Freeing Up Memory On Mac

Posted on  by

How to clear space on Mac quickly. There are lots of ideas below for freeing up disk space below, but if you are in a hurry and you don't need a lot of space, or if you aren't too bothered about. Restart Your Mac. Restarting your Mac is the simplest way to free up RAM. When your Mac restarts, it'll empty the RAM and any disk caches, which should make your Mac run smoother once the system loads up. If your Mac is unresponsive, press and hold the Power button to force it to shut down instead. Restart Your Mac. Restarting your Mac is the simplest way to free up RAM. When your Mac restarts, it'll empty the RAM and any disk caches, which should make your Mac run smoother once the system loads up. If your Mac is unresponsive, press and hold the Power button to force it to shut down instead. 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. I keep getting a warning that my mac is running low on memory. When I go into Disk Utilities the Hard drive says. Used 164.29GB Other Volumes 1.84GB Free 833.86 GB. The visual blue bar would not even take up 1/3 of its overall length. The processor is 1.6GHz Intel Core i5. Memory 8GB 1867MHz DDR3. Graphics Intel HD Graphics 6000 1536MB.

Have you noticed lately that your MacBook isn’t running quite like it used to? You’re hearing the fan turn on a lot more and maybe it’s starting to freeze up when you have too many windows or browser tabs open. It’s not necessarily time to buy a brand new Mac or even upgrade the internal hardware. It sounds more like your RAM is the culprit.

Random access memory, or RAM, acts as storage for ongoing tasks and functions necessary for modern computing. It’s best known for its role in multitasking. If you’re using up most or all of your RAM, you could run into issues. While previously you might have been able to upgrade your Mac’s RAM, many MacBooks nowadays don’t allow for this. My 2011 MacBook Air has 4GB of RAM and I’m stuck with it until I buy a new laptop.

What you can do instead, to somewhat remedy the issue, is use software tools to free up some RAM. Here are two good options.

Quick Fix: Memory Clean 2

My once almost consistently quiet MacBook Air now has the fan spinning even when I only have a browser window and Messages open. Upon inspecting what could be the cause, I found that at any given time I only had 100MB to 500MB of available RAM. So I looked for an easy solution and found one in the Mac App Store: Memory Clean 2.

Freeing Up Memory On Mac

With the click of a button, Memory Clean digs around for areas behind the scenes where it can free up memory.

Memory Clean sounds exactly like what it does, it cleans your memory. You won’t lose any data or anything like that. The app shows you a breakdown of how your Mac is using up RAM and how much is available. With the click of a button, Memory Clean digs around for areas behind the scenes where it can free up memory and does just that.

The app is free and on average I manage to clean 100MB to 300MB every time I use it. You can always just keep cleaning Clean after each cycle until it frees up the amount you want, though with each click the amount it can clean gets smaller.

I also recommend the $4.99 paid upgrade for “Extreme Clean” which tends to clean anywhere from 400MB to 700MB for me. It takes a few seconds longer to work, but after one run-through I can already begin to hear my MacBook’s fan slowing down. The only downside is that once you start doing other things on your Mac again, RAM usage goes back up.

Detailed Fix: Activity Monitor

If you want to get the job done yourself and make some more permanent changes to your RAM usage, use Activity Monitor. This is an app that comes with macOS and lets you monitor CPU usage, battery life and memory among other things.

Open Activity Monitor and click the Memory tab. At the top of the list, click Memory to sort processes by memory usage and make sure ones using the most are at the top. If you recognize the process or app hogging your RAM, click the Information icon and click Quit to ditch it and free up that memory. Note that this will close the app.

There are likely a lot of running processes here you don’t recognize. You’re better off leaving these alone as they could be essential to your Mac.

Once you figure out which apps hog memory that you don’t necessarily need, you should then prevent them from automatically launching at startup too.

ALSO READ: How To Speed Up a Slow Mac

Freeing Up Memory On Mac Air


The above article may contain affiliate links which help support Guiding Tech. However, it does not affect our editorial integrity. The content remains unbiased and authentic.

Read Next

How to Use the Summarize Tool on Mac

Want to get through lengthy assignments or documents quickly? Here's how to use the Summarize Tool on

“No matter what I do, my Mac is still slow”, an average tech-consultant hears this phrase multiple times a day. Give a person even the most powerful computer, and pretty soon it will be cluttered with apps, extensions, and things that are too much for it to handle. To reverse it, one has to go back and сlean up the mess, removing memory agents one by one. Prepare for a fight — every byte of memory is at stake. So let’s put your Mac on a diet and get it more free RAM to breathe freely.

