Some of the programs I use on my mac take up a lot of memory over time.

raisin291 wrote:

I have a base model M1 MacBook air and I've noticed that some of the apps I use take up a lot of memory,

how do I stop them using up so much memory in the first place?

Are you having some issue?

Otherwise I would ignore the RAM usage. Unused RAM is wasted RAM.

Quitting apps, relaunching apps, rebooting the machine is pretty basic...

Unified memory process does its best to manage memory for you—let the macOS worry about RAM usage.

Your computer only has 8GB of RAM to work with—this is the bare minimum today—the option to buy more RAM was at the point of purchase.

The Unified Memory feature of the macOS allows applications to share memory resources. This improves performance by allowing multiple applications to access the same memory location simultaneously. Unified Memory is not supported by all applications.

raisin291 wrote:

There isn't much of an issue other than slowness but I found it weird why some of the apps use up so much of the memory for seemingly no reason.

Quit some running apps you are not using if you experience slowness. Not all applications are optimized to help you out—the Netflix interface is third party I can not help you with. Close open tabs in your browser...

Swap files is VM (virtual memory)— this is your RAM using SSD storage space to help manage all running apps.

SSD work most efficiently when you have 20-25% free storage at all times— this helps with VM and efficiency of swap process.

If you had a memory issues it would be RED, not what your memory pressure is showing YELLOW.

VM is compensating for your low amount of physical RAM - for what you are demanding.

I see no issue.

Compressed memory management was introduced way back in macOS 10.9

you can read more: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/10/os-x-10-9/17/

Right now and from pic above, see 6 Different Websites open and active.

That is, not counting Web Site Not Appearing the Activity Monitor, if any

Each is using between 139 MB ( smallest ) and all the way up to 4.34 GB ( Largest )

Q - " how do I stop them using up so much memory in the first place? "

A - Cut down on the number of Open Sites that run at the same time.

A - Here, a more learned Contributor can perhaps explain better ? 🤞

Each Open Website, especially if ruining Heavily configured javascript code will demand Memory and sometimes over burden the CPU and suck up RAM ( Memory )

raisin291 wrote:

When quitting and reopening the same apps however, the amount of memory used decreases even when doing the same things, is this normal?

This is normal. Memory is dynamic it is not static.

I see no issue.