RAM storage being used up.

asad_fatimi wrote:

An update: signing out of iCloud and force-quitting these processes from activity monitor seems to resolve the issue and they don't come back. As such, it is likely this is some glitch with respect to the "focus" mode on all my other Apple devices syncing through iCloud, although I have the setting for sharing focus mode across devices disabled on my Mac. Signing back into iCloud doesn't seem to have restarted these issues (it's been 30 minutes).

Thanks for the update asad_fatimi— good computing

Zainisgayafwith2 wrote:

My MacBook Pro (M1 Pro, 16GB RAM, Sonoma 14.1) has been facing a problem for the last two days where two processes named “donotdisturbd” and “suggestd” take up almost all of RAM storage.

My laptop had suddenly started becoming slow despite me having 500 GB still available on the hard drive, so I opened activity monitor to see if the problem was regarding memory pressure and saw these two processes taking up almost 100% of the CPU usage and a cumulative 13GB of RAM.

Although force-quitting these processes from activity monitor temporarily frees up the RAM again without any changes in the function of the laptop, they spontaneously restart in the background and slowly keep using up more RAM till I get a prompt to force quit some of my open applications to free up RAM. I have tried force-quitting the processes almost 9 times now but within 15 minutes of each time I do this, the processes take up so much RAM that I get the prompt that all my memory is being used. I have attached a screenshot below of my activity monitor screen just 8 minutes after force quitting both “donotdisturbd” and “suggestd”. Restarting the laptop, shutting down and restarting it, and opening the laptop from safety mode have not worked. Any advice on what I should do?

A SafeBoot Use safe mode on your Mac - Apple Support will sort many anomalies

Does a quick disk repair before it fully boots up, and certain system caches get cleared and rebuilt, third party system modifications and system accelerations are disabled.

Login and test. Reboot as normal and test. Caches get rebuilt automatically.

This test will tell you if third party interference; most* extensions etc are not loaded in safe boot mode.

Third-party sync software like: OneDrive, GoogleDrive, BackBlaze or DropBox have been known to cause issues—try disabling these cloud based apps and compare your results.

unplug all non-essential third party peripherals when testing

Uninstall all third party apps that are Cleaners/Optimizers/VPN/Anti-Virus

all known to cause issues on the macOS

RAM is not the issue here—compare a RAM issue:

First, I think you may have some confusion between RAM and storage. RAM is the operating memory that is provided by the installed RAM. Storage is the space on the hard drive with accepts the installation of apps and files. Only the Disk Utility app can give you an accurate report of the HD space used or available. If you need more space, you either must delete some files to create the space or you can install an external disk to copy files onto so the can then be removed form the HD to clear needed space. As For RAM, some computers can have more RAM installed and some cannot. Some RAM is reclaimed by restarting the computer and by emptying the browser's history.