RAM is an important component of a computer for ensuring device performance. When your Mac has less memory, you may get into various problems that cause your Mac not to work properly.
It’s time to free up RAM on Mac now! If you still feel clueless about what to do to clean up RAM memory, this post is an aid. In the following, you will get several useful tutorials that guide you to free up RAM easily. Let’s see!
What is RAM?
Before getting started, let’s first figure out what is RAM and its importance to your Mac.
RAM stands for Random Access Memory. The computer would divide such a part for keeping temporary files generated while it’s performing daily. It enables a computer to carry files between the computer and the system drive to make sure the computer runs properly. Generally, RAM will be measured in GB. Most Mac computers have 8GB or 16GB of RAM storage. Compared to the hard drive, RAM is much smaller.
RAM VS Hard Drive
Okay, when we also refer to the hard drive, what’s the difference between them?
The hard drive is the place where you will keep all your documents and files, and it can be divided into separate drives. However, RAM is not able to be selected for saving any document, app, or file, because it is a built-in drive to transfer and allocate system files for the computer to work normally. RAM is considered as the workspace of a computer, and it would directly transfer the files it needs to work with from the computer drive to the workspace for running. In other words, if your computer has RAM, it can handle more tasks at the same time.
How to Check RAM Usage on Mac
Checking the storage space of a Mac is simple, but you may be not familiar with it. To check RAM usage on Mac, you need to go to Applications for enter Activity Monitor in its search bar for access. You can also press F4 to quickly place the cursor in the search bar for typing. Then a window will pop up to show you the memory pressure of your Mac. Here are what the different memories mean:
- App memory: the space used for app performance
- Wired memory: reserved by apps, unable to be freed up
- Compressed: inactive, can be used by other apps
- Swap used: used by macOS to function
- Cached files: can be used to save cache data
However, rather than checking the figures, it would be more important for you to measure the availability of your RAM by checking the color grasp in Memory Pressure. When it shows a yellow or even red color, that means you have to free up RAM to bring the Mac back to normal performance again.
What Happens if Your Mac is Short of Memory
When your Mac is lacking in RAM, it may face such issues:
- Fail to perform properly but may run issues occur
- Keep spinning the beach ball all day
- Get the “Your system has run out of application memory” message
- The performance fails to be synced but lags when you type
- Apps fail to respond or keep freezing all the time
- Take a longer time to load things like a webpage
For the hard drive memory, users can change to a larger one to obtain more storage space. But RAM is different. It would be quite tough to replace your Mac’s RAM memory with a larger one. In that freeing up would be the simplest solution to solve Mac running improperly caused by a shortage of RAM, now let’s move to the next part.
How to Free up RAM on Mac
To free up RAM on Mac, there are many methods to help. So don’t feel it is a difficult job and never get started. Simply by following the guides below, you can easily clean up RAM to your Mac work fluently again, in save budget in purchasing a new one!
Best Solution: Use An All-in-one Mac Cleaner to Free up RAM
If you find it hard to get started with freeing up RAM on a Mac, you can rely on MobePas Mac Cleaner, a brilliant Mac cleaning software to free up RAM in just one click. Simply by opening the app and using the Smart Scan mode to scan, MobePas Mac Cleaner will function to list all the system junk, including system logs, user logs, app caches, and system caches that would be accumulated in the RAM. Tick them all and click Clean, your RAM can be freed up at once! MobePas Mac Cleaner can be used regularly daily to help free up RAM with one click.
Manual Methods to Free up RAM
If your RAM is full suddenly and you only wish to free it up instantly without third-party help, the following temporary methods would be suitable for you to do it.
1. Restart Your Mac
When Mac is shut off, it clears all the files from RAM because the computer does not need to work. That’s why people say that “restarting the computer can be a solution for many issues”. So when you need to free up RAM on Mac, click on Apple > Shut Down for restart it would be the quickest way. If your Mac fails to respond, long-press the Power button and you can force it to shut down immediately.
2. Close Apps in the Background
Apps running in the background would take up RAM, in that your Mac has to make apps function by constantly transferring files to make it perform. So to free up RAM, another way is to close the apps you don’t need to work with but keep running in the background. This can help free up RAM to some extent.
3. Close Opened Windows
Likewise, too many windows opened on a Mac could take RAM memory and cause your Mac to run behind. In Finder, you just need to go to Window > Merge All Windows to change multiple windows to tabs and close the ones you don’t need to work with. In web browsers, you are also able to close the tabs to help free up RAM.
4. Quit Process in Activity Monitor
As we know, you can check what processes are running on Mac by monitoring them in the Activity Monitor. Here, you can also take a look at the functioning processes and quit those you don’t need to run to free up RAM. To shut down a running process in Activity Monitor, select it and click on the “i” icon on the menu, you will find the Quit or Force Quit button for the quitting process.
Through this post, I believe that you have mastered the ways to free up RAM when your Mac runs slowly. Monitoring RAM space would be a quick way to get your Mac working faster again. In this way, you can make sure your works can be processed on Mac efficiently as well!