Swap Used in memory

aaratpchopra wrote:

I was just wondering, does the Swap Used of the memory gets cleared on the hard disk when the computer gets restarted or is shut down? if yes, how? if no, isn't that filling up the hard disk? how does it work?

https://discussions.apple.com/content/attachment/36a20dec-4b1c-4d3a-b36a-b1767c258016

Yes reboot the machine or shut down and restart.

Log out, sleep, wake, restart or shut down your Mac

Shut down or restart your Mac - Apple Support

VM (virtual memory) is swap files and that is what it is used for. All Volumes share space with the Container, so there is no penality.

MacBook-Pro ~ % diskutil list internal

/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: GUID_partition_scheme *1.0 TB disk0

1: EFI ⁨EFI⁩ 314.6 MB disk0s1

2: Apple_APFS ⁨Container disk1⁩ 1.0 TB disk0s2

/dev/disk1 (synthesized):

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: APFS Container Scheme - +1.0 TB disk1

Physical Store disk0s2

1: APFS Volume ⁨Macintosh HD⁩ 15.2 GB disk1s1

2: APFS Snapshot ⁨com.apple.os.update-...⁩ 15.2 GB disk1s1s1

3: APFS Volume ⁨Macintosh HD - Data⁩ 478.3 GB disk1s2

4: APFS Volume ⁨Preboot⁩ 805.1 MB disk1s3

5: APFS Volume ⁨Recovery⁩ 1.1 GB disk1s4

6: APFS Volume ⁨VM⁩ 2.1 GB disk1s5

Look at the memory pressure color scheme— green is good, red is high demand

example only:

Yes. How? That's the way the developers made it.

Swap space is temporary space used when needed, When not needed it goes way until the next time it's needed.

When is it specifically needed? You'll need to ask Apple and Apple generally doesn't divulge their R&D.