0

My Macbook Pro has been running with really high memory recently, I think it might be what's caused the whole system to freeze 2 or 3 times over the last couple of weeks. I'll have a bunch of apps open then, maybe it's just that? But I don't think my usage habits have changed in the last 6 months (in fact previously I've done a lot of heavy RAM things, like working with large data sets / ML), and I wasn't experiencing any kind of freezing.

By "freezing" I mean that the whole system locks up, can't move mouse etc., display is still on, and it takes ~10secs to come back. Once it didn't come back and I had to do a hard restart.

Set up: enter image description here

Looking at the Activity Monitor, the programs there definitely aren't using the 14GB of Memory Used, but from other articles here I see that this is normal. Maybe the high memory pressure isn't normal though. I'm really not using big RAM-heavy programs, and as i said, it's no heavier than what has been absolutely fine for the last months. Activity Monitor sorted descending by Memory

Anyone else experienced this? Would high memory pressure cause the kinds of freezing that i've experienced? Any fixes?

Thanks,

Improve this question
3
  • 3
    Firstly, you're only viewing "My Processes". Switch to "All Processes" in the View menu. Also, Chrome is well known as a massive RAM hog. Try running things without Chrome, and see if that makes a difference. If not, then quit one more program - probably Teams next, then see what that does. Keep going till you find the culprit.
    – benwiggy
    Commented Jan 21, 2022 at 7:35
  • Thanks Ben, good spot, will do as you suggest.
    – Chris Browne
    Commented Jan 21, 2022 at 7:44
  • @benwiggy, did as you suggested, your first hunch was right. Have move to MS Edge instead of Chrome and life is good again.
    – Chris Browne
    Commented Jan 24, 2022 at 15:08

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
1

As per @benwiggy's suggestion, I investigated which programmes were causing high RAM usage: it was Google Chrome. I have installed Microsoft Edge, which has all the features of Chrome (same extensions, appearance settings etc.) but doesn't hog memory. Very happy with it so far.

Smooth sailing for now: enter image description here

Improve this answer

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .