How do I clear up RAM on my Macbook Pro?

Question

Level 1

2 points

How do I clear up RAM on my Macbook Pro?

I have been informed that clearing up my Activity Monitor on my Mac would help make my Mac run faster and work better. When I have nothing but the Activity Monitor open, this is what appears:

I would like to delete/stop any that are not necessary for my computer. I do have a couple applications installed on my Mac that did not originally come on here, so I realize that I will need to keep those as well. Are there any that I can delete without causing my computer to crash or not work correctly?

MacBook Pro, OS X Yosemite (10.10.1)

Posted on Jan 10, 2015 9:37 PM

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Answer 1

Niel

Level 10

741,863 points

Jan 10, 2015 9:40 PM in response to xallyx

You shouldn't quit items in the Activity Monitor just to clean up; this should only be done when troubleshooting specific issues. Logging out and back in or restarting the computer will basically accomplish the same thing without risking trouble.

(119954)

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Answer 2

Allan Jones

Level 9

78,266 points

Jan 10, 2015 10:36 PM in response to xallyx

You are using pre-OS 10.9 RAM metrics to judge a computer running 10.10.

Many people worry about this because they do not know that, starting with Mac OS10.9 Mavericks, Apple changed how the system uses RAM. The system will reserve all the free RAM it can and hold it for ready access, rapidily assigning it to new tasks coming online. It is a very fast and efficient system. It is now longer like how we judged RAM usage in the past. Adding RAM or "cleaning" RAM wont make much difference in the fact that "Memory Used" looks "funny" since the changes were implemented..

The new metrics are "Memory Pressure" and "Swaps." Yours are fine--don't obsess over it. I have 12GB RAM in an iMac i7 and look how its RAM chart reads:

I tripled the as-shipped RAM from 4GB to 12GB and the system still takes advantage of nearly all that. However, there are no swaps and the memory pressure is minimal. The computer runs very fast even with multiple apps open. There is not problem with your computer.

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