor was saying there was about 4 GB of app memory usage when there were no apps running
well either way, something "wasn't right" considering doing a reinstall freed up about about 3 GB and in the 7 years i've had the computer it's never used about 6 GB from just turning on with nothing running, and the performance has always been top notch and continues to be now that i've done the reinstall
high ram usage at startup
