On this M1 Macbook Air it's been difficult to control the memory use on and off the computer. It looks like I have the same data in iCloud Drive that's ALSO on the computer itself. This device has 256 GB of space, and the memory use is very high. I'm looking at getting a LaCie hard drive soon, and there are many things that need deleting, but I'm not sure how to do all that.
Don't confuse storage space (drive capacity, 256GB) with memory. They are two different and unrelated things.
If the storage of your computer is running low because you have too much stuff saved on the drive, the fix is to do as you plan and get that external hard drive. A drive that becomes too full will cause the Mac to stop booting. Ideally you want to always have a minimum of 10%-15% of the startup drive capacity free.
You'll have to decide what stuff you absolutely need/want to keep on the computer's internal drive and what stuff you can store externally. Anything you have saved in your Home folder, including things in the Documents, Downloads, Music & Pictures folders, can safely be kept on the external drive.
The stuff that takes up the most space on the drive is videos, music and pictures and downloaded items. All of those can be stored on an ext drive. Move these things to the external drive and then delete them from the internal to free up that space.
Don't concern yourself with anything outside of your Home folder. There's nothing there but stuff required by System to run the computer.
Importantly, if you aren't doing so already, you should use another external drive and back up your files with the Time Machine application. A simple fact of computing is that if you don't have data backups, then you will lose something. The Time Machine app is already installed on your Mac.
Don't confuse storage space (drive capacity, 256GB) with memory. They are two different and unrelated things.
If the storage of your computer is running low because you have too much stuff saved on the drive, the fix is to do as you plan and get that external hard drive. A drive that becomes too full will cause the Mac to stop booting. Ideally you want to always have a minimum of 10%-15% of the startup drive capacity free.
You'll have to decide what stuff you absolutely need/want to keep on the computer's internal drive and what stuff you can store externally. Anything you have saved in your Home folder, including things in the Documents, Downloads, Music & Pictures folders, can safely be kept on the external drive.
The stuff that takes up the most space on the drive is videos, music and pictures and downloaded items. All of those can be stored on an ext drive. Move these things to the external drive and then delete them from the internal to free up that space.
Don't concern yourself with anything outside of your Home folder. There's nothing there but stuff required by System to run the computer.
Importantly, if you aren't doing so already, you should use another external drive and back up your files with the Time Machine application. A simple fact of computing is that if you don't have data backups, then you will lose something. The Time Machine app is already installed on your Mac.
Dynamicious wrote:
On this M1 Macbook Air it's been difficult to control the memory use on and off the computer. It looks like I have the same data in iCloud Drive that's ALSO on the computer itself.
When you synchronize data via iCloud, it will often be stored on devices that synchronize to iCloud, as well. You need to have the data on the device itself in order to actually use it.
In the case of iCloud Drive,
It sounds like you're referring to storage space, not RAM (working memory).
There is no magic way to free up storage space. You need to delete apps or data that you no longer need or move data to external storage.
I think what I'm worried about is everything in my Apple Drive and on the Macbook itself. I'm not sure if that's the case or not.
What is the EXACT error message you’re getting?
Fix Low Memory on Macbook Air M1 2020
