What Is Your RAM Usage on macOS? Share Your Workflow and Use Case | Hacker News Reader

What Is Your RAM Usage on macOS? Share Your Workflow and Use Case

22 pointsdockerd33 comments

I'm trying to understand the memory requirements for different workflows on macOS.

What is your typical RAM usage?

What's your primary use case (e.g., software development, video editing, data analysis, etc.)?

I regularly run Docker containers, VMs, IDEs, and two web browsers on both an Intel Mac Pro and an M3 Mac Pro. I believe they both have 16GB of RAM. I have never bothered to check my RAM usage because I've never had the computer slow down or stop working because it ran out of RAM. (Intel Mac certainly feels bottlenecked sometimes by CPU, though.)

I have a 32gb m1 max studio and i get its hard to go oom for most people and even me a power user who leaves every tab open for weeks, has many docker containers and vms running. Etc with all this a few things will cause my mac to go to a crawl and thats llm stuff or pytorch (stable diffusion) will easily lock up my system entirely if I just leave it running or any heavy windows stuff…i mean i think the pattern is that its stuff that is meant to be run on heavier x86 hardware and gpus …

> has many docker containers and vms running Is it true that in MacOS you have to specify how much memory to be reserved for the Docker Desktop app (or colima or ...)? That means it doesn't matter how many docker containers you run, they can use only that amount of memory.

I.. don't know. I'm a relatively new (~12mths) convert from a lifetime of Windows, and one of the things that has really surprised me is that I don't seem to need to care about RAM usage. I actually had to look up how to find out.

I'm mostly photo editing (Exposure, XnView, Nitro) or doing small dev projects (VSCode, Rider). On a my old Dell laptop with 16GB RAM, I'd have to actively monitor RAM usage if I wanted Exposure to run well, shut down most other apps etc. On my MBP with 16GB, it has never been an issue.

Right now I have: Mail, LibreWolf, Signal, Jellyfin, Bitwarden, LibreOffice, XnView, Nitro, Terminal, Safari, Calibre, Remote Desktop, WIIM Home, Notes and Rider open, along with a host of background things like VPN, Syncthing etc. Activity Monitor says 14.2GB used. But I'm not sure if that number matters, because I've never noticed running out of RAM.

macOS tends to view unused RAM as wasted RAM so it uses as much as possible which is different to the Windows approach. The integrated SSDs are also optimised for swap to aid with that. So the ideal outcome should be like you said, not having to care about usage

No, this is ridiculous - all modern operating systems use 'unused' RAM for disk cache.

As an example: with ripgrep searching the entire (500 GB) C: drive for a fixed string, Task Manager reports:

  CPU: 61% 2.49 GHz
  Memory: 10.3/48.0 (21%)
  Disk 0 (C:): SSD 100%

  In use (Compressed): 10.1 GB (0 MB)
  Available: 37.7 GB
  Hardware reserved: 1.0 MB
  Committed: 8.9/48.8 GB
  Cached: 37.9 GB
  Paged pool: 2.0 GB
  Non-paged pool: 979 MB

Observe that “Available” ≅ “Cached”.

The system is a VM with 48 GB RAM and an 800 MB pagefile running Windows 11 (and lots of background processes: Emacs, Tailscale, sshd, WSL, NVIDIA and Adobe shovelware, etc.).

A bajillion firefox tabs (and emacs, and some lsp servers, and some dev servers and ...). Right now 28G used, 16G swap, in yellow memory pressure. Routinely get to red memory pressure. 32G M1 Max.

Just upgraded to a 48G M4, hopeful for some improvements, but think I might have to change my ways rather than my hardware...

Could've upgraded to a 64 GiB M1 for around $400 net cost rather than spending $2200 more on top of that.

Software & systems dev.

- 2 (UP) Ryzen 7950X3D + RTX 4070 Ti SUPER + 128 GiB RAM + 100 GbE (Gentoo)

- 1 (DP) EPYC 7002 series 7402 + 512 GiB RAM + 8 TiB SSD total + 0.5 PiB HDD total + 10 GbE (VMware ESXi 7 - also hosts XFS mdraid NAS, Plex, Ubiquiti, and k8s)

- 1 2021 16" MBP M1 Max 32 GiB 1 TiB

    Load: 78.96 62.12 52.73
    Uncompressed: 7.9 GiB 
    Compressed: 17.1
    Wired: 2.4
    Free: 4.0
    Size: 926Gi   Used: 847Gi    Free: 46Gi

- 1 RPi 5 + S/PDIF DAC hat as a PlexAmp server

- 4 RPi 5 + USB3->1 TiB SSD k8s PoE cluster in a small chassis

All are distcc, docker, ssh, and rustdesk enabled. Servers are on climate- and power-monitored UPSes.

(Please don't start pointless unsolicited preaching about this FS or that OS because I've heard it all, been there, and done that. Thanks.)

I work on an iOS app (FitBee) built primarily in SwiftUI. Xcode routinely takes about 5-6 gigs of ram. If I enable predictive code completion that’s another 2gb. Very glad I upgraded to a Mac mini m4 pro with 48gb of ram.

How long have you been using m4 pro mac mini? How is the memory pressure? How much was the RAM for previous machine?

I have an Intel Mac with 16GiB of RAM. It's starting to feel it's age; there's always the browser, which reported itself as using over 13GiB on it's own at times, the system using 9GiB of swap. Zoom, lang-servers, docker containers, compilers.

