How Do You Clear Ram On A Mac

02-05-2021

How Do You Clear Ram On A Mac

Restarting Mac solves a lot of problems, so it should help you in freeing up memory on macOS 10.15. It involves turning the Mac off and turning it on again. During the restart process, Mac will clear RAM on macOS 10.15 and present disk crashes. Therefore, when you turn it on processes run smoothly. Inactive RAM is Mac OS X storing information from applications that you have opened in the past in case you open them again. This speeds up launch of said applications. If you open a different application, Mac OS X will overwrite what it has stored in the inactive RAM and load the application.

Clear Ram Windows 10
How To Clear Ram
How Do You Clear Ram On A Mac Desktop
Free Up Ram Mac

System cleanup in one click

Make your Mac fast and secure with CleanMyMac X.

Few things are more frustrating than your Mac telling you it has run out of memory when you're trying to be productive. It's more frustrating when you've ignored the problem for quite some time and your Mac's limitations simply won't let you put a solution on hold any longer.

How to get rid of low memory notifications

Usually, a popup warning isn't the first sign that something is amiss. You may have noticed that your Mac isn't running as fast as it used to, with the fan louder than normal as if it's struggling to carry a heavy load up a hill.

Although Macs are wonderful computers, they have limitations. Thankfully, there is plenty you can do to resolve this problem and get your Mac operating smoothly again.

Reduce memory usage with Setapp

Instead of manually deleting files, get Setapp. It not only removes the clutter but also gives you full control over memory usage.

Your system has run out of application memory - Fix it

Mac memory usage is often occupied by apps, even browsers like Safari or Google Chrome. In the most dire circumstances, your Mac will toss a warning at you: 'your system has run out of application memory.'

Don't despair – it's solvable. The first thing to note is this is a natural issue; your Mac has a limited amount of RAM. Though more expensive Macs have more RAM, even they can butt against limitations when too many applications are running.

It may also be an app that is hogging all of your resources. This is especially true of older applications which haven't been optimized for modern computer architecture. Websites may also be a culprit.

Check RAM usage on Mac

To check your RAM use on any Mac, take the following steps:

Open Activity Monitor from your list of applications
Note: You can do this is the Mac's control center, via the Finder in your Mac's dock, or by pressing command-space and typing 'Activity Monitor' in the Spotlight search field.
Toggle to the 'Memory' pane in the Activity Monitor window

As you see in the above screenshot, Activity Monitor shows you all of your processes, sub-processes, and how much memory each is taking up. The most pertinent portion of the window is the bottom, where it shows you the total memory usage, and how it's affecting your Mac.

A better way to monitor your Mac's memory use is with iStat Menus. After installing the app, it makes a home in your Mac's menu bar, and monitors just about everything, including memory, CPU, GPU, disks, and network usage.

You can choose which systems you'd like to monitor in the app itself. Only the items you're monitoring will have an icon in your menu bar. A simple click on the menu bar icon surfaces a drop-down menu of how your Mac is performing at the time, and hovering over each graphic brings up a larger menu, as you can see below.

How to check CPU usage on Mac

Checking CPU use on your Mac is similar to the steps above for checking memory use. For Activity Monitor, you'd make sure to highlight the 'CPU' section of the window. This will show you all the processes using your Mac's CPU at the time.

Similarly, iStat Menus has a 'CPU & GPU' toggle just above the memory section. Activating that will add a CPU and GPU monitor to your Mac menu bar, which has the same interactivity as the memory icon and menu shown above.

How to free up memory on Mac

Clear Ram Windows 10

Knowing how to clear memory on Mac is important, especially if you have a Mac with limited resources. One option is using Activity Monitor:

Open Activity Monitor on your Mac
Select an app using a lot of memory
Click the 'x' icon on the top left of the screen

This is straightforward, but there's a better way. CleanMyMac X has an automated CPU and memory monitors built-in, which can give you a real-time view of memory usage in your Mac's menu bar. It also has a really quick and easy way to free up memory without digging through Activity Monitor and manually shutting down apps.

All you have to do is click the CleanMyMac X icon, select 'Free Up' in the memory pane, and the app takes care of the rest! Oftentimes, it doesn't even shut apps down.

This is a quick fix, but CleanMyMac X takes it a step further in the app itself. Under the app's 'Maintenance' section is an option to 'Free Up RAM,' which helps you clear RAM on Mac. Once you've got this option selected, simply select 'Run' at the bottom of the window, and CleanMyMac X will do a thorough scrubbing of your Mac's RAM, and clear unused files out of the way.

How to get rid of low memory notifications

Most apps are pretty good about how they use your Mac's resources. Having too many open or running in the background can severely limit what your Mac can handle, and is often why a Mac overheats or slows down.

