After upgrading to macOS Tahoe, now the WindowServer app starts taking up a lot of RAM and Mac keeps constantly has 2 GB+ swap, and rarely 13 GB swap used. And purgeable space is around 5 GB usually
MacBook Air, macOS 26.1
Turn off STAGE MANAGER (biggest improvement)
System Settings → Desktop & Dock → Stage Manager → OFF
Many users see WindowServer drop from 10 GB → 3–4 GB instantly.
How does the memory pressure graph look like?
If it is green, and there is noticeable slow down in your mac operations, then there is probably nothing to worry.
I noticed that at times the memory usage appears rather high, but the "Real Memory" is only a few hundred MBs, and the memory pressure stays green.
Wllwlwlwlwlwlw wrote:
After upgrading to macOS Tahoe, now the WindowServer app starts taking up a lot of RAM and Mac keeps constantly has 2 GB+ swap, and rarely 13 GB swap used. And purgeable space is around 5 GB usually
A swap file is part of the system’s virtual memory. It’s used when your Mac runs out of available physical RAM. Instead of crashing, macOS temporarily moves less-active data from RAM to storage (SSD) in the form of swap files.
Purgeable Space ?
Purgeable Space is controlled by the Operating System and not the user
Get detailed information about a disk in Disk Utility on Mac
Much like my colleague @ Luis Sequeira1
Active Monitor >> View >> View ALL Processes
Using about 180 MB of Real Memory
Refer image below on a M4 Desktop 16 GB Unified RAM / 500 GB SSD drive
Plenty of Free Space
WindowServer taking up 10GB+ space
