Guide: How to solve Yosemite memory leaks and CPU usage

The best way to judge whether you have enough installed is top open Activity Monitor to the Memory tab and watch the MEMORY PRESSURE graph at the bottom. If it stays Green most of the time, you should be fine with what you have. Yellow indicates you should continue to watch closely and if it's Red most of the time then time to invest.

I actually was checking using the latest (October 2014) version of MenuMeters

http://www.ragingmenace.com/software/menumeters/

I'm not sure how they come up with the used a free numbers but it appears to be the sum of App Memory and Wired Memory. I didn't note what those values were before doing the SMC/PRAM reset recipe.

cblouch wrote:

I actually was checking using the latest (October 2014) version of MenuMeters

I use MenuMeters, but turned off the Memory display after upgrading to Mavericks.

I'm not sure how they come up with the used a free numbers but it appears to be the sum of App Memory and Wired Memory.

No, it's simply the difference between "used" and "total" in MenuMeters and there really is no reason to pay any attention to that number.

See the definitions for these in that document I referred you to:

• Memory Used: The total amount of memory currently used by all apps and OS X processes.
• App Memory: The total amount of memory currently used by apps and their processes.
• Wired Memory: Memory that can’t be compressed or paged out to your startup drive, so it must stay in RAM. The memory used by a process can’t be borrowed by other processes. The amount of wired memory used by an app is determined by the app's programmer.
• File Cache: Memory that was recently used by applications and is available for use by other applications. For example, if you've been using Mail and then quit Mail, the RAM that Mail was using becomes part of the file cache, which then becomes available to other apps. If you open Mail again before its file cache memory is used (overwritten) by another app, Mail opens more quickly because its file cache is converted back to app memory instead of loading all of its contents from your startup drive.
• Compressed: The amount of memory in RAM this is compressed to make more RAM memory available to other processes. Look in the Compressed Mem column to see the amount of memory compressed for each process.

The Memory Manager will first dump File Cache, then it's own System Cache and if it needs additional RAM, then start Compression and only as a last resort, page out to disk. For a more technical explanation see the ArsTechnica article "OS X 10.9 Mavericks: The Ars Technica Review" Compressed Memory.

I followed the steps to the letter. Sadly, it didn't work for me. I have 12 GB memory installed on my iMac, and immediately after booting up, 6 GB was already used up. I opened up Chrome, then my memory usage jumped to 10 GB. I just can't figure out what is causing this...

ajeclizm wrote:

I have 12 GB memory installed on my iMac, and immediately after booting up, 6 GB was already used up. I opened up Chrome, then my memory usage jumped to 10 GB.

Then the new OS X memory management system is working exactly the way it was designed. There is no reason to ever pay attention to how much RAM is in use any more, since the OS will attempt to keep it as full as possible to avoid having to read data from your drive. That saves time and energy. For a more technical explanation see the ArsTechnica article "OS X 10.9 Mavericks: The Ars Technica Review" Compressed Memory.

The only thing you should be watching is Activity Monitor->Memory tab and the MEMORY PRESSURE graph at the bottom. If it stays Green most of the time, you should be fine with what you have. Yellow indicates you should continue to watch closely and only if it's Red most of the time then time be concerned. Additional details can be found at How to use Activity Monitor.

Why watch anything ? You stated it is working fine.

So Which is it ? Working fine ? Or I think its working fine but you should keep an eye on it?

This OS is so behind the 8 ball. Very sad. If I could go back to sl on my 2013 MacPro I would.

So please keep trying to enlighten the users that don't know any better. All you have to do is read the horror story's poste.

Can I get what he's smokin......

You really have a way of always twisting words around don't you. But I can always spot a troll who never ever offers constructive advise, only criticism.

I said that memory management was working as designed which has nothing to do with how well your computer may be operating. RAM will always be as full as possible, so quit paying any attention to it and if your computer isn't working properly, figure out what you need to make it better. Purchasing more RAM may be the answer, but 12 GB should be more than adequate for most users. I can't tell from ajeclizm's comment whether there is a real problem or if they are just staring at RAM use, which is now a waste of time.

lol - I can say that the situation for me got "ok" meanwhile. I experience SBBOD with Safari after wakeup (it's like two times for about 5 seconds playing on the strands of California - or where ever). Definitely this release did not have the felling that got me from Leopard to Snow Leopard. It's more a Vista-feeling. Since I work with Swift my fans are blowing all time, getting crashes once a minute. This and that. So I don't notice what else is going on my nerves...

I Have 32 gb of ram and my system works.

How I fixed it was it was to drop back. One step forward and two steps back solved that

nitemare.

And then let's not forget the wifi problems that still rear's its ugly head.

keep trying to convince some here it's them and not the software.

If you don't have anything useful to offer, then maybe you should find something else to do. I have never observed you to do anything here but complain and that's of no use to anybody. Zero points in over eight years here says volumes to me.

What I did was tell ajeclizm to stop watching RAM use, that's all. I have no idea what the problem is or even if there is a problem, so how could I blame them for anything?

Ah, that is much more reassuring. My memory usage is maxed out, but the memory pressure gauge is all the way down. That must be a good sign then.

One question, though. Before I followed all the steps in the initial post of this thread, my web browser would occasionally freeze when attempting to load a page. Whenever that happened, I noticed that my memory usage was at max usage. I thought that that was what was causing the freezing, because as soon as I quit a few applications, the webpage would resume loading. Was that related to memory pressure, then? Too bad I didn't watch the gauge when that was happening.

The only thing useful is Apple fix this mess. As for "Points" I have better things to do unlike you, to sit here and get points. Points, (High Points) = No Life, they make me feel important. Oh those points ? LOL

When you come in here and tell everyone that Yosemite problems are going to be fixed by adding more ram is not correct. I have 32 gb in the fastest mac made. I know, I should have gone with 48, 64, maybe 128 gb.

Keep it up. Your point level will go higher and higher. (Keep thinking Points) LOL

Yuck9 wrote:

The only thing useful is Apple fix this mess.

The mess is your lack of understanding, not the management system.

Notwithstanding what Yuck9's role is here(being a troll or not) the length of this thread an the number of different posters indicate: there is something wrong. And not: there are too many stupid users out there. So yes: "Apple, go an fix the mess". I can't imagine how many frustrated users must be out there that did not find this thread for any reason.

We'll just disagree about what it is.

ajeclizm wrote:

Before I followed all the steps in the initial post of this thread, my web browser would occasionally freeze when attempting to load a page. Whenever that happened, I noticed that my memory usage was at max usage. I thought that that was what was causing the freezing, because as soon as I quit a few applications, the webpage would resume loading. Was that related to memory pressure, then? Too bad I didn't watch the gauge when that was happening.

It certainly could have been, but we'll never really know unless it happens again. When compression no longer works, the MM system will start by purging Application memory caches, shut down certain background process and eliminating System cache to make room. After that it will start to write pages of RAM out to your drive and bring them back when needed. That's when you will see the most noticeable delays in many processes, including the loading of browser pages. It could have been one of those other applications that had a memory leak or some other huge memory demand that was causing it, but your web browser and associated Web Content process (one per tab) that are probably most often to blame. Many web pages asked to be refreshed automatically and are always updating ads, etc., so some of this depends on how many tabs are open and what pages are doing in the background at the time. Activity Monitor should be able to help you identify the memory hogs as well as hung processes.