First, remove desktop clutter. Get a combination of Setapp apps that clear away unneeded desktop files.

Download Declutter Free

“Your system has run out of application memory”

How do you know your Mac is low on memory? Floating “rainbow wheels” aside, you may notice your Mac now takes ages to load. You’ll also see many browser applications crashing. You’ll be also thrown warning messages as “Your system has run out of application memory”. To help it, you should first visit the Activity monitor to see memory usage on Mac.

How to check RAM usage on Mac

Go to Applications and type in Activity Monitor in the search bar. This invokes a good old Activity Monitor that should tell how much free memory you’ve got left.

A shortcut to open Activity Monitor:

Press F4 and start typing Activity Monitor in the search bar.

I’ve attached a screenshot from my Mac and as you can see my memory usage almost reached full capacity. Here’s what it all means:

Glay discography torrent. App memory: taken by apps and processes
Wired memory: reserved by apps, can’t be freed up
Compressed: inactive, can be used by other apps
Swap used: memory used by macOS
Cached files: memory you can really use

Notice the colored graph under Memory Pressure. If your graph is all but red and yellow, your Mac is really gasping for fresh memory. It seems counter-intuitive, but “available memory” your Activity Monitor is not that important after all. In fact, it’s a system intended behavior to use all memory resources when available. On the contrary, the Memory Pressure graph is much more telling, so grow a habit to check this graph in the Activity Monitor every now and then.

How to check CPU usage on Mac

Open the CPU tab in Activity Monitor to keep in check CPU-heavy processes. Normally an app would be using 0-4% of CPU. If it takes abnormally more than that, go inside that particular item in the list and press the Quit button.

How to free up memory on Mac

Tip # 1. Remove Login Items to lower Mac memory usage

Login items are programs that load automatically upon Mac startup. Some of them covertly add themselves to the list and this is no good. If you’re looking to free up RAM, they are the first candidates for deletion. Don’t worry, you’re not deleting the app itself, you just stop it from auto-launching every time.

So, to remove Login Items and at the same time reduce your memory usage of your Mac, you need to:

  1. Open System Preferences and select Users & Groups.
  2. Click your nickname on the left.
  3. Select the Login Items tab.
  4. Check programs you don’t want to load as your Mac starts.
  5. Press the “–” sign below.

Now, you won’t see these apps pop up the moment you turn on your Mac. Although this method doesn’t require some superpowers of yours, some special Mac optimization and memory cleaner tools may do the job faster and ensure the smooth performance of your Mac. CleanMyMac X is an excellent example of such software. Here’s how to disable Login Items with CleanMyMac X:

  1. Download it for free and go to the Optimization tab.
  2. Check Login Items to see the list of apps that get opened when you start your Mac.
  3. Click Remove.

As you’ve already come to the Optimization module of CleanMyMac, you can also fix hung apps and heavy memory consumers there. In this way, you’ll free up the solid amount of RAM on Mac — 100% free of charge.

Tip # 2. Free up disk space if Mac is low on memory

The available space on your Mac’s drive translates into virtual memory. This comes to save you when you’ve run out of physical RAM. So now your computer relies on your hard drive space to keep your apps going.

The classic geek rule of thumb holds it that you should keep at least 20% of disk space on your startup drive. Not only this potentially reduces your future spending on iCloud storage but it also keeps your Mac speedier.

What to delete to free up space:

  • Large unused files, like movies
  • Old downloads
  • Rarely used applications
  • System junk

But here’s a simpler solution to save your time — clean up your drive with CleanMyMac X— the app I’ve mentioned above. Many users recommend it as an excellent way to free up more space because it searches for large & old files, useless system files, Photo junk, mail attachments and shows everything you can safely delete. Interestingly, it finds about 74 GB of junk on an average computer.

Extra trick: How to free up RAM on Mac with CleanMyMac X

If you have downloaded CleanMyMac, you may also take advantage of its amazing feature — the ability to free up RAM in a few seconds. Try this next time you see “Your system has run out of application memory” message.

  1. Go to the Maintenance tab on the left.
  2. Click Free Up RAM.
  3. Click Run.

As simple as that!

And you can do it even if you download a free version of the app.

Tip # 3. Clean up your Desktop

This tip always comes at the bottom of instructions and unfairly so as it is quite effective. Without even looking at your Desktop I would assume it’s cluttered with mountains of icons. Thing is, your macOS was designed in a way that it treats every Desktop icon as a little active window. The more icons, the heavier memory usage on Mac. So in order to release available memory resources, it’s recommended to keep your Desktop clean.

You don’t have to do it all by yourself. With apps like Declutter and Spotless, every desktop cleaning session will be scheduled in advance and executed automatically. Your only job is to define the rules on how your files should be organized.

