Activity Monitor Memory Used Looks Higher Than Apps Listed

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Activity Monitor Memory Used Looks Higher Than Apps Listed

I recently upgraded my RAM to 40 GB. When looking at the Activity Monitor, I am shocked to see a lot of RAM being used.

The Activity Monitor says the 'Memory Used' is 27.98 GB. App memory is 23.63GB. If I restart the Mac, with the same programs running, it will start out at least 10 GB less, then slowly increase. I do have a lot of Programs loaded and running, but am guessing that the total does not add up to 28 GB nor anything near.

The process listed are:

'lsd' at 2.39 GB

iTunes at 1.72 GB

WindowsServer 1.27 GB

Finder 820 MB

Thunderbird 516 MB

etc.

Of course the amounts get smaller and smaller. Unless I can find a way to export those values to Numbers or Excel, I cannot know for certain. But I bet they do not come up anywhere near 27 GB.

What is going on? Or am I just wrong?

iMac 27″ 5K, macOS 10.14

Posted on Jul 27, 2020 5:55 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Allan Jones

Level 9

68,726 points

Jul 29, 2020 8:17 AM in response to Lawrence Hammer

Please make sure you are not stressing over something that changed almost seven years ago. Starting with macOS 10.9 in Oct 2013, Apple rebuilt its RAM allocation scheme based on the principle that unused RAM is wasted RAM. "Free RAM" may be good for Windows but the current metrics for Mac RAM evaluation changes in 2013 to "Memory Pressure" and "Swap Used."

If Pressure is in the green and Swap Used is zero or nearly so, everything is working perfectly. I cannot see you pressure reading, but your swaps are zero. Job done. To me this is working as expected.

This screenie is from my 2010 iMac after updating to OS 10.9. Note how much of its installed RAM was being used, yet the computer was running perfectly.

Here is an Apple support article on the subject: View memory usage in Activity Monitor on Mac - Apple Support

And another: Check if your Mac needs more RAM in Activity Monitor - Apple Support

The propeller-head version is here: https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Performance/Conceptual/ManagingMemory/ManagingMemory.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/10000160-SW1

If you are still worried about RAM usage, all you need do is to restart the computer once a week or so.

However, if you embarked on this journey because your computer is having issues that interfere with its use, please give us the details of the issues and we can help you look for the problem.

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Answer 2

Jul 28, 2020 12:45 PM in response to Sharhari

Thanks. Not sure what I can do with that information, though. Here is what it says:

Processes: 462 total, 2 running, 6 stuck, 454 sleeping, 1700 threads 15:35:25

Load Avg: 2.67, 1.89, 1.40 CPU usage: 4.85% user, 2.66% sys, 92.47% idle

SharedLibs: 293M resident, 77M data, 46M linkedit.

MemRegions: 131223 total, 12G resident, 296M private, 4991M shared.

PhysMem: 39G used (3296M wired), 650M unused.

__________________________________________

Is that really saying that 39G of the RAM is being used? Or just accessed at times?

This is what activity monitor is saying at about the same time:

As I look at this, Activity Monitor gives the following information[not sure how much of this is information I should disclose] about the processes running. Think this adds up to 27GB? RAM info is below [I removed the serial number info]:

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Answer 3

Sharhari

Level 5

6,287 points

Jul 28, 2020 9:46 PM in response to Lawrence Hammer

Lawrence Hammer wrote:

Thanks. Not sure what I can do with that information, though. Here is what it says:

Processes: 462 total, 2 running, 6 stuck, 454 sleeping, 1700 threads 15:35:25

Load Avg: 2.67, 1.89, 1.40 CPU usage: 4.85% user, 2.66% sys, 92.47% idle

SharedLibs: 293M resident, 77M data, 46M linkedit.

MemRegions: 131223 total, 12G resident, 296M private, 4991M shared.

PhysMem: 39G used (3296M wired), 650M unused.

__________________________________________

Is that really saying that 39G of the RAM is being used? Or just accessed at times?

You need to look into all process in Activity monitor for complete list to add up to used memory.

Screenshot for info:

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Answer 4

Jul 29, 2020 9:23 AM in response to Allan Jones

Excellent response, thank you.

I had installed an external SSD as the boot drive. After doing so, I ran into the ceiling of the 16 GB I had installed and the iMac came to a screeching halt. Apparently the Mac does not handle swapping out memory required from the RAM to an external SSD well.

Several people who use an external SSD as boot remarked that they had the same issue and solved it by adding more RAM. So I got two 16GB sticks and figured that 40GB was overkill.

But I saw that the Mac was using 30GB of the 40 and was wondering 'what the heck?' and if I was going to quickly run into the same problem.

Your explanation tells me that I will not and that I am 'stressing over something that changed almost seven years ago' that will not be an issue.

Thank you very much for your time and expertise.

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Answer 5

Jul 29, 2020 7:38 AM in response to Sharhari

Thanks for the suggestion, but that is what I have selected.

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Answer 6

Sharhari

Level 5

6,287 points

Jul 28, 2020 8:33 AM in response to Lawrence Hammer

You can use "top" command in terminal and the output you can copy paste.

top -o mem -u

Hope it helps.

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Activity Monitor Memory Used Looks Higher Than Apps Listed

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