macOS Monterey 12.1 still has memory leak issue

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.

Ok i've done extensive research on this and spoke to a range of clients / others with similar iMac's or "Older" macs pre 2020.  I've talked to top Apple support engineers which are not giving much up about it.

What I have found is they have all reported a massive slow down and issues with rebooting, can't boot etc etc. My macbook pro is OK, but still terribly slow for it's specs. All the iMacs 2020 and below are almost unusable.

My iMac can boot into Windows and is very quick using a dual boot also. Loading an old version of OSX also works perfectly fine. 

I've spent 1000s on various external thunderbolt drives to solve. It appears that Apple is slowing down these machines on purpose, which I hope is not the case.

I'll await the 12.3 update before I get rid of these machines and move to windows.. no no no.. please don't make me do that. 

I agree. But it’s actually made it semi useable. It wasn’t on there previous to it.

I manage a lot of studios with multiple Mac’s all the older ones are struggling.

Anything’s that's not M1 is pointless using at this point.

Universal Control is half baked AT BEST. Still shows beta, which is a generous moniker. In the spirit of being honest, Apple has absolutely had their *** kicked trying to deploy this feature. Up to this point, it's a failure. Just keeping it real. What a disappointment

Let me thank you for during an "erase and install". Had been wondering if that would fix the issue. But, it's a lot of work and to end up with the same issue, I know is very frustrating. Again, thanks for eliminating the clean install possibility.

No problem! I wanted to make sure that it couldn't be an issue with the update going over the top of MacOS 11. It seems now it's almost certainly related to how MacOS 12 controls memory. The only other (outside) chance is that it's a hardware issue... I do find it puzzling that this isn't impacting all M1 Air users.

When you see http:// in the process name, it means some WWW site you are looking at. Browsers are notorious for using lots of memory. If you can find your http://mail.google.com tab, for example, close it and watch your memory come back.

I have no idea what www.pushsquare.com is but close that tab, too.

The longer you have a tab open, the more memory it can use over time.

That you are using 3.52GB of swap suggests your machine might be slow because it's constantly reading and writing to the SSD

Closing the apps / tabs which are using a lot of memory always speeds up my machine. I also didn't have this problem before upgrading to MacOS 12.

Push Square is one of the sites I co-own, so I need to have that open a lot. Likewise with Google mail and Grammarly, two things I use on a daily basis.

I get what you're saying - close the problem down and it frees up memory - but I need to visit these sites and use these apps, so that's not a proper solution.

This is a computer I paid a lot of money for around 12 months ago, so the fact it cannot deal with having a few web pages open is crazy.

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?

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.

They are, but are ignoring it and haven't provided a fix. I have a M1 MBA w/16gbs of ram and I hate using this laptop. Between the crappy keyboard and now continuous ram issues, its ridiculous. They even made me restore it and manually move all my files over. Who knows if I have misplaced any photos or videos from over the years. After this experience and Apple's lack of care, they will not get another dime for a laptop from me; Imma buy a Dell! Mac OS Sucks anyway, so no lose on my part!

I hoped MacOS 12.4 would finally solve the memory leaks. It didn't. When I open the iTunes Store, it still prevents my Mac from working after some clicks. The warning window that my Mac has no more RAM available and that I should quit Music is still there. It is not possible to quit Music, not even force quit. After some seconds more and more apps appear in the warning window.

As you I'm tired of the software issues that appear more and more often on Apple products. I'm using Apple computer and devices for over 20 years and I'm at the point where I'm seriously considering to move everything over to Linux.

I personally don't think the memory mismanagement will be corrected in Monterey. I'm now holding out hope it's quashed in the next version of MacOS. I agree with you, Apple's software is not what it once was. Now it seems it had devolved into bugs they are unable to correct. The software problems are never ending with Apple today. That is the reality.

I am not upgrading to macOS Monterey until there is a fix . Thx for info