Diagnostic and usage has low memory logs

I get at least three of these a day with the largest process being the AppStore. Haven't had anything crash and it seems fast, wondering if it's anything I should worry about.

I can't explain why you're getting these low memory logs, or whether they really mean anything serious. But I can explain some of what's listed in the log.

You're right that storage and memory (RAM) are different; this is just as true on an iOS device as on a PC or Mac. In your case, you have an iPad 3rd generation, which comes with 1 GB of memory. The low memory log is intended for developers, and the "pages" have nothing to do with web pages. They are "memory pages", small fixed-size blocks of memory which are managed by the operating system. The OS divides the entire memory of the machine into these pages and parcels them out to running applications. (This is normal practice on pretty much any modern computer system.) In iOS, these pages are 4 kilobytes in size, so your machine has a total of 262144 pages of memory (1 GB divided by 4 KB). A small fraction of these pages will be reserved by the operating system for its own needs.

The list of processes at the end of the log shows what was running on the system at the time. It includes running user applications as well as various background system services which are hidden from the user. The column "Count resident pages" lists how many pages of memory each running process was currently using. Facebook is the largest process, using 48165 pages.

The section above the list of processes is a breakdown of the memory by how it's being used. The relatively low number of "Free pages" is not unusual; free pages are memory pages which are kept completely unused, just in case something needs extra memory, and most modern operating systems try to keep as much memory in use as possible. After all, if you've paid for the memory in the system, you want it to be doing something useful. If some process needs more memory, but there aren't enough free pages available, the operating system will check other memory pages in use to see if any of them can be freed up somehow.

As for the rest of the breakdown, "active pages" shows pages currently in active use by some process (meaning that the process has used them very recently), and "inactive pages" shows pages which are in use by a process but which haven't been referred to very recently (these might potentially be freed up). "Wired pages" are memory pages which are currently being used by the operating system and cannot be freed under any circumstances. While it's normal for some pages to be wired, a large number of them may make it harder for the operating system to find enough free memory. "Purgeable pages", on the other hand, are pages which it's perfectly OK for the operating system to free whenever memory is needed.

Unfortunately, I can't figure out what "Throttled pages" refers to. It has something to do with iOS's memory management, but I can't find an explanation of the terminology.

If any of this seems opaque or obscure, I apologize. Operating system memory management is a very complex topic, but I tried to keep this discussion reasonably understandable.

Just wanted to add a thanks for this post, very informative.🙂

Are you the developer of the apps showing up in the log?

Are you experiencing issues such as crashes and understand what the log is telling you?

No?

Then why are you looking at the logs?

Signed in exclusively to say thanks for that. Only useful thing I have ever read on this site. Informative and thorough- GREATLY appreciated.

The last few days are the first time I've received these low memory logs, could these be the reason I am unable to update or download new apps? Even though I have plenty of storage.

I have the same problem as everybody here.what im ****** of really is how an ipad3 cant take a few processing.. Ive closed all available apps opened, almost cleared out all my photos, deleted games ive been cultivating for weeks and yet here i am contemplating over what to do everytime my fb crashes.. I seem to think the great ipad3 is not so great afterall and so maybe the rest of those product that gave us this problem. My logs are so full of these reports over crashes and low memory. And after reading all your comments people, i realize there is nothing really i can do.. Crap.

That was informative but its not helping. Made me realize i paid a product that offers a good experience and yet acts the other way. It cant even tolerate a few tasks for **** sakes. Apple got me fooled.