Two questions:
First: Is it normal for a new iMac 24", six hours old, to use nearly 11.5 GB of RAM? My previous iMac 21.5"'s memory pressure fluctuated between 3 to 6 GB, and nearly redlined at 6.75 while using PS. At the moment the only running apps are safari, iMessages and mail.
Second: Is something wrong?
iMac 24″, macOS 12.5
Are you saying the "Memory Pressure" graph is showing yellow or even red? If the memory pressure is red, then that is not good. Keep in mind with recent versions of macOS the "Memory Used" will be nearly full with very little free memory since unused memory is wasted memory, but the memory pressure should rarely ever be red.
Are you running any anti-virus apps, cleaning apps, or third party security software? These types of apps are notorious for interfering with the normal operation of macOS and causing problems and none of these apps are needed on a Mac. You can try booting into Safe Mode to see whether you encounter the same problem.
Are you using any browser extensions? Some of them are known to cause problems too.
Within Activity Monitor on the Memory tab sort the "Memory" column to show the processes using the largest amounts of RAM to see what is using the memory. You may need to click "View" and select "All Processes" in case it is a system process instead of a standard app.
Are all of your third party apps compatible with an M1 Mac and with Monterey? Are you using the latest versions of those apps?
How did you setup the new Mac? Migrating from an old Intel Mac can sometimes bring over baggage and clutter as well as really old software or custom configurations that may no longer be compatible with your newer hardware or OS. Many contributors would advise only migrating the home user accounts in order to transfer just your data, while manually reinstalling all your third party apps by downloading the most recent versions of those apps.
Are you saying the "Memory Pressure" graph is showing yellow or even red? If the memory pressure is red, then that is not good. Keep in mind with recent versions of macOS the "Memory Used" will be nearly full with very little free memory since unused memory is wasted memory, but the memory pressure should rarely ever be red.
Are you running any anti-virus apps, cleaning apps, or third party security software? These types of apps are notorious for interfering with the normal operation of macOS and causing problems and none of these apps are needed on a Mac. You can try booting into Safe Mode to see whether you encounter the same problem.
Are you using any browser extensions? Some of them are known to cause problems too.
Within Activity Monitor on the Memory tab sort the "Memory" column to show the processes using the largest amounts of RAM to see what is using the memory. You may need to click "View" and select "All Processes" in case it is a system process instead of a standard app.
Are all of your third party apps compatible with an M1 Mac and with Monterey? Are you using the latest versions of those apps?
How did you setup the new Mac? Migrating from an old Intel Mac can sometimes bring over baggage and clutter as well as really old software or custom configurations that may no longer be compatible with your newer hardware or OS. Many contributors would advise only migrating the home user accounts in order to transfer just your data, while manually reinstalling all your third party apps by downloading the most recent versions of those apps.
Thank you for your thoughtful questions.
I conflated memory used and memory pressure. The memory pressure is quite low on the new 24" iMac. On the other hand, the memory used seems high in comparison to the 2015 21.5 iMac, but according to HWTech, memory used is memory not wasted. That was very philosophical.
Insofar as the other questions go, the Adobe Genuine Services were uninstalled as a result of a third party cleaning app question. It didn't decrease the memory used much, but it's a cleaning app, so it's gone.
In regards to the browser extensions question, there aren't any extensions installed yet.
Insofar as what the activity monitor was showing, I need more time to discover what the standard apps and processes are doing. At first glance, it seems that Adobe Creative Cloud is peppered throughout many of the processes, and its apps aren't turned on either. The Skype application is more concentrated.
Regarding compatibility of third party applications, I assume they're compatible. They were freshly downloaded from the internet after a software update was rendered.
Finally, during setup of this new iMac, I only transferred folders from iCloud. Everything else that was organized in the old hard drive, and not in iCloud, was not migrated. I suppose it's still a mystery why so much memory is being used, and must learn more about interpreting the view of memory usage for standard applications and system processes.
At the moment seven applications are open, Finder, Skype, Safari, iMessage, Mail, system preferences, and activity monitor. The memory being used in 10.35 GB, but the memory pressure is very low. If I turned everything but activity monitor off, the memory being used fluctuates between 6.5 GB and 8.5.
FlexSF wrote:
Insofar as the other questions go, the Adobe Genuine Services were uninstalled as a result of a third party cleaning app question. It didn't decrease the memory used much, but it's a cleaning app, so it's gone.
Don't install any anti-virus apps, cleaning apps, or third party security software as they are not needed on a Mac. These types of apps interfere with the normal operation of macOS and usually causes more problems than they solve plus they impact system performance. You may want to run EtreCheck and give it "Full Disk Access" so the report will include more details which may contain more clues. Post the report here using the "Additional Text" icon which looks like a piece of paper.
Regarding compatibility of third party applications, I assume they're compatible. They were freshly downloaded from the internet after a software update was rendered.
You should check each third party app's system requirements. Even if the system requirements for an app are "compatible" you still need to be a bit careful in regards to apps that only mention a specific OS version and newer. An app developer may have abandoned an app years ago so that "and newer" is misleading plus sometimes a developer may forget to update their system requirements or compatibility information. In addition, you should make sure the app is compatible with an M1 Mac if you have an M1 Mac. While Rosetta 2 should allow most Intel versions of macOS apps to run, there may be a few that may not. macOS Monterey has also had a lot of compatibility issues which change with each macOS update so what was working yesterday may have issues with the next patch.
must learn more about interpreting the view of memory usage for standard applications and system processes.
At the moment seven applications are open, Finder, Skype, Safari, iMessage, Mail, system preferences, and activity monitor. The memory being used in 10.35 GB, but the memory pressure is very low. If I turned everything but activity monitor off, the memory being used fluctuates between 6.5 GB and 8.5.
There may be a lot more applications running at startup & login that you realize since some of them may be running as services in the background. The apps I mentioned previously that should be avoided are prime examples, but even standard apps may also run their update checks in the background. Cloud file syncing services also work behind the scenes. The EtreCheck report will show these items.
Generally you want to memory pressure to be in the green. Once it starts getting into the yellow you may be getting close to running low on memory. Red should be avoided. However, many times I have encountered issues when the memory pressure was still green. In those cases I noticed that I was using GBs of compressed memory and GBs of Swap.
Edit: Here is the link to EtreCheck:
Do not concern yourself with RAM usage - Apple changed that purposely. If you have 16 GB of RAM and only used 8 GB, then the other 8 GB would be wasted. So, they changed the behavior and the new normal is to use everything you've got. There are a few apps that are memory "hogs" - they will use all of it and that may result in a problem if you are trying to use other memory intensive apps ; Chrome is an example. Other than that, as long as your memory pressure is not showing a problem, there is no need to try to analyze it.
Memory pressure for six hour old iMac 24" with 16GB RAM.
