Monterey; Pages Memory Leak?

"If you made changes to customize your mouse pointer and specifically the color choice—restore the defaults and compare your results."

@leroydouglas nailed it here for my scenario. I had modified the pointer color in accessibility settings. Once reset, the memory leak has stopped.

note: I was able to keep the existing larger sized cursor

First, there is no reason to ever install or run any 3rd party "cleaning", "optimizing", "speed-up", anti-virus, VPN or security apps on your Mac.  This user tip describes what you need to know and do in order to protect your Mac: Effective defenses against malware and other threats - Apple Community.  

There are no known viruses, i.e. self propagating, for Macs.  There are, however, adware and malware which require the user to install although unwittingly most of the time thru sneaky links, etc.   

Anti Virus developers try to group all types as viruses into their ad campaigns of fear.  They do a poor job of the detecting and isolating the adware and malware.  Since there are no viruses these apps use up a lot of system resources searching for what is non-existent and adversely affect system and app performance.

There is one app, Malwarebytes, which was developed by a long time contributor to these forums and a highly respected member of the computer security community, that is desshoigned solely to seek out adware and known malware and remove it.  The free version is more than adequate for most users.  

You've installed what most of the long time contributors here consider akin to malware: CleanMyMac. You should uninstall CMM according to the developer's instructions.

Also it's reported that the 12.1 update has fixed the modified pointer issue.

Rimmo wrote:

Is this evidence of a memory leak for Pages with Monterey os? Restart makes no difference.

https://discussions.apple.com/content/attachment/2a9f0efd-f736-4367-a0cc-d9136893b6ee

There were some known issues with memory leaks in other applications mentioned..

in the macOS Monterey—

If you made changes to customize your mouse pointer and specifically the color choice—restore the defaults and compare your results.

Change Pointer preferences for accessibility on Mac - Apple ...

Same here. I have an iMac 2020 running Monterey 12.0.1 and this is, ironically, happening to me with CleanMyMac X of all programs. I contacted the MacPaw Support Team about it as well. This Monterey OS is giving me so many issues on both my iMac and brand new MBP 14inch.

I have also a memory leak issue with Mail on Monterey 12.1 No pointer modification on my side. Mail growths up to 95Gb of RAM and then crashes. I removed the mails accounts, so launching mail as an empty app, same issue.

If I use Airmail or even Outlook on the same mail accounts, I have no issue.

Any idea?

Thanks

Did you open a large Pages document heavily laden with high-resolution images, or other document objects such as PDF objects? I doubt you can draw any conclusion about a Pages memory leak from Activity Monitor.

If this is an 8GB 24-inch iMac, you probably cannot run the full Microsoft suite of applications and other open applications (especially multi-tab browser sessions) concurrently as it would exhaust your available RAM. Much harder to do with a 16 GB RAM model, but not impossible.

Doing the pointer reset did not help me.

Apple will have to fix this in an update. But.... If you open Activity Monitor in an unused desktop, you can keep an eye on it. if you see a process or an app stealing too much RAM, you can force quit it and it will go back to its normal thing.

Its temporary, but its quite easy to deal with. FYI if WindowServer process is doing it, when you force quit it, your screen will go black for about 5 seconds while Monterey puts it all back, and then you will have to sign back in.

To answer the original question:

As you see, universalaccessd is using way too much memory; it should be around 7-8Mb. The process is related to Accessibility (formerly Universal Access) settings.

For couple of days I’ve been trying different setups mainly with Accessibility settings, and can’t be sure about it but my best guess is that it is not just the mouse pointer colour which triggers the memory leak problem. There must be certain other settings too, perhaps not related to Accessibility. People have had Control Center too chewing way too much memory, so could there be certain options there which also causes the problem to trigger?

You like me and almost everyone who uses Monterey has the dreaded memory leak bug.  Apple will fix it eventually.

Before then there is a simple temporary solution.  Presumably you have several desktops on your mac.  I have 11 at the moment.  Go to one you don’t use often and open up Activity Monitor(its in your applications and on every mac).  Leave it open all the time.  Click on the column that tells you the use of memory by system processes and apps.  Highlight(click on) any that look completely out of control, and then click on the little icon with the x in the middle of a circle.  Choose force quit. If its an app it will quit and you will have to restart it.  If its a process(weird names mostly) then it will quit but come back almost instantly in the small size it's supposed to be.  For me about 15 minutes ago I noticed that the most common culprit, Control Center(which normally uses about 26 mb of memory)  was slowly sucking more and was up to 144mb.  Earlier this week I found it at 14 GB.  

You can keep these little buggers from stealing memory by just keeping an eye on them.  Be advised:  if WindowServer is up at 1gb then its probably doing it too, and if you force quit that one, your screen will go black for about 5 seconds while the OS puts it back, and then you will have to type in your machine password again.

Hope this helps.  

Same here. I have an Intel i5 six core, 32GB ram, 1tb high speed SSD iMac 4k.

Monterey is terrible for ram management. Very laggy with constantly freezes.

I have a macbook air m1 too, and Monterey brings lag to him.

BIG SUR >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Monterey.

I never had this problems on Big Sur.

I've seen this across a couple apps since upgrading to Monterey, I don't think the memory leak is in Pages but in the OS. I've seen it in VS Code, Safari, and PowerPoint.

My MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2018) is also seeing this problem across literally every app, word, Firefox, safari, preview, even finder, you name it.

you gotta be kidding me, it fixes my problems