AppleSpell.service excessive RAM usage?

Question

Level 1

10 points

AppleSpell.service excessive RAM usage?

Hi all,

Since upgrading to Sierra on my 2011 13" MBA, I have noticed AppleSpell.service is consuming between 500MB-2GB of memory. This is only a 4GB machine so it's forcing more swapfile use etc. Most of the time this service is using more RAM than anything else running on the machine!

I do not recall seeing this prior to Sierra.

Suggestions? Bug? Configurable settings?

Thanks!

Chris C

MacBook Air (13-inch Mid 2011), macOS Sierra (10.12), recent new SSD and full reinstall

Posted on Sep 27, 2016 9:47 AM

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Answer 1

sterling r

Community Specialist

Sep 28, 2016 11:35 AM in response to campbellcj

Hello campbellcj,

Thank you for bringing up your problem with AppleSpell.service on your MacBook Air since the upgrade of Sierra here in the
Apple Support Communities. I understand how important is it to have your available RAM at all times. Here are the things I would like to check.

The first thing we want to ensure is that all your data is safe. You can make a backup using Time Machine and an external hard drive. Use this article for help making a backup for your Mac: Use Time Machine to back up or restore your Mac .

Once your data is safe, I recommend you boot into safe mode. Safe mode will tell us if the issue is related to a startup item or plugins, and sometimes is all that is necessary to correct some problems. When you boot to safe mode, log in to your account and check if the issue is also occurring in safe mode or not. This help article may help you with the steps for safe mode: Try safe mode if your Mac doesn't finish starting up . If everything is working properly again, but then is not working after you restart the Mac to leave safe mode and boot back into your user account, please check the section titled "If an issue doesn't happen in safe mode" for troubleshooting steps.

If the issue is also happening in safe mode, you want to test this in another test administrator user account on your Mac. A test user will let us know if the issue is isolated to your account, or system wide. Please check this help article: How to test an issue in another user account on your Mac . If the issue is being experienced in the test user also, then we need to check the section titled "If an issue happens in more than one user account" from the article provided above which will leads you to this help article: Mac OS X: How to troubleshoot a software issue .

Thanks again and have a great rest of your day.

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Answer 2

campbellcj Author

Level 1

10 points

Oct 4, 2016 12:12 PM in response to sterling r

Thanks for your reply! Getting back to this now and will try your safe mode idea next.

Note that part or all of the issue might actually be bugs in Activity Monitor and/or a non-intuitive UI there. See the screen shots from this morning. The process summary display shows a wildly different story than the detail dialog. But both look seriously questionable!

compared to...

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Answer 3

baronmax

Level 1

4 points

Dec 17, 2016 5:29 PM in response to campbellcj

I beat you! I also have seen the same but my VM is showing as 96.60GB!

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