Here are a few tips to reduce high memory usage manually if you're experiencing unique warnings or issues:

Fix 'kernel_task', a high CPU usage bug

You may have noticed through Activity Monitor something called kernel_task absorbing a large amount of processing power. One of the functions of kernel_task is to help manage CPU temperature; you may find that your Mac fan is loud and always on, even if the device isn't hot to the touch.

kernel_task usually performs this way when one or more applications are trying to use too much CPU. Unfortunately, one of the potential downsides is a Mac can overheat to such an extent that internal systems are damaged, sometimes irreparably.

Working through the following steps in this article is one way to avoid similar problems. If none of this work and kernel_task is still absorbing a high percentage of your CPU, then one or more of the following could be the cause:

Cooling system inefficiency
A failed or disconnected temperature sensor
Another hardware issue, including a worn out batter
Your System Management Controller needs a rest

If you're experiencing severe issues, Apple recommends a system management controller (SMC) reset. It's essentially a hard reset for your Mac, and should help your RAM and other hardware components start from scratch. Keep in mind you won't lose any data in this process.

Reduce memory usage in Finder

One common culprit for RAM issues is Finder, your Mac's file manager. If iStat Menus or Activity Monitor has highlighted Finder as using hundreds of MBs of RAM, there is an easy solution: change the default display for a new Finder window so it doesn't show All My Files.

Click on the Finder icon in the Dock and click on the Finder menu, then select Preferences
Click on General. Under 'New Finder windows show', click the dropdown menu and choose any option except All My Files
Close Preferences, press Alt-Control, and click on the Finder icon in the Dock. Click Relaunch

Finder will now relaunch with new windows opening at the option you selected in step two.

Improve Chrome's Task Manager

Chrome is a popular browser, but it's a resources hog! Chrome uses a GPU Process as standard, which means it speeds up the loading of web pages, which can be great except at times when your computer is struggling with insufficient RAM.

Here's how:

Open Chrome on your Mac
On the right side of the Chrome window, select the three-dot menu
Select 'More tools'
Select 'Task Manager'
Select a Chrome process you'd like to kill
Select 'End Process' at the bottom right of the window

Here's another way to reduce Chrome's use of your Mac's memory:

Open Chrome on your Mac
On the right side of the Chrome window, select the three-dot menu
Select 'settings'
Scroll to the bottom of the page and select 'advanced'
Scroll down to 'System,' and toggle 'Use hardware acceleration when available' off

This will affect how Chrome runs on your Mac, and your experience won't be as smooth. You can also remove unused or unwanted Chrome extensions to help it use less resources on your Mac.

Get CMM X to free up space

Install CleanMyMac X and streamline the entire process of memory management on Mac. Clever memory usage control done for you.

Clean up browsers

In every browser you use regularly, there are always going to be extensions and popups that take up space and use RAM. You can manage each one manually, or use a tool such as CleanMyMac X to identify and delete them.

In the CleanMyMac X app is a section titled 'Extensions,' which lists each extension you have for your browser or browsers. All you have to do is view the list of extensions, select the ones you no longer want, and remove them. It's really that simple!

Disable login items

Login items, browser extensions, and preference panes, such as Flash, are another common source of memory usage. Most of us have several installed that we rarely use, but which hog memory and reduce performance.

One way to do this is through System Preferences:

From your Mac menu bar, select 'System Preferences'
Select 'Users & Groups'
Select 'login items'
Deselect items you no longer want active at login

Another way, one that is even quicker, is to employ CleanMyMac to identify and cleanup login items.

Open CleanMyMac X
Under 'Speed,' select 'Optimization'
Select 'login items'

You can remove all login items, or select the ones you'd like to remove individually on the right side of the window.

Disable desktop widgets

Older Macs running a version of macOS older than Catalina can disable widgets. Desktop widgets can provide a useful shortcut to apps you need to access fairly often. But they can take up processing memory that is slowing your whole Mac down. One way to close them completely is in System Preferences.

Go to: Mission Control > switch off the Dashboard

Declutter your desktop

Apple's built in decluttering tool is handy for many. All you have to do on your cluttered desktop is right-click, then select 'Use Stacks.' This places all of your desktop files into folders unique to their filetype, like 'screenshots' and 'images.'

A better way is to use Spotless, an app that gives you far more control over how your Mac is organized. It has several triggers for automated cleanup of files on your desktop, placing them wherever you see fit. It's particularly useful for power users who produce several files daily, but don't want to take the time to place each in a respective folder.

You can also select many files on your Mac desktop, and tell Spotless to tidy them up. You always have full control!

Schedule regular cleanups

Constant use of your Mac, or leaving it on all the time, will slow it down over time. Shutting it down and restarting is a traditional way of 'cleaning up' a computer.

We also like CleanMyMac X's scheduled cleanup feature. Telling the app when you'd like to perform a thorough cleaning up of your Mac's system is a method many prefer to shutting down and restarting often. It has the upshot of removing files and folders you no longer use, and cleaning up tasks that are slowing your Mac down behind the scenes. A simple shutdown may not do this.

