Bloated OS?

Maybe if you post the EtreCheck report here, someone might be able to spot something to help you.

As with all recent versions, Mac OS X will attempt to use as much RAM as it can. If your are simply worried about those numbers, it is NOT a problem.

I am just making a guess about the killed tasks. You haven't posted your EtreCheck report so I'm just listing the things that could cause EtreCheck to complain. Perhaps this is something I need to fix. If so, now would be a very good time to post that EtreCheck report because I plan to push out an update tomorrow.

For the record, the operating system will kill its own tasks when it starts to run out of RAM. It will do that before it gets to swap space. I think this started in 10.10 or 10.11. I forget. Well, it definitely started in iOS.

We could maybe tell more if you posted an etrecheck report.

It has also been two weeks since you were requested to post an EtreCheck report which you have not done yet. As soon as you do that maybe someone might help you.

BTW, it sounds like an 8 GB machine even with a Fusion drive is not going to cut it any longer.

I would agree, but ut depends what or how much you want to do, & of coarse RAM is 5 times faster than an SSD even.

I look at 8 GB of RAM as a minimum, sort of like "C'mon down we've got new cars for s little s $99 down".;)

i have no idea if you have a clue what your talking about so it's hard to comment

when you close apps use "Quit" not "Close" or they will stay in memory and consume it (this allows quick re-opening but does consume memory)

some apps can consume allot of memory depending on how they are used. your 1password program i have no idea. it's not an App Store app i gather. i can't say if it's even wise to use it (if it works with the CURRENT version you've updated to)

UNIX operating systems were killing off processes when under duress a very long time ago — even before Apple existed.

Hello,

I can tell you that kernel_task is not the problem. For an 8 GB machine, a little over 1 GB for kernel_task is normal. EtreCheck is going to report low RAM if you are using swap space or if you get some killed system tasks.

A modern macOS system (such as Mojave) is designed to use all available RAM, and then some. It doesn't really matter if you use swap space or have killed system tasks. Your fast SSD will pick up the slack and you shouldn't ever notice a problem. I have seen some people get into a problem where they run out of space on their SSD. Then you're in a pickle.

Wait a minute. A 2012 iMac? Does that thing even have an SSD? If not, that would be unfortunate. Imagine taking your phone and replacing the flash storage with a mechanical hard drive. And make sure you don't use one of those fancy 7200 RPM drives. Find a really slow 5400 RPM drive. Now, how fast is your phone with that drive? If you upgrade an older Mac to Mojave, that is essentially what you are doing.

You should be able to upgrade the RAM on that machine. It is a 2012 model, so it has Thunderbolt. You could connect it to an external SSD and boot from that. The only problem is that external Thunderbolt devices that take SSDs are relatively rare and expensive. You have to find an older device too. Those will be even more expensive. Thunderbolt is not really backwards compatible. You may not be able to use a Thunderbolt 3 device on that machine. It depends on the device. No way for me to tell. I recently purchased an external Thunderbolt and didn't notice that it was USB-C. I got it home and it didn't work. It was bus-powered and my Thunderbolt-USB-C adapter didn't pass power in the other direction. I had to take it back to the store. Your mileage may vary.