How to free up RAM on Mac. Knowing how to clean up memory on Mac is essential, here are a few tips to keep your Mac optimized. Restart your Mac. Sounds obvious, but since RAM is temporary memory when your Mac restarts, it will empty the RAM and any disk caches, so this is actually a pretty quick and easy way of cleaning up memory. Memory Clean is the ultimate app for optimizing your Mac's memory and is best used after you have finished using a memory (RAM) intensive app or game. It replicates the feeling of a fresh system restart.
If you're plagued by the “Your system has run out of application memory' message or your Mac is suddenly acting slow and sluggish, you might be wondering how to check the memory on your Mac?
There is no denying MacBooks are powerful computers, but they do have limitations. Luckily, we can do plenty to resolve this issue and get your Mac running smoothly again.
Knowing how to reduce memory usage on your Mac is essential, so let's jump in and look at how we can check and reduce memory usage.
What is RAM?
RAM (Random Access Memory) is essentially your Macs short-term memory. It temporarily stores everything currently running in real-time on your device. RAM storage is considered volatile memory—when there's no power or every time you restart your Mac it gets cleared.
RAM vs Hard drive
Unlike your RAM storage, your hard drive is permanent storage; here you can store data for a long time.
When your Mac is using the majority of your available RAM, you might experience these issues:
Spinning beachball
Applications crashing
Low on memory message
Slow loading times
Read on to find out how to check and clear your Mac's memory.
Check your Mac memory usage
To check your RAM usage:
Open a Finder Window then Applications > Utilities > Activity Monitor.
Now select the Memory tab.
Activity Monitor shows all of your processes and how much memory each one is taking up.
At the bottom is a little graphical representation and totals, but what does this all mean?
App memory: Memory being used by apps.
Wired memory: Memory used by the system to operate.
Compressed: Memory that has been compressed to make more RAM available.
Cached files: Memory you can really use.
Swap used: Memory used by macOS.
If the graph under memory pressure shows a lot of red and yellow, your Mac is struggling for free memory; I'll show you how to clear memory on your Mac in the next section.
To check your hard drive storage:
Go to Apple Menu > About This Mac > Storage.
Here you'll see a breakdown of your hard drive storage. If you are low on space, press the Manage button, here you'll find Apples built-in storage optimization tool.
It's worth checking out the recommendations. These are all easy to follow steps that can help you optimize your hard disk storage. You can easily navigate through all the folders in the sidebar to remove and delete any old or large files taking up precious space on your Mac.
If you’re looking for more detailed instructions on how to free up hard drive storage, check out our article.
How to free up RAM on Mac
Knowing how to clean up memory on Mac is essential, here are a few tips to keep your Mac optimized.
1. Restart your Mac
Sounds obvious, but since RAM is temporary memory when your Mac restarts, it will empty the RAM and any disk caches, so this is actually a pretty quick and easy way of cleaning up memory.
2. Check Activity Monitor
Check Activity Monitor, and close down applications that are using a lot of RAM. Here's how:
Open a Finder Window then Applications > Utilities > Activity Monitor > Memory.
From the list, select any process or app that is hogging memory and press the “X” to close it.
3. Tidy your desktop
The more icons you have lying around on your desktop, the more memory is used. Take a look at what's sitting on your desktop right now and have a tidy up.
I use stacks to keep my desktop in order. The Stacks feature categorizes items and puts them together in neat little piles. Double click anywhere on your desktop, and select Use Stacks from the menu.
4. Clear up System Junk
To optimize the available RAM you do have, it's a good idea to clean up your system junk, like temporary files, cache and incomplete downloads or old logs. You can spend hours trawling through folders, or you can use a dedicated tool like CleanMyMac X, to do all the hard work for you, in just a few clicks. Bonus points for this app being notarized by Apple.
Here's how to clean your system junk with CleanMyMac X:
Launch the app — download the free version here.
Select System Junk from the left sidebar.
Press Scan, and then Clean.
5. Disable login items
Login items are another common source of memory usage. Unknowingly we can often have several installed that we rarely use, but they hog memory, here's how to check and remove:
Select Apple Menu > System Preferences > Users & Groups.
Select your user profile and then select the Login Items tab.
Press the Lock icon at the bottom of the screen to make changes.
Remove any applications you no longer want to launch when your Mac starts: select them in the list and press the '-' button.
6. Use a Mac memory cleaner
If you're really low on RAM or don't fancy poking around in all your files and folders, it can only be easier to use a Mac memory cleaner.
Here are my 2 favorite cleaners:
I mentioned this app earlier, so you might not be surprised to see it at the top of my recommendation list. Not only can CleanMyMac X help you clear your system junk (and a whole lot more) but it also has a handy Free up RAM feature.
Once you have downloaded the app, and launched it once, select the CleanMyMac X icon from your top Apple menu bar.
Under Memory, press Free Up.
Sit back and enjoy all that extra RAM.
Memory Clean 2
MemoryClean 2 from Fiplab is super easy to use. Once downloaded, this app will purge your Mac's inactive memory.
Select the MemoryClean Icon from your top Apple menu bar.
Press Clean.
If you opt for another tool, always check reviews, and make sure it's a trusted source.
There we are, now you know how to check the memory on your Mac, how to clear it and use a Mac memory cleaner. See you back here soon, for more great tips.
“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:
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:
- Open System Preferences and select Users & Groups.
- Click your nickname on the left.
- Select the Login Items tab.
- Check programs you don’t want to load as your Mac starts.
- 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:
- Download it for free and go to the Optimization tab.
- Check Login Items to see the list of apps that get opened when you start your Mac.
- 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.
- Go to the Maintenance tab on the left.
- Click Free Up RAM.
- 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.
Clear Memory Mac Free
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:
- Open Finder.
- From the Go menu, select Go to Folder.
- Type ~/Library/Caches in the field and press Go.
- In the window that appears, you will see all your cache files.
- Press Command+A to select all files or delete files one by one.
- 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.
How To Clear Memory In Macbook Pro
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.
- Go to Chrome settings (dotted icon in the top right corner)
- 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.
Clean Memory Windows 10
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
How To Clear Memory In Mac
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
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?
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.
How to quickly free up RAM on your MacBook?
Clear Memory In Macbook
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.