Keeping your Mac in tip-top shape is critical. While we'd all like to think computers are brilliant little devices that can handle anything, they need some care, too.

All of the apps mentioned in this article help with taking care of your Mac, and protecting your investment. Best of all they're each free as part of a seven day trial of Setapp. Give it a try today!

Setapp lives on Mac and iOS. Please come back from another device.

Meantime, prepare for all the awesome things you can do with Setapp.

Read on

Setapp uses cookies to personalize your experience on our website. By continuing to use this site, you agree to our cookie policy.

You still remember the first thing on your mind when you were buying your new MacBook that this Machine will always keep up with your pace and will never slow down on you. That’s exactly what these awesome machines are built to do. But sooner than you think, it starts slowing down. The first thing you need to know is that the performance of your Mac depends a lot on the memory usage on the device. We will talk about some of the ways to learn how to reduce memory usage on Mac and get it to maximum performance again.

Check Your Available Memory Usage on Mac First!

All the applications developed for use on Apple Machines are built to optimally use the memory available. But memory management for MacBook becomes critical when you open too many applications that are running simultaneously. This results in major memory overload.

Once you experience your Mac slowing down, you should start analyzing the memory usage. If you don’t know how to check memory usage on Mac, the best application to start with is the Activity Monitor. You can easily find this application in the Utilities or you can simply type the name of the application in the Spotlight window.

Activity Monitor: Helpful Tool in Analyzing Memory Usage on Your Mac

Activity Monitor is a built-in application in MacOS which tells you everything that is running on your MacBook. It gives you a complete overview of your MacBook’s memory usage. Here you can find out what applications are currently running and how much memory is being utilized by each of the applications. It is an excellent tool in analyzing the memory usage as it gives you plenty of details on the resources being consumed by any application, including the memory being used, Number of threads utilized by each app, CPU usage, etc.

How To Clear Ram

What's more, ths Activity Monitor shows how you can add different columns to check a particular resource being utilized by an application and play with the statistics to shut down what you don’t need and that eats too much of memory. To illustrate a few, let’s have a look at the memory page of Activity Monitor.

The memory page is very informative when you understand all that it is showing to you;

Memory Pressure: This graph gives you the usage of memory over a period of time. You can set the Update Frequency and set the intervals. The right-most bar is the current memory usage, going back in time as you move to the left of the graph. The color of the graph shows the usage level.

Green – RAM Memory available.
Yellow – RAM Memory still available, tasked by memory-management processes (like Compression)
Red – RAM Memory completely used. This is the time where you should start shutting down some apps.

You can see the total installed RAM on your computer shown as,

Physical Memory: Total memory installed.

The part which you are really concerned about is the one marked as,

Memory Used: Total memory being used by the running apps and processes. Getting inside to have a deeper understanding of the memory distribution allows you to play with it and get the best performance.

App Memory: Total memory used by all the apps/processes.
Wired memory: As the name suggests, this memory is (virtually) hard-wired and you cannot make any changes to the processes using this memory. These are usually the primary processes of your Machine and they need the memory with the quickest access and cannot be swapped with the memory on disk.
Compressed: The MacOS will compress a chunk of memory in the RAM to make more space for the utilization of other apps. You can see the column of compressed memory to see how much actual and compressed memory is used by each process or application.

Swap Used: The MacOS will utilize some space on the disk drive of your Mac. This is used to free up physical space on RAM for the applications requiring more intense use of memory.

Cached Files: The MacOS keeps the recently closed applications as cached files for quick loading once you restart the same application. However, this memory is available to be used by any new application if the same application is not started.

Running out of Space? Try The Quick Fix to Free Up Memory Space Here

When you are running out of space on your Mac and your memory pressure graph is constantly in the red. Your computer is slowing down and if you are thinking about how do I free up memory on my Mac, using a powerful Mac cleanup software is the quickest fix for you. Umate Mac Cleaner is beyond compare your first choice for Mac cleaning software you will find and let me tell you why.

Umate Mac Cleaner is an amazingly powerful tool to clean and offers a one-click solution for releasing more memory. No important files will be deleted through Umate Mac Cleaner so you don’t have to worry about accidentally harming your Mac. Its one of the main features - Clean Up Junk is designed to delete all the junk files which are slowing down the Mac system. You can use the Clean Up Junk feature to run a Quick Clean first.

Quick Clean will run an automatic scan to search, identify and delete the unnecessary files piled up on your system. Deleting those junk files have no effect on system performance, so you can safely remove them without consideration.

Once the Quick Clean has done its job and you still feel the need to make some more space available, the Clean Up Junk lets you run a Deep Clean on the Mac. Deep Clean shows you the files available on the system which can be deleted to make more space available on the Mac. It runs a scan and finds the items that can be deleted, and you can now choose which of these files you want to permanently remove from the system, then hit the big Clean button to remove them with single click.

