Lion - Memory Usage Problems

Mavericks, after four hours of work, 1,55 GB inactive memory, everything is slow, same old crap. It's time to begin searching for the new, better OS.

I have to ask: did you wipe your drive and do a clean install? What kinds of third-party software are you using?Windows 7 or 8 runs excellent on Mac hardware using BootCamp if you've cannot overcome your issues.

I have a 2009 MBP and a 2012 Mac Pro and my memory issues have only subsided. I did have a serious issue recently with Safari but I'm sure it was due to the video plug-in being used at the web-site I was at - NFL stream 😉

Mac Pro, up for 12hrs. with a few programs opened, used and closed. Now, Safari (3 tabs), iTunes Internet streaming and Mail. See below:

I have not installed the Maverik yet but had terrible problems with last version.

To resolve some issues A CLEAN install.

To resolve more issues install the Memory managers from the app store.

To resolve a FAT Safari and make her lightening fast - install the developers version and ALL my memory issues as long as I kept the managers installed - went away... about 70% immediately and the other 30% over time got better.

I use Mac mini (2011), 8 GB RAM. Maverick install like upgrade. Use only tipical software (mostly Apple) + . Over 1GB inactive is for my taste too much. But, my system became slow too.

It's a bad OS if need additional Memory manager.

You need to start fresh, at least.

Backup up your drive and follow the directions exactly from the link below.

Once you boot from the USB drive, go to Disk Utilities and [first] partition your drive to a single GUID partition, then for good measure, perform an erase and name your drive "Macintosh HD" - or "SSD" if your using a Solid-State Drive (personal preference). Then proceed to install Mavericks. Good Luck!

http://lifehacker.com/how-to-create-an-os-x-mavericks-usb-installation-drive-145 0280026

Thank's. I will try.

@nkko I am reserving judgement. There are two positive signs I have seen so far.

The first is that Safari is now properly running web pages in separate processes! That means, if you close the window the memory is freed up which was not the case before. Also it seems to be using a lot less memory separate from that fact, although that is harder to see for sure. But I can see the safari processes comign and going, which is very good news.

The second promising thing is that on my Mac Mini, which is the only computer left which does NOT have an SSD, I am doing a Time Machine backup and file cache size is staying in the range I would think makes a certain amount of sense. So my fingers are crossed that I won't have to switch to an SSD for that Mac Mini after all. In fact, even though running a time machine backup I was able to launch Aperture and it came up in a reasonable amount of time. It's still way too soon to be sure but there are positive signs from my point of view.

We will know more after the time machine backup finishes. It's taking it's time: it's a 10Gb backup and it's only halfway done after an hour. But I think there's a lot of little files ...

Been running for several days now. I have not swapped a single byte yet. Usually I am swapping 2Gb after a few hours.

That's on my 8Gb MacBook Pro.

My 4Gb Mac Mini is the same. Zero swapping.

It hasn't been like this since Snow Leopard. I think it's an improvement.

Meanwhile, Safari's memory leaks are vastly improved as well. Every time you close a window the memory is freed up. There is a single safari process that sticks around longer and it slowly gains over time and you will need to quit Safari completely from time to time. But's nothing like the old days where I would routinely see 1.5Gb real memory for Safari alone, after just a morning or afternoon using it.

I for one am very pleased with Mavericks. VERY pleased.

Hope your experience mirrors mine.

I totally agree that memory performance has improved. While there are some third-party apps (namely CCC) that occasionally hog and/or leak memory - I'm no expert, just going by the numbers I experience.

To summarize my setup: 2012 Mac Pro with OS X on an SSD and 16 GB of memory. At this very moment I have my usual programs open - Safari, Mail and iTunes. Here's a shot of my memory after 4 days and two hours.

Also, on a side note, I just got home and my wife is the only other user, very infrequently. I know she was logged on earlier this evening. This morning, I was [again] experimenting with Vox, its settings and playing some FLAC files. I got to a point where, along with my 3 usual apps running, Vox helped get me down to about 19 MB 😮 of "free" memory, then I closed Vox. It took almost an hour to get 2 GB of "free" memory back when I finally logged out.

While sometimes I do max out my memeory, I believe Mavericks is doing much better. I like it a lot. Especially the new looks and features. I think what Apple has been trying to achieve is a balance between allocating as much memory as possible to make things run quickly and smoothly, yet knowing when to let go. I'm sure if my system had just 8 GB of memory I would be just as happy and I would not currently be seeing 4.03 GB of "Active" memory with just my 3 apps open.

can someone please tell me how to monitor the RAM for each separate Safari extension it's using? it's impossible to do this by process of elimination without dedicating an entire project to the cause, b/c the effects of what happens to cause Safari Web Content to go up to 3-7GB of RAM in activity monitor takes some time (a day or so) and is dependent on what types of pages are loaded and what i do on those pages. but the performance is just ridiculous. Safari is ruining the OS's overall speed and greatly affecting my work b/c of how slow Safari & the system is running.

i recently added 4GB RAM just for the Safari RAM monster eating up all my memory and it didn't help at all. it uses all my system's memory until there's none left and thne my computer won't function anymore. i'm using 6.0.5 b/c 6.1 was unusable after removing the bookmarks manager.

@shape - You need to quit safari when you see it using all this memory. Quitting safari frees it all up. It's annoying but it's a simple solution.

You are right - I have found that sometimes Safari gets slow. It just scrolls slowly, it is just plain old slow. And when that happens I go to the activity monitor and I see that it is using between 1 and 2 Gb of RAM and that's when it starts happening. And it affects other aspects of the system as well.

So I just quit it. CMD-Q. Check Activity Monitor and search for Safari in the search bar and there should be NOTHING in the list at that point.

Adding that extra RAM would only postpone the inevitable.

So - say it with me: when Safari uses too much RAM just quit it. Not to be confused with closing the window by pressing the "x" close button. You must select Quit from the menu. And when you do there should be no Safari anything in the process list in Activity Monitor.

It sounds like you have not upgraded to Mavericks. A lot of these problems are fixed in Mavericks. Closing a window in Safari now DOES free up most of the memory. Still there is an issue which causes the parent process to slowly leak, so eventually you have to quit Safari even in Mavericks. It's a shame: Chrome figured all this stuff out years ago and they use the same (or very similar) engines underneath the covers.