View memory usage in Activity Monitor on Mac

0:02
In this video, we’re going to look at how we can view our memory usage using the Activity Monitor on the Mac. Basically, what we can do is we can see how much system memory is being used on our Mac by individual apps. Let’s see how we can view memory usage on the Mac. Let’s go to my Mac.

0:23
Now in order to view your memory usage, what we need to do is we need to open up our activity monitor this is in your Utilities folder. I’m going to go to my Finder here. And then when I’m in my finder, when I go up under go, we have our utilities folder, this is located in the Applications folder as well. So if you have your Applications folder, you can find it within there. I’m just going to select this. And we have my Utilities folder here. Now if we look, you’re going to see we have an app called Activity Monitor. This is come with every Mac OS and the same Utilities folder. So if you’re using an older version of Mac OS, I’m using Mac OS, Monterey, if you’re using an older version, you’re still going to see this activity monitor. Now what this activity monitor does is it gives us a glimpse into the activity of what’s going on within the computer. In this particular video, we’re going to look at memory.

1:16
Now why would I want to look at my memory usage on the Mac? Well, if you have an app that is running slow, or maybe you have your computer that is running slow, what may be happening here is one of your apps is using a lot of memory. So then what you need to do is you need to quit out of that app. Well, if you have a lot of apps open, which app is it? Another reason why you may want to look at this is because you’re just curious, every computer doesn’t matter if it’s Windows or Mac, every computer uses memory. How was it using that memory? What can you do to better manage that memory, you can quit out with apps that are using a lot of memory, you can find all this out in the Activity Monitor. So I’m going to open this up. And now I’m looking at my activity monitor.

2:02
From here, what we need to do is we need to make sure that we’re looking at our Memory tab. When we’re looking at our Memory tab we can see how much memory each app is using. So we can see that my shortcuts app here is using 248 megabytes of memory. Now the first thing that I would recommend doing is sorting by memory usage. I’m going to make this column a little bit wider here. So I’m just going to drag this over to the right. So now we can see it says memory. I like to have it sorted by that. So then I can easily see which app is using most of my Mac’s memory and my case here again, it is shortcuts and the Finder. So what else am I looking at here? Well, I’m not going to get too geeky.

2:46
But if we go down to the bottom, you’re going to see we have this information here. The physical memory, this is the amount of RAM that your computer has. So my computer has eight gigabytes of RAM. That’s basically what this is telling me here. So this will not change. If you’ve ordered a computer with 16 gigabytes, then it’s going to say 16 gigabytes. If you’ve added RAM to it, it may show additional RAM, but this is how much RAM your computer has. Now below that we have our memory used, what is this? Well, this is the amount of RAM that is currently being used. So I’m currently using six gigabytes of RAM. How is that RAM being used? Well, if we go over to the right, you’re gonna see we have at memory wired memory and compressed. So apps are using about two gigabytes.

3:41
The Wired memory is what my system is using, I can’t change that if I were to quit out of apps, I could lessen up that app memory. But I can’t do anything about the wired memory. Compressed memory is apps that have used memory. But now I’m no longer using those apps. So there could be apps that are open, but I’m not using. And then what the Mac will do is it’ll compress it. So a combination of these three different types of memory add up to our memory used. So if I were to quit out of shortcuts here, what it would do is it would reduce my app memory, thereby reducing my memory used. It would also allow another app to use more memory. How can I see which ones are using compressed memory? Well, if we go back up to the top, you’re gonna see we have these columns here. If I Control click on this, I hold down the CTRL key and I click you’re going to see I can add more columns. I’m going to go with compressed memory. I select this.

4:43
And now I can see which apps are using custom memory which apps are using the most compressed memory. I click on this to sorta and now you can see that this app here, which is my shortcuts app, again, is using the most compressed memory We can also move these columns around, I’m going to drag this column over here to the left. And now we can see them side by side. We also have our cached memory. This is unused memory by the Mac that is used to improve performance. And then we also have our swap used, would swap used if you have a lot of swapped use memory, that could slow down the computer. Because what it is doing is it’s swapping whatever is in that memory to your hard drive, which slows down the computer. RAM is really, really fast. Hard drives can be slow. So if your computer your Mac has to write some of your memory over to the swap drive over to your hard drive, it’s going to slow down the computer, how can you speed it back up, go over to where all of your apps are and quit out of any apps that you’re no longer using. That’s the best way of cleaning up your memory here. Just quit out of apps that you’re no longer using. Eventually what that will do is that will free up more memory for other apps. So that’s a look at our Memory Usage in the Activity Monitor on the Mac.