macOS Monterey 12.1 still has memory leak issue

I'm glad I found this thread and that I finally know that all these problems have to do with Monterey. I think it's the worst OS Apple ever has delivered, really buggy and from the different reports many people are affected. Apple should start to communicate much better on such issues instead of ignoring. I had several threads here on the Memory leak issue and nobody could help me (because there's no solution so far provided by Apple).

These were my threads:

iTunes Store / Music crashes Mac OS Monterey 12.1 and Mac Mini M1.

Apple Music cache might be the reason for crashes of my MacMini M1. Is there a solution?

MacMini M1 (2020) crashes/restarts regulary (Sleep mode issue?). Different problems from the beginning.

When I started again to search for the reason of the problems I finally found out through the app "iStat Menus" that there must be a problem with the memory consumption, especially when Music was active. My Mac just crashed some minutes ago as I connected my iPad. This time it might be something new. It's interesting, that after a restart the background of the user login window isn't the colourful background anymore, but a plain grey background.

If Apple can't solve the memory leak issues they will get serious problems. Actually my MacMini M1 isn't a computer I can rely on. For the reputation of the Silicon Chips this would be bad.

Tigerator wrote:

12.3.1 still has the issue. The Mail app has become unusable, making it impossible for me to work. This is not acceptable, a fix is needed quickly. As it is, I'll have to waste the time and pain of downgrading back to Catalina from Time Machine.

JC

https://discussions.apple.com/content/attachment/32629da8-42e8-497c-8c3f-c18ded33b7e5

This is a user-to-user technical support forum, and the volunteers here do not have access to internal Apple information.

Suggest contacting Apple Support and/or going to developer.apple.com and filing a bug report.

Since the problem manifests for different users in Mail, Firefox, and Final Cut Pro as well as in Safari, I don't think it's particularly tied to any one application. And since it's been reported on a range of hardware, both old and new, it's not a hardware problem. It's definitely a rare bug in the OS related to memory management, triggered by an exception in the applications.

Experience seems to be that it can be resolved by completely resetting the data of the application, which seems to change the behaviour of the applications enough to avoid however the exception was caused. For example, see my instructions for resolving it in Mail in this thread.

For Safari, I suspect that doing a similar thing will work. Try renaming ~/Library/Safari to ~/Library/SafariSave using the process described for Mail in that thread, then open Safari to see if it works.

JC

There seem to be two complaints here, one is about a memory leak and the other about slow performance. I don't know that they are related.

The latest update has seemed to fix the memory leak issues I have been seeing. It is going to take days/weeks to be absolutely certain - a memory leak can be small in comparison to 16G of RAM so it can take a long time to run out.

A memory leak is when some piece of software, likely system software, is allocating memory that it never frees. Memory is allocated and freed constantly, it's a healthy thing. When it's not freed, the system thinks it's supposed to be allocated for good reason when it's not. The size of the allocated memory in system software tends to be small, like space to hold a string of characters. Application software can try to allocate huge sizes of memory, especially to hold an image or a video file (or a chunk of one).

If you think some app, like Final Cut Pro are leaking memory, simply close the app and see if the memory is not returned/freed. I wouldn't blame an app like that for using lots of memory while the application is in use.

The OS compresses memory when it's not in use. Like you have a chrome browser tab that you haven't looked at in a long time, it can be compressed to make more real memory for some other program(s) to use. When the system is truly out of real memory, it will start swapping memory from RAM to SSD. When a program isn't running, it's RAM can be copied to SSD and used for something else, and when the program is activated, the memory has to be read in from SSD (and something else written to make room).

If your machine is in constant out of memory mode, it will be constantly swapping, and that is going to make everything crawl. Nothing in the world worse than a machine that is swapping. When I set up a Linux workstation, I turn off swap altogether - if you run out of real memory, you need more memory :)

If your machine is simply sluggish all the time, even after a fresh boot with nothing running, then it's not a memory leak but something else wrong.

I have Docker Desktop installed on my system which uses a ~2GB linux virtual machine (qemu-system-aarch64). Otherwise, the memory usage by apps on my system (uptime 6+ days) looks really good.

