Macbook M1 Pro 2021 memory leak

I support more than 100 macs and this issue has been driving me crazy. This is what I have found and how I have resolved the issue thus far.

1. The only systems that I have had issues with are systems that have migrated users and applications from an Intel based mac. System with new users and freshly installed applications have had no issues for me
2. I create a fold in the shared user profile named migration and copy all user data here.
3. I create a new profile/user account
4. Manually copy the data from the migration folder ie desktop, documents, etc
5. Delete the original user profile

This has worked for me without fail thus far. I did not run the numbers, but I believe approx 20 percent of the intel to m1 migrations have had this issue. To avoid this going forward I am avoiding the migration assistant and just copying data and installing the software etc.

I have tested m1 to m1 migrations and so far I have not had any issue, I have not tested m1 to intel or had the need to do that as of yet.

I hope this helps and I hope this continues to work for me

Hi Daniel,

Sorry you feel that way. If you're unhappy with the performance of your machine and want to share your feedback with Apple about it, here's the link: https://www.apple.com/feedback/

Alternatively, Apple support can be contacted here if you'd like technical help and troubleshooting.

All the best.

Hi Ana,

this is what the cpu-times and ram-usage diagram shows just around when Pixelmator got a little sluggish today. Not too bad but not responding to clicks few times.

A lot of safari-pages have a pretty high memory footprint. E.g. "synonyme.woxikon.de" while I did not use that page within the last hour or so. Same goes for "sessionlab.com"

Best regards

Someone is hungry. Haven't opened the page since a day and it is getting bigger. It wants my attention. Just remember: its text only but 2-3 ads are showing up. A lot of links (50-100) to other articles on the same domain. Maybe safari is auto-crawling all these links and preloading the pages? That would be bad.

Will try to default to light mode these days. Thank you @tyronne.

I am running 12.2.1 on a new MBP 16", M1 Max, 64GB. I consistently see memory slowly ratchet up, and only a reboot seems to fix. This exact same thing happened with a MBP 14", M1 Max, 64 GB I was using for a few months before I received this machine a week or so ago.

Could someone please answer this man?

My brother, friends and myself have the same issue.

Just out of curiosity, did you get a customized MacBook Pro or one of the "standard" models? Yours looks like the model in the middle, right? So of the shelve.. I had the hopes that maybe only customized MacBooks were affected :(

I hope, this finds a solution soon, as me and friends of mine who are actually depending on this machine economically would love to use these machines.

I share your frustrations ~ I've got 2 16" 2021 MacBook Pro's and they're both exhibiting frequent memory leaks. I had contacted Apple and was passed off with the same thing. The best thing to do is to keep reporting it via Apple's feedback page or feedback assistant (if you're running a public beta, for example) and hopefully with an increased number of people feeding back about it they'll act on it sooner rather than later.

To answer your questions about builds, I've one custom build and one standard and they're both the same. In my eyes and from experience (I work in Software/Data), it's a software issue. Returning the unit won't provide a fix I'm afraid.

Mac OS Monterey has been riddled with bugs since its release, which is a great shame as the hardware on the new Mac's are being spoiled by excessively buggy software.

As a side note, if you do decide to keep your Mac, every time you see a Memory leak in activity monitor, take a screenshot and keep them in a folder to send to Apple. That's what I do with mine, and hopefully it'll help them figure out what's causing it.

Thanks for sharing an update john_doe1106 ~ Glad to hear things are working well for you! I've also updated to MacOS 12.1 and so far no leaks from my side with the applications I use.

Keep us posted @tyronne98 on how you get on!

Hey,

I have the same problem and 12.1 didn't fix it.

Webpages on Safari 15.2 consume between 150 up 950MB, roughly 400mb on average. A lot of programs use a lot of memory. E.g. Dropbox 800mb (I am aware that this could be a dropbox-specific problem)

I am not using any special mouse cursor-size, no safari-extensions.

My MacBook Pro 16" M1 Pro 16GB gets slow and does not respond very well when using a couple of tabs and e.g. pixelmator. Of course that is really the opposite of what I wanted when I switched from a Mac Pro 13" 2018.

Best regards.

Hi DaSteinhoff,

Sorry to hear about the issues you're experiencing on your new Mac: it definitely shouldn't be running slow with the applications you've described, especially since Pixelmator has been fully optimised for the M1. Could there be any applications running in the background that you're maybe not aware of? If so, when the machine next runs slow for you, could you share a picture of your activity monitor usage, ie: both CPU and GPU usage? That might help me isolate down what could be causing the slowdown.

As an aside, since you're running 12.1 and are still experiencing issues I'd advise doing a clean install of the OS, and if the slowdown still persists after that, then I'd recommend booking an appointment at your nearest Apple store.

Best Regards,

Hi DaSteinhoff,

Apologies for the delayed reply, and thanks very much for coming back to me and sharing screenshots - this is really helpful.

From what I can see in activity monitor the overall system memory is in yellow which means you're not far off running out of it. When the system memory is close to running out, the Mac could start to feel slow and unresponsive. From activity monitor there's no memory leaks occurring in the applications you've got running - Microsoft Teams is generally a memory hog, but there's nothing from there that looks like it's using excessive amounts of memory.

To me, it looks like you're free of memory leaks and the slowdown you're experiencing is just due to how much you've got open and running.

I hope this helps, but feel free to come back to me if you've any questions or concerns.

Best Regards,

Hi,

thank you for quick reply. I strongly disagree: each of the safaris tabs accumulate memory over time. It is ridiculous that a page I like synonyme.woxikon.de takes more than 600mb of ram: it is a text-only, maybe three pages-high site.

i should not and never had high memory pressure on any other mac / macOS with only safari and two “bigger” (teams!, pixelmator) Programms running.

best

Daniel

FIXED! I spoke w Apple support and they said I just needed to upgrade to newest Monterey 12.1 (21C52). Even though my Macbook 14 inch is brand new - and I didn't see an "Update" available in the software updates....I finally was able to see an update appear after waiting a few minutes at the Settings--> Software Update screen. The update was 3.2GB and took 15 minutes to download and install. Ever since software update, I am not seeing the "Out of memory" error popup. Yahooooo!