Tips to Reduce Memory Usage on Mac

No matter how much RAM or powerful hardware you have on your Mac, you will feel that it becomes slow over time. This makes you think whether or not it’s time to upgrade the hardware. But simply upgrading the hardware isn’t a good solution to problems. Well most times productivity of your system depends on Memory usage.

How To Reduce Mac Memory Usage

So, you need to learn that how to free up memory on Mac. There are many ways to reduce memory usage on Mac we are listing here some simple ways to do so.

1. Kill unwanted applications using Activity Monitor:

There are many applications or programs which keep running in background all the time even if you do not want them. On a windows computer we use Task manager to kill such programs. On a Mac you can use Activity Monitor to do this. You can find a shortcut to open activity monitor and when you will access it you will find a memory tab in which your applications or process are sorted by the amount of memory they are consuming.

At the bottom grid you can see the memory they are consuming in which you will see a break up of Memory used. Which include following

Wired Memory: Reserved by apps which cannot be spared.

Compressed: In active and can be used by other applications.

Swap Used: Memory which is being used by Mac OS.

You can check the pressure on your memory by the graphical representation at the bottom if it is higher than your system has ran out of application memory. For sure you need to force quit or kill some application. Which you can do by choosing an application and then clicking on force quit.

How to Use Task Manager on Mac

2. Use An Optimization Tool:

Using an optimizer tool can help to regain the used memory and speed up your Mac. One of the best mac optimization tools is Disk Clean Pro. It removes junk files such as cache files, log files, temporary and trash to recover space on your computer. The tool scans all your browsers, deletes Internet history, cookies and application cache to make sure your privacy remains intact.

Moreover, you can manage duplicate files, old downloads and mail downloads in a few clicks. So, get Disk Clean Pro and restore space on your Mac

Download Disk Clean Pro To Speedup Your Mac

3. Clean shortcuts from the Desktop:

Next thing which can be done to clean Mac memory is cleaning of desktop have minimum icons on the desktop and it will take comparatively lesser time to load at start up and you will have comparatively more memory free at the same time.

4. Reduce Memory Usage by configuring Finder preferences:

There is a simple trick to free up around 1 GB of RAM. Default preferences on your finder are set to search your files when you are browsing folders which means it saves path for all your files which creates excessive burden on Mac.

To change finder preferences settings, click Finder and go to Finder Preferences.

Open General tab. You will find a drop-down menu under New Finder Windows Show: click on it.

Choose any of the given folders either it can be Downloads folder or any folder of your choice.

Now close finder preferences and relaunch finder by double clicking on it and holding options button at the same time.

5. Optimizing browser extensions:

Extensions installed on your browser also consumes RAM because when you actively use web browser these extensions also consume memory because they run all the time actively whenever you browse. Safari, Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox are the browsers we broadly used web browsers. So, you should minimize the number of widgets or plugins installed on these web browsers. It not only helps in reducing memory usage but also helps in free up disk space on Mac.

Explore Your Mac Better With Activity Monitor

6. Close unwanted finder Windows:

Another simple method to save data is to close finder windows. There can be multiple finder windows which are open on your Mac without your knowledge. Some of them are collapsed together or some of them are stacked on blind spot on your screen. So, if you want to close all the open finder windows to free up memory on your Mac then you can click on finder then Window and then Merge all Windows. Now you will find all the finder windows open in front of you and you can easily close them all and this was how to free up RAM on Mac.

So, these were some quick and easy tips to free up memory on Mac. Apart from this if you want to reduce memory usage then you should not keep multiple tabs open on your browser and detach non-required peripherals. Hope these simple ways to boost up your PC will work well for you. If you have any other suggestions, please let us know in the comment box.