Here we go again; Google Docs is something I absolutely have to use to do my job, and now my Macbook Air M1 is running like a dog purely because I'm typing some words.

This is beyond the joke now. How can a system that costs so much money not be fit for purpose?

12.3.1 still has the issue. The Mail app has become unusable, making it impossible for me to work. This is not acceptable, a fix is needed quickly. As it is, I'll have to waste the time and pain of downgrading back to Catalina from Time Machine.

JC

OK, this is rather remarkable. I didn't want to have to do this (as all of my passwords etc are stored on Safari, and I like that Safari allows me to use touch / face ID), but I've installed Google Chrome and there are no memory leak issues whatsoever now.

I've got multiple tabs open (including those which would normally trigger the issue) and it's been rock-solid so far. Memory pressure is in the green 100% of the time, memory swap is in MB rather than GB and my Mac is running as smooth as silk - as it should have be doing!

This makes me suspect that in my case, at least, the issue is related to Safari.

Horrible memory leaking occurring since Monterey upgrade. I have an iMac with 32mb of memory - it drops to single digits with ANYTHING running - Safari, Mail, Music......brings it to its knees. WHERE IS THE UPDATE AND FIX!?!?!

After updated MacOS from 11.5.2 to 12.1, I've been experiencing memory shortage issue, too. I believe 12.1 still has memory leaking issue.

Since I am using Intel based Mac (iMac2019), this is not only M1 based mac issue, but also Intel based mac.

Very annoying!

I have this issue too. I'm running a Macbook Air M1 with 8GB of RAM and it's constantly slowing down due to the OS being unable to control certain processes (usually websites / safari) from hogging too much RAM.

The issue has been present since I updated to MacOS 12, and is still there as of the latest update (12.2.1 (21D62))

It's driving me crazy. I've been in touch with Apple Support and have been sold that it's a known issue, but there's no timeline on when this will be fixed. Really regretting updating to 12 now.

Glad you shared this. I had setup a tech support session with a level 2 from Apple to discuss this same problem. I had not taken any action on that because I believed the problem was on Apple's side and not my specific machine. By the way, I'm on an Intel Mac, so it doesn't appear to a Apple silicon vs Intel situation. I was looking at a new 24 inch iMac, but I'm waiting on a resolution. Fingers crossed for 12.3 update.

Hi, it's March and still no solution in sight? I just upgraded to Monterey 12.2.1, but my Mac mini M1 (16GB) still suffers from massive memory leaks when I run graphics software (Sketch, Adobe XD, etc.). How are we supposed to work like this? :-(

I was afraid of this leak before I received my pro when they first came out. But I figured it would get fixed quickly. But I was wrong, my 32 gig system was using 70 some gigs of memory for no obvious reason just a couple weeks ago.

Has apple even acknowledged the problem?

A previous poster on this thread stated Apple is aware but offered no ETA. I have a hope/theory it's related to "universal control" coming in 12.3. I hope like **** it's fixed by this forthcoming release.

I have the Feedback Assistant App on my m1 iMac. I used it to report the issue. Something like this:

"I have the 8G m1 Mini as well. Both run out of memory after some time passes.

Running Monterey 12.2.1.

The Mini just serves iTunes and has no monitor on it. I do use it with Remote Desktop 24/7 on an external monitor on an old Intel iMac I still have.

It takes a couple or three weeks. Then the top bar on the desktop (on the Mini) disappears. I can't open any panel in settings. I can't even reboot the machine without a hard shutdown (hold power button until it shuts down) first.

The m1 iMac runs out of memory, too. It just takes longer."

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People were reporting the memory leak problem last November. It really needs to be fixed. Some of us expect our systems to run 24/7/365.

I'm not sure about losing control of certain processes - seems to be a different issue, but could be related to out of memory.

When the computer runs out of real memory (too many open applications or browser tabs, etc.), it will offload some of the RAM used by an idle program (like a browser tab you haven't looked at in a while) to the SSD to make more real RAM. When you look at the tab that's on the SSD, it has to load from the SSD back into memory - often offloading some other program to the SSD to make space. If it gets into a constant switching between two of these programs (the programs can be system daemon programs, running in the background that we don't normally care about), you get into a continuous swapping state and everything will slow down.