Memory usage really high Macbook Pro

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Level 1

5 points

Memory usage really high Macbook Pro

Hi all,

I have a 2012 Macbook Pro on macOS Sierra 10.12.6. I guess it's getting decently old at this point but recently i've been noticing a bit of a performance decrease. In Activity monitor I noticed that with nothing open, it is hanging around 4-5 GB of Memory used out of 8 total GB available in physical memory. This doesn't seem right...

There is ~2 GB of cached files. App memory is 4 GB. Wired memory is 1.6 GB and compressed is 150 mb.

Obviously I have chrome open right now, but the chrome tasks only account for ~750mb or less. The only other big task is kernel_task at 870mb. Why would my computer be using so much memory without any applications open? I just restarted it a few minutes ago as well.

MacBook Pro with Retina display, macOS Sierra (10.12.6)

Posted on May 29, 2018 8:49 PM

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Answer 1

Eric Root

Level 10

685,341 points

May 30, 2018 8:12 AM in response to Jpedow94

Try running this program in your normal user account, then copy and paste the output in a reply. The program was created by etresoft, a frequent contributor. Please use copy and paste as screen shots can be hard to read. Click “Share Report” button in the toolbar, select “Copy Report” and then paste into a reply. This will show what is running on your computer. No personal information is shown. You can run the report for free at least once, but if you run it several times, at some point it will ask you to pay a license fee.

Etrecheck – System Information

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Answer 2

leroydouglas

Level 10

201,010 points

May 30, 2018 9:20 AM in response to Jpedow94

Jpedow94 wrote:

8 total GB available

I suspect memory is not the problem. Since El Capitain 2013 compressed memory is the new way.

Unused memory is wasted memory.

You can read more here:OS X 10.9 Mavericks: The Ars Technica Review | Ars Technica

You can look at memory pressure in the Activity Monitor

Applications/Utilities/Activity Monitor.app let it run for awhile, If you do not see "red" everything is working normally and not starving for memory: How to use Activity Monitor on your Mac

MacBook Pro (15-inch Mid 2012), macOS (10.13.4), i7 480GB SSD 16GB RAM iPhoneSE iOS11.3 Parallels13.0.1, HP OfficeJet Pro 8620

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Memory usage really high Macbook Pro

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