It's quite alot I guess, so that's good, but the swapping in particular causes the cpu to struggle a bit. Company's in cost-cutting mode, so I think I probably won't get an upgrade in the forseeable future; envious of those with an M-series, and really want 32GiB+ RAM

I can tell you that from a "performance for a given amount of physical RAM" perspective, Intel-based and Apple Silicon Macs are from different worlds. Even if you upgraded to a 2021 MacBook Air M1, you would be gobsmacked by the difference.

True. It will be massive performance gain to go from Intel Macbook Pro to currently available M2/M3 air.

Well... While I can't answer directly because I do not use personally OSX stuff, I've have had some passing through my hands to help friends and... The result is: no matter your workflows or activities OSX is a VERY BAD OS with bad iron underneath.

Some examples: a friend of mine have lost a keycap on a MacBookPro Apple told her she need a new machine... I've bough a keyboard on eBay for ~30€, opened the craptop and understood why Apple suggest to through it to bin... The keyboard can only be changed unmounting nearly the whole machine whose batteries modules are hard-glued to the chassis itself. I've used a HAMMER and a wallpaper spatula to detach them and I've had to literally rip the old keyboard. The new one in place works flawlessly and the craptop got reassembled without a visible scratch or any other issue except for half a day just to change a damn keyboard.

Another friend have lost it's MBP unique drive, he change the machine for a new one, trying to restore backup from TimeMachine and the disk seems not even recognized. I told him to boot a GNU/Linux live, the disk was good, data there in a convoluted form, with the help of a simple script https://gist.github.com/vjt/5183305 with minor changes I've restored the data.

Just two anecdote to say: do not waste money, they are worse than Windows.

I got am m2 max with 96gbyte ram. I bought it to create photogrammetry, which i havent really used it with it because my focus changed. But i do regularely run my own llms (120B-q4) which work at acceptable speeds (7-8 tokens/s for llama3.2 90b q4km, 14 t/s for quen 2.5 q4km). Like that ram usage goes up to 83gbyte.

Anything that you wouldn't have run on chatgpt/claude and would need local LLM?

Or you using local LLM as you have option to run it locally?

I have a MacBook Air 24G and I do a lot of VSCode, usually a few projects open and running a bunch of Node.js services/servers. I never get above 20G in normal operation. 16G is a bit tight, but 24G has enough room for now.

8GB M1 Air.

I do some software development, mostly personal webapps - I run k8s/docker with Orbstack and VS code. I don't watch my memory usage. It's probably swaps to disk, but the perf hit isn't noticeable to me.

Just to be clear, if you post "usage" I can't take you credibly. You can only really discuss your hardware RAM amount and your "Memory Pressure" from Activity Monitor.

Why does that word harm credibility?

Because of how macOS manages memory on Apple Silicon, raw "Memory Used" numbers aren't enough to understand your system's ability to perform well with a given workload. Instead, "Memory Pressure" is the primary indicator of how effectively your system handles workloads given the available physical RAM.

Ok but the post says

> I'm trying to understand the memory requirements for different workflows on macOS.

Does this sound like someone representing as a Mac power user? Or is it your thought that only experts should ask questions?

I was more referring to people commenting saying how much memory you need

I have a Mac mini m2 with 8gb and it's clearly not enough.

I'm only using it to test my flutter app on iOS and manage fragile xcode settings.

Most of my work is on a Windows pc.

Ram is never an issue, but Macs default open files limit is horrid.

Share yours first

How about you tell us what you have in mind and we'll tell you how much RAM you need.

I recently shifted to an M4 Pro MacBook Pro with 24GB - base model from Windows Machine. I was reading few sub-reddits where most people going for 48GB just to be future proof which they would never require mostly. Personally, I am fine with 24GB except that it doesn't allow much bigger LLM but realized that bigger LLM then would require more memory bandwidth also which would mean M4 Max. Decided to go ahead with M4 Pro base model and will use online LLM.

I wouldn't spend money on the absolutely newest hardware like some new car buyer unless I were a decamillionaire, but even then, I don't think unthrifty habits are all that wise to adopt because they "leak" into other areas of life and habits also.

An 2021 M1 Max 64 GiB 2 TiB is only $1800, while an average 2024 M4 48 GiB 1 TiB is $4000. I'll take 1/3 more RAM over just slightly better performance and worse reliability for half the price. As long as the battery has at least 85% of life remaining and the SSD doesn't have excessive volume of wear, it's a better choice unless you absolutely needed every second of time and you're making $1M TC or owning a startup with a funding run-rate / TTM crunch like you're going to turn into a pumpkin at midnight.

Lot of people don't realize this - "I don't think unthrifty habits are all that wise to adopt because they "leak" into other areas of life and habits also." I personally faced this too.

Interesting perspective on preferring more RAM than a bit down performance which is potentially true as M1 apple mac are quite fast for most use-cases.

It depends entirely on your use-case(s). The cost and profiteering of new MBPs is so absurd and drifting away from classic SJ innovation and value, that its borderline immoral to $upport it. I do approve of their fig leaf potentially SSD swappable and repairable Mac mini M4 (and maybe Studio at some point), albeit the power switch is completely wrong for wall & rack mounting and brackets; I hope OWC will release some classic upgrades to mini and Studio rather than external sleds that are slower and bulkier. The trap TC fell into is that chasing design alone with maximum profit extraction is no way to make cool products that are also useful and endure, adding goodwill to form a brand culture rather than the highest possible stock valuation for a time.

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