Another very useful feature of Umate Mac Cleaner to lower memory usage on Mac is Manage Application & Extensions. Naturally, there are a few applications lying around over the chunks of your memory and these applications are not even being used. These unused applications and unnecessary extensions are hogging on the memory bytes which are needed for the new and more frequent applications. This feature of Umate Mac Cleaner is how to save memory on Mac by uninstalling the rarely used applications and their associated files. Along with the unused applications, it also targets the unnecessary extensions which are installed in your Mac. This feature will list down the applications with their usage statistics and you can choose which ones to remove to lower memory usage on your Mac.

Getting Umate Mac Cleaner for Mac memory management is unbelievably easy. All you need to do is get the app from iMyFone, install and launch the app and let it do the rest automatically. The app comes with a very intuitive user interface and is compatible with Macbook/iMac running MacOS 10.15-10.9.

Other 7 Tips to Reduce Memory Usage on Mac Manually

Using a Mac cleaning tool to free up memory on Mac is much easiesr and faster. And this way is highly recommended for time-saving clean up. However, if you want to free up memory without using third-party software, here are other 7 extra tips for you to do the job manually. Let’s check them out together!

1. Clean up the Desktop

No matter what computer you are using, you know that your desktop is filled with unnecessary and unused icons scattered all around the screen. Don’t worry; this is what we do on all our computers. But if you want to lower the memory usage on your Mac, you might want to steer away from cluttering your desktop. This might come as a surprise, but MacOS allows your desktop icons to be treated as priority applications and it keeps all the desktop icons in the active memory. This takes up space in your RAM which you definitely want to save.

2. Manage Memory Usage in Finder

The Finder application on Mac can sometimes take up a lot of memory of your system. You are thinking that Finder should not be taking up this much space, right. It is probably because the Finder application is set to show all files available on the system. Try changing the default display of Finder to not show All My Files. This will work wonders for you.

3. Force Quit Memory-eating Processes

In the Activity Monitor, you can see which applications are consuming most of the memory. These memory-hogging processes are slowing down your system. You can select to Force Quit these processes to save memory on your Mac.

4. Delete Browser Extensions

The add-ons and extensions on the internet browser are nice tools for quick access to features you need while surfing the internet. But more often than not, they are consuming more memory than they are being helpful. You can save a lot of memory on your Mac by deleting the unwanted browser extensions. Just launch the browser on your Mac, like Safari, Chrome and Firefox, and then go to Preferences to remove those unwanted extensions on the Extensions tab.

You can use Umate Mac Cleaner to remove the undesired extensions. Just launch the app and go to Manage Applications and Extensions and the memory management tool will list down all the extensions for you to choose and delete. You will be surprised at how many of these extensions are not even needed in your Mac.

5. Close Unwanted Finder Windows

Opening a number of Finder windows takes up a lot of memory, and it is incredible how much memory you can save by this little tip. You don’t need anything fancy for this. A keyboard shortcut is all you need; press Command + Option + W to close all the open windows on your Mac.

6. Disable Login Items

The items that are set to launch on every login are going to use a lot of memory space. Most of these login items are not essentially required for your day to day computing needs and you can easily get rid of them. Here are the simple steps to do that: Click the Apple icon > select System Preferences > Click Users & Groups > Select the login item you want to remove, then click the Remove.

Using Umate Mac Cleaner to Disable Startup Items is your one-click solution to fix this issue. Select the items you want to disable on your next login and you will start your Mac with a bunch of memory saved.

7. Purge RAM in Terminal (for Advanced Users)

Open the terminal on your Mac and enter the command ‘sudo purge’. This feature requires admin rights so you would have to enter the password here then the system will clear the inactive memory. We strongly advise against using this method unless you know your way around your Machine.

If You Use Chrome Browser, Here's Bonus Tip to Lower Memory Usage

If you are using Google applications like Gmail, Google Drive, etc. This tip might be useful on how to lower memory usage on Mac. Google Chrome makes use of the system GPU for its processes to help load web pages super fast, however, this process takes a lot of memory on your system RAM. Fortunately, there is a way to control this. Use the Task Manager of Google Chrome to manage the memory available for use by Chrome, and you are good to go!

Anyway, You Should Keep Your Eye on Mac's Memory Usage

If your Mac is boosted up with 16 gigs of RAM memory, then you might have a lot of free space to use up for unnecessary applications. But with the basic 4 or 8GB RAM machine, you would require the monitoring more often. More applications running on the Mac means more memory usage. This makes it very important that you should keep a check on your applications. Learning to read and analyze the memory page of the Activity Monitor will be extremely useful in memory management for your Mac and keep your MacBook memory usage under check.