How To Check MacBook Memory
Gaspard Xenos
The Memory pane displays how much memory your Mac is using, how often it is swapping memory between RAM and your startup disk, and the amount of memory provided for an app and how much of it is compressed memory.
If memory pressure is yellow, red, or has spikes, check to see if an app is using up memory and causing the memory pressure to increase. If you no longer need to have the app running, you should quit the app.
People need to check their storage space for a variety of reasons. Sometimes, just for the sake of effective storage management; sometimes, when your computer is running slowly and storage is the first culprit you can think of. Ideally, about ten percent of the storage space on your Mac should be free at all times so your computer can run smoothly.
If you want to see how much memory on Mac you have left, click MEM. For information on disk space, go to SSD > Disks, and so on. iStat Menus even allows you to keep the data surfaced directly on your menu bar. Instead of clicking the icon, you can choose to have things like CPU or memory usage as icons so the information is always available in real-time.
Disk Utility is another resource. Open Disk Utility, and it will launch into a view of the volume(s) on your Mac, which also shows how much space is used, and how much is free. Keep in mind Disk Utility is meant for power users who want to manage their storage, and is a bit of overkill for most users.
But iCloud is not the only solution for cloud storage on Mac. If you have something else, CloudMounter is the easiest and best way to manage all your cloud storage containers. It lives in your menu bar for easy access, and shows all your cloud storage options in Finder. It helps your Mac treat cloud storage as a local disk, making access and managing files really simple.
Random Access Memory (RAM) is a vital component of any computer. When you launch an app on your Mac, it requires a portion of your available memory to run. Serious problems can arise if there are problems with your computer's memory.
In this tutorial, we'll look at how to find out how much memory you have in your Mac, what's using it, and how you can perform thorough testing to ensure it's working correctly. If you recently installed a new stick of RAM and you're encountering problems, performing a Mac memory test is a vital part of troubleshooting the issue.
To find out how much memory your Mac has, click on the Apple logo in the top-left corner of your screen and select About This Mac. On the Overview tab, the Memory line lists the amount of RAM in GB, the speed of the RAM in MHz, and the generation of double data rate (DDR) you're currently using.
This is important if you intend to add more RAM to your Mac, since you'll want to match any RAM you install with your existing RAM. This is mostly advice for owners of iMacs and older MacBooks, since the RAM on Apple's newer laptops is soldered to the logic board and not upgradeable.
Click System Report and navigate to the Memory section to find out even more information. Here you can see how many sticks of RAM you have installed, which is another important piece of information to keep in mind if you want to upgrade. macOS will also give you a status report of your memory's current condition (though you'll need further testing to isolate problems).
Activity Monitor is a small app that lives in the Applications > Utilities folder. It provides information about what's currently running on your machine. You can also use it to find out which apps are using your available memory, and how much they're using.
Launch Activity Monitor and click on the Memory tab. Then, sort the Memory column by descending order (meaning it will show a downwards pointing arrow) to see processes that are using the most memory at the top. Don't worry if you see "kernel_task" using a lot of memory, that's usually just the operating system ticking along in the background.
You can kill any process by selecting it and clicking on the X button at the top of the window. Keep in mind that this will close the corresponding app or browser tab. To avoid data loss, quit the application as you normally would instead, or by selecting it and using the Cmd + Q shortcut.
At the bottom of this screen, you'll see a summary of your Mac's total memory, the amount you're currently using, and a graph showing memory "pressure" over time. Try opening a few apps to see how they affect performance.
The best way to check your Mac's memory for problems is to perform memory testing while using as little of it as possible. Since the operating system uses quite a bit of RAM in the background, testing memory by booting into a lightweight testing environment is recommended.
Testing your RAM with Apple's user diagnostics tools is easy. Simply restart your Mac, and then hold down D as soon as it restarts. If you did it correctly, your computer will either boot into Apple Diagnostics or Apple Hardware Test, depending on the age of your machine.
Apple silicon Macs require a different way of entering Apple Diagnostics. You must first shut the Mac down and turn it back on, holding down the Power button until you get to the startup options screen. Then, press Cmd + D.
Follow the prompts and let the test complete. It can take a while, particularly on older computers. When you're done, you should see a report giving you a brief overview of any detected issues. Unfortunately, the test will only tell you whether or not problems were detected. You won't be able to tell which stick of RAM is faulty.
Problems running the test? Holding down Option + D at startup will run this test from the internet. It will take longer to gather the required files, but it should work just as well once the download completes. This only applies to Intel Macs.
If you want to learn more about any problems Apple's diagnostics detected, or you want to run another test for peace of mind, MemTest86 is one of the best tools for the job. There are a few memory testing tools that use similar names, but MemTest86 is still regularly maintained and updated.
In order to test your machine, you're going to need to make a bootable USB drive from which to run the test. The first step is to find a suitable USB drive and make sure there are no important files on there, since the whole drive will be erased. Then, insert the USB drive into a free port.
Now download the free drive creation tool Etcher, mount the DMG, and install it to your Applications folder. Then, head to the MemTest86 Downloads page and grab the Image for creating bootable USB Drive under Linux/Mac Downloads.
Once MemTest86 has downloaded, extract the archive and launch Etcher. Then click Select image, navigate to the extracted archive you previously downloaded, and choose the memtest-usb.img file. Now click Select drive and choose the USB drive you want to use. When you're ready, click Flash! and wait for the process to complete.
Next, shut down the Mac you want to test and insert the USB drive you just created. Press and hold the Option key and power on your Mac. When prompted, select the external drive you created (it may show up as EFI Boot) by clicking the arrow to boot into MemTest86. Don't select Macintosh HD, since this is your internal drive.
Wait for MemTest86 to initialize. Testing should begin after a short pause, but if it doesn't, select Config > Start Test. Allow time for the test to complete; it took around 40 minutes on our test machine. At the end, you'll be given a summary and an option to save a report to the USB drive in HTML format.
Some people use "memory" as a catch-all term for free space, but macOS specifically refers to this as "storage." You can find more information about this by clicking the Apple logo, selecting About This Mac, then clicking on the Storage tab. If you're close to running out of storage, learn how to create as much free space as possible.
A) Your boot disk has very low free storage, and macOS cannot create page/swap files to offload virtual memory contents to disk. This is generally not the case, but I mention because if you do have very low free storage, it might apply.
B) A process (or set of processes) have asked macOS for excessive amounts of virtual memory address space. Virtual memory address space requires macOS to create Virtual Memory Page Tables in the kernel address space to keep track of the application virtual addresses given out. Generally, if there is a memory leak (process asks for a virtual address range, uses the addresses, forgets to give them back, asks for another virtual address range, uses the addresses, wash, rinse, repeat), eventually there are so many virtual memory page table entries trying to keep track of the virtual addresses, that macOS no longer has memory available for applications, and you get the "Your system has run out of application memory".
NOTE: I have seen situations where no single process is using all the memory, but rather a host of smaller processes are using up all the virtual memory. That is to say, a 100 instances of the same program all running with a moderate amount of memory eventually adds up to a lot of page table entries being used.
I have also seen users with 100's of web browser tabs open, where each tab is being managed by its own separate process. And just because you are not looking at any give tab, does not mean the Javascript running on that web page, is not taking up memory and virtual addresses.
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