Update 11/7 : Since I wrote this pillar , several Macworld readers have reached out with similar issues on M1 MacBooks . Some readers have had luck with disabling extensions and other have suggested it ’s related to Webkit . There are also lengthyHacker NewsandRedditthreads with user recount their experience .
For the past 10 months , I ’ve used a13 - inch M1 MacBook Prosupplied by my employer . Most sidereal day it ’s great , with exceptional battery life sentence and excellent speeds , and is an overall massive upgrade over my old 2016 model .
But some 24-hour interval it ’s nearly insufferable to get anything done . More than any Mac I ’ve possess , this MacBook on a regular basis have freeze , crashes , and restarts that often seem to be related to memory issues . It ’s been closely impossible to nail a pattern , but I assumed it was something establish on my machine by my company . After reading legion account this week about exchangeable payoff , I ’m not so indisputable .
WhenGregory McFadden tweetedthat Control Center was using 26 GB of the 64 GB of random access memory on his new MacBook Pro , the screenshot face very intimate . While Control Center never ate up that much RAM for me , I regularly espy spike when using Safari and Photoshop Elements and have seen more sporadic result with Mail and other apps . Sometimes the issues stimulate retardation that work themselves out in a few minutes , other sentence my motorcar locks up and forces a restart it .
I now keepActivity Monitoropen while I make for and it ’s uncommon that the memory press admonisher is n’t yellowish or red . Like most Mac users , I tend to keep several apps idling in the screen background — Mail , Music , Safari , Outlook , Word , etc.—but with the M1 MacBook , I often need to quit apps to free up software store . Closing Safari check is a regular task necessary to release up memory and keep my machine run swimmingly .
Activity Monitor often shows my memory pressure in the red .
IDG
That ’s extremely similar to the MacBook Pro and Monterey issues I ’ve read this week — except I ’m still run handsome Sur . That lead me to believe it ’s a big trouble that was n’t as widely report until now . Perhaps it ’s because developer be given to be more hyper - aware of thing like this or it ’s exacerbated by the redundant RAM in the raw MacBook Pro , but the identification number of people experiencing this issueappears to be growing . And I hope Apple is paying attention .
Memory loss
When the M1 microchip was released , Apple changed the path we think of RAM on our Macs . As in the iPhone and iPad , the memory was now affixed on the same package as the system - on - microchip . The M1 Pro and M1 Max come with high memory option , but the M1 tops out at 16 GB and that ’s that .
As Jason Snellwrote back when the M1 was released , that goodly system has benefits : “ The M1 CPU ’s memory is a single pool that ’s approachable by any component part of the processor . If the system needs more memory for artwork , it can apportion that . If it need more store for the Neural Engine , likewise . Even better , because all the scene of the central processing unit can get at all of the system memory , there ’s no performance murder when the graphics cores need to access something that was previously being accessed by a processor center . On other system of rules , the data has to be re-create from one portion of memory to another — but on the M1 , it ’s just instantly approachable . ”
monition like these — which I received while I was writing this clause — are rough-cut .
It ’s potential that macOS is n’t get by this unify memory body structure properly , and will continue to allocate RAM beyond what is available without freeing up RAM that is no longer ask . This is ordinarily refer to as a “ storage leak . ” execution step by step deteriorate until you need to either wait for the RAM to clear , strength - quit the app , or resume the machine .
Sometimes a admonition will appear when no single app is even using that much memory and other time apps are seemingly using way more remembering than is uncommitted . I ’ve seen undivided websites report using as much as 20 GB of Aries for no discernable reason , crippling my machine .
Maybe now that it ’s more of a widespread issue , Apple will figure it out . We ’ve reached out to Apple for comment but have n’t heard back , and it ’s whole possible that Apple fixes it in a future variant of macOS without ever direct the number in public . That ’s what fall out with theexcessive SSD usageearlier this year , though that Apple tell that was a “ datum coverage misplay ” and not an genuine problem . The store bug is an literal number that needs to be fixed as soon as potential .
In the meantime , there are a few way to extenuate the issue . The first is to be vigilant . As I said , keep Activity Monitor subject , and when you see an app ’s memory usage creep up , address it . you may also expend a third - party memory cleaner that let you chop-chop clear RAM . carry that periodically will serve keep your resources available . And finally , stay up to engagement with the a la mode interpretation of Big Sur or Monterey , as a localisation will hopefully arrive presently .
