Level 1

12 points

MacBook Air memory leaks following the Sonoma Update

Any updates on when Apple will address the MAJOR issue of memory leaks ( AGAIN, this happened in Montery also ) on MacOS Sonoma, I have had nothing but crashes caused by memory leaks since upgrading and have several clients with BRAND NEW iMAC's and MACBook Air units with the same issues. This is CRAZY and Apple should have nevre released an OS with this BUG, especially since this is NOT the first time this has been an issue. Is anyone at Apple testing thigns anymore ?

[Re-Titled By Moderator]

MacBook Air (M1, 2020)

Posted on Oct 17, 2023 11:41 AM

Top-ranking reply

devyre

Level 1

8 points

Posted on May 23, 2024 4:23 PM

I've found a reliable way to reproduce this issue. I was working with Metal 3 to port my game engine to macOS, and noticed major memory leaks while resizing the application window. After hours of debugging I figured I might just revisit the "Hello Triangle" example directly from Apple. That leaked memory too.

So, for anyone with the will to reproduce this issue:

Obtain the official "Hello Triangle" Metal example from using_a_render_pipeline_to_render_primitives
Use a MacBook (maybe a Mac Studio is also affected?) with external monitors.
Resize the "Hello Triangle" window on an external monitor.

A few notes:

It does not happen when resizing the application on the built-in monitor.

My monitors are both 4K@240Hz (32GS95UE-B), which may be another factor important for this?

I am using HDMI 2.1 on one and DP 1.4 on the other, and both suffer from this issue.

The issue disappears if I comment out the `presentDrawable` call in the "Hello Triangle" example.

I would also like to make clear that I have resized the official "Hello Triangle" example application so much, that it ended up locking up my system (making my cursor stutter, music choppy, and inevitably freezing forcing me to do a full restart).

Hopefully this information allows for a prompt fix. I also own a Mac Studio with an M2 Ultra, which I will be testing this on shortly, so I might edit or follow up to specify if this is a laptop-specific issue.

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33 replies

fred-nbs

Level 1

15 points

Mar 5, 2024 4:10 AM in response to Luis Sequeira1

I would sooo much like to find the culprit.

I'm also connecting my Mac to a TB4 dock using a TB4 cable.

I've done the test to connect it directly to the monitor (6K DELL U3224K) using that TB4 cable, and that doesn't change anything.

I wonder if using an HDMI cable or DV would change something.

The issue really exhibits when playing full screen videos (using VLC, QuickTime, ...) on external monitor. You can literally see the WindowServer process eating more & more RAM in real time :/

dialabrain

Level 10

135,527 points

Oct 17, 2023 3:12 PM in response to lloyd_dawson

Most likely caused by software installed that is not 100% Sonoma compatible.

Mar 4, 2024 5:28 PM in response to lloyd_dawson

I have a pretty new mac 2023 MacBook pro with m3max chip and 36gb of memory, I've been noticing with about 10 safari tabs open and iMessages it will start swapping after running for a day or so. Reboot and it's back to using about 12gb of memory. There is definitely something off, that needs to be fixed.

Mar 5, 2024 3:46 AM in response to matherman

matherman wrote:

I have a pretty new mac 2023 MacBook pro with m3max chip and 36gb of memory, I've been noticing with about 10 safari tabs open and iMessages it will start swapping after running for a day or so. Reboot and it's back to using about 12gb of memory. There is definitely something off, that needs to be fixed.

https://discussions.apple.com/content/attachment/35876691-ae1f-4b34-8b84-fc99f7016613

There is nothing abnormal in the image you showed.

By design, macOS will try to use as much memory as is available. Unused memory serves no purpose. Keeping cached files, or compressing memory of currently not in use applications, is what the OS does. A small portion of swap space is ok. (Of course it would not be ok to have several GB of swap). A very useful indicatio is that memory pressure: low and green is good.

Mar 5, 2024 4:36 AM in response to fred-nbs

fred-nbs wrote:

I would sooo much like to find the culprit.

I'm also connecting my Mac to a TB4 dock using a TB4 cable.

I've done the test to connect it directly to the monitor (6K DELL U3224K) using that TB4 cable, and that doesn't change anything.

I wonder if using an HDMI cable or DV would change something.

The issue really exhibits when playing full screen videos (using VLC, QuickTime, ...) on external monitor. You can literally see the WindowServer process eating more & more RAM in real time :/

As an additional data point: does this happen only when mirroring the displays, or also when using as extended desktop?

lloyd_dawson Author

Level 1

12 points

Oct 17, 2023 2:58 PM in response to John Galt

All ready have been chatting with them, there are lots of other reports to the same issue.

Mal-S

Level 5

5,062 points

Dec 2, 2023 3:18 AM in response to lloyd_dawson

Do you use Chrome? This is known to be a memory hog.

Apr 10, 2024 3:16 PM in response to fred-nbs

I am experiencing this same issue.

Im running Sonoma 14.5 on an M2 Pro MacBook Pro and have my lid closed while connected to two external Dell U3219Qs.

After maybe 10 minutes of work the system is using swapped memory and the machine is unusable. However without the monitors and the lid open, this issue doesn't arise.

lloyd_dawson Author

Level 1

12 points

Oct 19, 2023 2:34 PM in response to Richard Gaitskell

Very similar issues, see LOTS of complaints on several Apple boards. Have even ahd the MacBook Air totally LOCK UP many times and only a HARD SHUTDOWN will recover things. Have done a FRESH install with same issues. Another Apple OS issue that should never have been released.... wonder how long for a FIX this time around.....

eschiss1

Level 1

14 points

Dec 2, 2023 3:13 AM in response to lloyd_dawson

My iMac 2019 running the Sonoma update issued a few days ago claims to have 130 or so GB free in Finder while Disk Utility shows only ca.25-30 GB free, and trashing fairly large amounts of things only seems to make both worse.

Note: df -h seems to confirm the latter.

Mar 5, 2024 7:54 AM in response to fred-nbs

fred-nbs wrote:

Exact same issue with a proper HDMI cable directly connected to monitor.

I'm convinced this is an OS issue

Very possibly. By the way, most people seem to suffer this more with mirroring than extending, so I was kind of hoping that switching would alleviate the problem.

FWIW, I have not seen this in my Mac (Intel 16" MBP), whether mirroring or extending.

I have access to an M1 Max at the office. It has only one display. I did test it extending to my MBP using Airplay, and it too worked without issue, though.

These issues that affect some but not others are harder to trace. I hope this gets resolved soon..

dialabrain

Level 10

135,527 points

Oct 17, 2023 1:56 PM in response to lloyd_dawson

Have been running Sonoma since June on my Macs without leaks or crashes.

Oct 28, 2023 8:40 PM in response to lloyd_dawson

Yeah my machine has 8gb of ram and one or two low resource apps running ive got less than 300mb free.

eschiss1

Level 1

14 points

Dec 2, 2023 4:29 AM in response to Mal-S

In my case yes, and Safari, and neither, even with a decreasing number of active visible programs (but the output of the small top is weirdly intriguing- I could try to cut and paste it?)

Dec 4, 2023 2:42 PM in response to lloyd_dawson

I have memory leak on my hard drive despite I've deleted a ton of various files and the apps occupy an amount of space of 935GB and my computer has an 512 GB SSD

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MacBook Air memory leaks following the Sonoma Update