Increase SWAP on macOS Big Sur (Macbook M1)

Thanks for posting the report. The stats in Activity Monitor are worrying.

Looking at the report, a runaway process is using significant amounts of CPU performance (likely also the memory hog). I recommend starting up in Safe Mode to diagnose the issue:

1. Shut down your MacBook Air (M1).
2. Press and hold Touch ID until the screen says "Loading startup options".
3. Select Macintosh HD, hold down the Shift key, and select "Continue in Safe Mode".

When in Safe Mode, no third party apps are permitted to run automatically. If the problem is related to an app, you should notice that initially (before any apps are opened), little to no swap is being used.

Now, open Activity Monitor, and proceed with the below test:

1. Open an app that you commonly use.
2. Check swap usage in Activity Monitor.
3. If swap usage suddenly spikes, that app is the culprit.
4. If swap usage remains normal, quit the open app, then open another commonly used app.
5. Repeat steps 1-4 until you find the culprit.

To leave Safe Mode, restart your Mac.

Possibly, but macOS will still try to first maximize RAM usage, since that is always faster (and safer) than the internal SSD.

The swapfile resides in a hidden APFS volume named "VM". This allows for the swapfile to grow or shrink as it needs.

Now, because APFS volumes can optionally have a minimum and/or maximum size, I wonder if somehow your VM volume has a maximum size of 8 GB. To resolve this issue, you'll need to erase your VM volume from macOS Recovery:

1. Start up in macOS Recovery.
2. If prompted, authenticate with admin credentials.
3. At the top of the screen, select Utilities -> Terminal.
4. Type this command and hit Enter (Return): diskutil apfs eraseVolume VM -name VM -role V
5. When the process is finished, restart your Mac. Swap should now (hopefully) be permitted to grow beyond 8 GB large if it ever needs to.

Hi HNS-,

I'm not sure why you would want to increase swap usage, but it doesn't appear to have the controls needed to set a minimum or maximum size.

macOS first tries to use all of the available memory (RAM) in your Mac before resorting to swap. This is because using swap results in lots of reads and writes on the internal SSD, slowly shortening its lifetime.

If done correctly, there should be no risk. But definitely back up your data before proceeding. AFAIK if macOS can’t find the correct VM volume at startup it will make a new one.

Also, APFS volumes are dynamic by default - they have no fixed size. When you erase the VM volume, it will have an initial size of 0, and will automatically grow and/or shrink as macOS adjusts swap usage.

The true size limit of the VM volume is the amount of free space on your Mac, as your startup disk and VM share free space with each other.

By definition, swap is always going to be slower than true memory (RAM).

Just out of curiosity, what process(es) is consuming that much memory? You might want to get EtreCheck from the App Store and post a text report here.

Start by completely removing CleanMyMac. It is unneeded because the macOS, catlike, has cleaned itself for the last two decades. ANY third-party app that claims to clean or maintain yourt Mac WILL slow it and can contribute the the problems you see. CCM is the likely cause of the "runaway process" flag.

Based on hundreds of other EtreCheck reports here, removing CMM improves performance. You also have a number of third party enhancements install. I would review those and see which you really need. Amphetamine an Insomniac may be fighting. More than one installed ad blocker has been suspected in slow computer reports here. Find the one you love and send the other to summer camp.

System Software:

    macOS Big Sur 11.1 (20C69)Â

    Time since boot: About 6 days

In the presence of a mere 8GB RAM, restarting the computer more often than every six days will nicely keep that SWAP issue under control.

Use the Activity Monitor's %CPU column sorted to show what process is hogging CPU usage: