spikes in memory usage, not seen before

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Level 1

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spikes in memory usage, not seen before

I've started to see weird spikes in memory usage, this can happen when I quit (or start) an arbitrary program, see screenshots. I've never seen this behavior before. I'm on Mojave (10.14.6), MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2016). The only "App" that's consuming more memory is WindowServer, but I'm not at all sure if it's related.

(The first screenshot shows what happened when I quit iTunes, the last when I started Logic)

Any clues?

Thanks

/Jan-Erik

MacBook Pro 15″, macOS 10.14

Posted on Jun 21, 2020 4:52 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Sharhari

Level 5

6,293 points

Jun 23, 2020 1:05 AM in response to dkire

Please check in safe mode do you have the same kind of spike in memory.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201262

Note: Safe mode prevents your Mac from loading certain software as it starts up, including login items, system extensions not required by macOS, and fonts not installed by macOS. It also does a basic check of your startup disk, similar to using First Aid in Disk Utility. And it deletes some system caches, including font caches and the kernel cache, which are automatically created again as needed.

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Answer 2

dkire Author

Level 1

10 points

Jun 25, 2020 8:59 AM in response to Sharhari

Thanks, I've done some more debugging, it looks like the problem could be an incompatible third-party "Audio Unit" (in this case from Waves). Their docs say "Logic Pro 10.5 is not supported". I have Logic Pro 10.5 but the memory peaks seem to occur with other programs that use audio "in some ways" (like iTunes). If I remove the affected audio units the problem seems to be gone. Weird... I'll give it some time before I conclude that this really was the problem.

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Answer 3

dkire Author

Level 1

10 points

Jun 23, 2020 12:09 AM in response to dkire

The memory of the kernel_task is peaking. It often happens when I quit programs. How can I possibly debug this?

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spikes in memory usage, not seen before

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