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High WindowServer memory usage Macbook M1 Pro 16"

Hi. I would like to know if this amount of memory usage for the WindowServer process is actually normal in a Macbook M1 Pro:



As you can see, the WindowServer currently is using 52GB of memory according to Activity Monitor. But the actual Macbook is fast as usual, 0 slowness. Is this okay? Should I be worried about the 52GB usage? Or this metric is simply reported incorrectly? I have attached the other metrics of Memory for comparison purposes.

Posted on Nov 28, 2021 5:10 AM

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Posted on Jan 6, 2022 6:54 PM

I have the same machine, and I'm getting system messages that I'm "out of application RAM". But on my 16GB machine, my apps are using only 4 GB total of RAM. Windowserver, however, is using a whopping 110 GB (!) according to Activity Monitor.


I called Apple Support about it last week and a senior advisor recommended resetting all the permissions on my machine. That seemed to fix things for a couple days, but now I'm back at the error messages and crazy usage. I think the permissions fix 'reset' the problem somehow, but there's definitely something weird going on here.

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3 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Jan 6, 2022 6:54 PM in response to hachondeoro

I have the same machine, and I'm getting system messages that I'm "out of application RAM". But on my 16GB machine, my apps are using only 4 GB total of RAM. Windowserver, however, is using a whopping 110 GB (!) according to Activity Monitor.


I called Apple Support about it last week and a senior advisor recommended resetting all the permissions on my machine. That seemed to fix things for a couple days, but now I'm back at the error messages and crazy usage. I think the permissions fix 'reset' the problem somehow, but there's definitely something weird going on here.

Jan 6, 2022 10:09 PM in response to timkertoy

Hey. I've been browsing though the internet and lately (at least the last 2-3 weeks), the windowserver application has a ram consumption of less than 5GB (usually hovering between 1 to 2GB). So I would say my problem was fixed completely (and I run a lot of heavy web development programs between 3 monitors). From the top of my head, I'm not sure which one of the things I did fixed the problem. But one of the solutions I did was to revert the size of the mouse cursor from super large to the standard (that is one of the solutions I found). I hope this helps you and anyone else having the same problem.

High WindowServer memory usage Macbook M1 Pro 16"

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