Tip #4. Clear cache files

Another way to free up RAM on Mac is to clear it of cache files. Of course, it won’t save you gigabytes of space, but deleting cache regularly, you can help your Mac run faster and avoid system issues.

So, to remove cache files on your Mac, you need to:

Memory
  1. Open Finder.
  2. From the Go menu, select Go to Folder.
  3. Type ~/Library/Caches in the field and press Go.
  4. In the window that appears, you will see all your cache files.
  5. Press Command+A to select all files or delete files one by one.
  6. Enter your user name and password to confirm.

If you find some files still in the folder after you emptied it, maybe you have some windows open on your Mac. Just like that, you can save up some space on your Mac. Don’t forget to empty the bin afterward.

Tip # 5. Tune up Chrome’s Task Manager

Although Google Chrome is not the one to blame for massive memory usage, it can indeed affect your Mac's performance. If you use Chrome as your primary browser, you probably have many windows opened there. Chrome runs a lot of processes to ensure a fast browsing experience for you. So, it uses your RAM for storing your tabs, plugins, and extensions. Look at how many entries Google Chrome has in Activity Monitor:

The question then arises, 'Why does Chrome use so much RAM?' The thing is that each process is responsible for a separate plugin or extension of your browser. For example, when a tab unexpectedly falls, you need to refresh it to continue your work there. If one process were responsible for all tabs and extensions, you would need to restart the whole browser instead. Can you imagine how many times would you do that? That’s the proper answer to why Chrome uses so much RAM.

I’ve been using Chrome for some years only to discover (recently) that Chrome had a task manager of its own. You can use it to force quit memory-heavy processes in the browser. It’s a handy tool because it lets you see how a page weighs on CPU usage on a Mac.

  1. Go to Chrome settings (dotted icon in the top right corner)
  2. Click More tools -> Task Manager

To free up even more RAM, close the GPU process. The GPU Process, though helpful in theory to accelerate pages, eats up a considerable amount of memory. Click to end it to free up RAM on your Mac.

Tip # 6. Manage RAM usage with CleanMyMac X menu

CleanMyMac X has another useful and convenient feature for managing your Mac’s performance and memory usage. As you install CleanMyMac X and start it for the first time, it’s icon will appear in your menu bar. Click the icon to open the CleanMyMac X menu. Here you can find updates on the current condition of your Mac and perform quick tweaks to increase your Mac's speed. Whenever you feel like your Mac underperforms, open the CleanMyMac X menu to check how much RAM is available and free it up as well.

Tip # 7. Close Finder windows

Okay, suppose you’re still asking yourself, how do I clear RAM on my MacBook Pro/MacBook Air. The next trick is as magical (you’ll see for yourself) as it is time-saving. It’s no secret that each window in the Finder eats up RAM. But how many open windows are there? Some of them are collapsed or stacked in some blind spot on your screen. This Finder command merges all your windows into one. See how to do it:

Click on Finder > Window > Merge All Windows

Now you can manage Finder windows more effectively and free up memory on MacBook.

What else you can do to minimize memory usage on Mac

I’ve saved the easiest tips for the end, as long as these ones are self-explanatory.

  • Replace AdBlock (very memory-demanding) with a lighter extension
  • Keep fewer opened tabs in the browser
  • Restart your Mac more often to free up RAM
  • Close all hung-up print queues

That was my take on how to make your Mac a bit speedier to use. If you’re looking for more guidance, check simple ways to speed up your Mac.

Frequently Asked Questions

Mac

How to check application memory on Mac?

To check RAM usage on your Mac, go to Activity Monitor (Applications > Utilities). In the Memory tab, you will see all the active processes that are using your Mac’s RAM. At the end of the window, there is a Memory Used graph, which indicates how much application memory is used.

How to find out whether your Mac needs more RAM?

How To Free Up Ram

Your Mac may be using almost all its RAM, but you don’t need more if it’s using it efficiently. Open Activity Monitor and go to the Memory tab. The Memory Pressure graph shows the current condition of your RAM: green color means your Mac’s using RAM effectively, while yellow is a sign that some application or process is using too much of application memory. The red memory pressure signals that your Mac needs more RAM.

Free Up Storage On Mac Other

How to quickly free up RAM on your MacBook?

How Do You Free Up Memory On A Mac

To free up RAM on your Mac, firstly, you should find out what app uses so much of your memory. The memory-heavy programs are listed in Activity Monitor, Memory tab. If there is an app you aren’t using at the moment, click it and press the “X” sign to quit it. This will, in turn, free some of the application memory.