macOS Sequoia Massive memory leak

Many users are experiencing similar issues....

Sometimes, resetting the System Management Controller (SMC) can help resolve memory issues...... To do this, shut down your Mac, then hold down the Shift + Control + Option keys along with the power button for about 10 seconds, then release everything and turn your Mac back on. Also, check for any software updates, as Apple often rolls out patches for these kinds of bugs.

If the issue continues, consider running the Activity Monitor to see which processes are consuming the most memory. You can force quit any unnecessary apps or processes that seem to be misbehaving. As a last resort, you might want to create a new user account on your Mac to see if the memory issue persists there—sometimes, user-specific settings can cause conflicts.

MacDataSaviour wrote:

Many users are experiencing similar issues....

Sometimes, resetting the System Management Controller (SMC) can help resolve memory issues...... To do this, shut down your Mac, then hold down the Shift + Control + Option keys along with the power button for about 10 seconds,

That will only work on certain Intel Macs. The OP has two Apple Silicon Macs.

And, those instructions may not work on some Intel Macs. You should just link to the Apple published SMC reset procedures.

iceboooks wrote:

How to check on Mac for memory leak? I don't experience major memory issue after upgrading to Sequoia.

If you’re not experiencing issues, there’s seemingly not much point in looking around.

If that was misphrasing and you are seeing issues, see the previous replies in this thread for the tooling commonly used.

I remember I used to use a Macbook Intel (2019) with 8GB RAM and it used to work so good (used until Aug 2023). I used to run dozens of tabs on Firefox and many other applications in parallel. Now I have Pro M3 and RAM consumption is 15GB+ on just PyCharm and merely 15 tabs on Firefox. Whats going on?

Same issue here. And I believe this is related to iPhone Mirroring App.

I tried to keep away from that for 2 days, then the memory usage is acceptable even I connected to two 4k external displays (3 displays if internal included).

But when I accidentally clicked on the iPhone notification on my Mac this morning, the memory usage of window server went up instantly and keeps growing. Also that usage never decrease since then.

I am using macOS 18.0.1 on M1max MacBook Pro, so I deeply believe the memory leak problem is still not fixed.

I have had two system crashes in the last week, previously, flawless performance. I see in the crashlog that process parralalsM was faulting out - I ran all app updates available, restarted the VM fresh, left the machine overnight with my regular open apps. This morning it was responsive again, but after a while the system initiated a process manager window I've never seen before stating system memory is full. In the list of processes (mostly in the 100s of Mbs usage), Firefox was at 57Gb. Clearly, closed Firefox, and system is still running. I'll report to Mozilla and Apple in case there is an issue there.

Hi there,

I have done clean installation of Sequoia and installed all apps what I used in Sonoma. As soon as I installed I have paid attention the memory usage doubled. Normally I was running about 8-10GB and occasionally 15GB. Now I have stable 20-24GB without running any of memory hungry apps (tomcat, postgresql, java apps). Would Apple consider and check this issue soon?

Yep mine too. Open your Activity Monitor so you can see which app is causing the problem. Although some here think it's one specific app, I disagree. My main problem was with the dynamic background and screen saver. I switched to a basic background and disabled the screensaver for now until this gets resolved. Now my problem only occurs once or twice a day and it's my Citrix app causing the issue. At least I can work for now.

HELP US APPLE!!!!!!

I actually have the same issue! Keeps bumping to quite alot

MacBook Pro 14, M3 Pro

Simulator + Xcode = No emails, no Database manager, hardly Safari and Canvas of Xcode is not working

Me too. （M1 Air）

And there's a started with qemu- process used more than 10GB, I killed it and nothing happened

Yep, that was the correct approach to take. I just had to bring it forward since your suggestion seemed to be ignored.

👍

Turns out it was one or more Safari extensions causing the memory grab. I don’t know which one but the system has settled down.

Maybe you don't use iphone mirroring at all?