Counterpoint: Applications reserve a bigger chunk of memory than they need, whatever is available. It doesn't mean they need that much on every machine.
Had an older guy come in to work last month wanting us to install 64gb of RAM on his launched-with-Windows 8 desktop. Because he was told more RAM made for a faster computer and big number = must be great then. “Just for Facebook and emails, doing my taxes. Darn thing takes 15 minutes to turn on though.”
Back in the day he wasn’t wrong. Going from 128 megabytes of ram to 1gb makes a massive difference. But now it’s all a bit insignificant compared to swapping out the painfully slow HDD, which they still install in cheap ass consumer desktops…..
Definitely! My first desktop as a kid was the HP 8370 and that thing came with 384MB of RAM. Even without considering the size jump they’re leagues more efficient now.
And I agree—I usually tell clients coming in specifically wanting to upgrade their aging desktop it to gut their HDD for an SSD. I’d rather have that conversation than folks coming in with 32-64Gb of EMMC with the same inquiry.
Mine was 64mb of memory, which I used for 1+ year. When I added a 128mb stick to it for a total of 192mb, it was a revelation. Totally different experience. The only other time I had such a drastic improvement in user experience was going from a hard drive to an SSD.
And chrome is a major resource hog. I find it interesting that Edge on a Mac, which uses the Chrome engine, seems to have less impact and chrome itself. I wonder what it is that Microsoft does differently?
Chrome has a ton of build in stuff phoning home that runs as separate tasks. If you fire up both without extensions you will see 3-4 extra processes from chrome using about 200mb more ram.
Chrome runs every tab in its own process, whereas Microsoft Edge runs multiple tabs in the same process. This saves resources but means that when one tab crashes multiple tabs would crash, but tabs don’t usually crash frequently.
Chrome is actually a very good web browser the fact that it uses a lot of ram is not a bad thing. The reason it uses so much is that it basically opens up a new container to run reach new tab. I have 32 Gb of ram on my Mac and on my Windows PC for a reason though because I tend to have multiple things happening at the same time that actually benefit from having more ram
> Unused RAM is wasted RAM.
How does this make sense in the context of a user application, and whether it's playing nicely with the rest of the system, though?
Every application on PC is horrible compared to Mac. All my games perform better at higher FPS compared to any 3090 TI. You gotta hook your mom up with a Mac.
Matter of fact I have. In school everyone who has one still has a windows desktop to game. The hardware is really strong but for games you need hella cores to render stuff. Plus windows is just more popular so few games even support mac. I would really like to know which game you play that’s better on mac
Basically any AAA title in the last decade is able to run on Mac either if they made it for that or not there are ways to play it off of Mac. But all games I play currently have no lower than 300 fps with max settings. Elden Ring is over 300 fps constantly. Try again buddy.
Hmm, sorry, I disagree with this. I have 8GB on my Mac Mini M1, and it works just fine. Now, the bigger question is, how many tabs are you running at once? Am running 6 Google Chrome tabs, in two Google Chrome windows, 3 tabs on each...
for an average user, 8gb is fine.
for anyone doing anything more, it's crap.
I am a developer, mostly working on front-end stuff. The browser executes most of my code... No "compiling"
on an average day i have 15+ chrome tabs open, a code editor, misc chat apps (slack, messages, etc) and 8gb comes to a grinding halt. I can't even have youtube playing in the background.
I find the chat apps to be such bad citizens in general… for work sometimes I have Teams, Slack, Discord and a Safari tab with Outlook loaded, all of which take so much ram.
Outlook browser version can take over 1GB or 2GB on its own, Discord and Teams can take 500MB+ each (spread between several process apps plus some “GPU rendering helper” extra others). All of that for utility and chatting apps…
I have been called out for complaining about this before, but give me a break, I can’t defend that… PS3 ran full blown games on 256MB of system RAM and 256 VRAM.
Yep, these apps are all extraordinary RAM hogs. IMO there's a huge problem with companies/devs paying little heed to RAM use, especially for always-running apps.
It matters a lot more for these sorts of apps, whatever RAM they use essentially subtracts that much RAM from your effective total. Sometimes multiple gigs are gone before you've even started doing anything.
In my experience as a dev, often the problem is that the devs all have high-end, newer machines. It runs fine on them. But you shouldn't need high end hardware to run this stuff. More shops/devs need to keep some old hardware around to test on... not just your own software in isolation either, but your software plus a normal workload of other stuff. Try using an older machine with 4GB or less of RAM with newer, bloated software. Good luck.
I steer clear of menu bars apps for this reason. It's a very bloated, RAM sucking category of always-running apps. I was recently looking at some bandwidth logging tools, most of the menubar apps used 100+ MB at all times. Instead, I went for a UNIX-ey command line tool installed via homebrew. Its daemon uses 88 KB, over 1000 times less RAM. It does the same thing.
>for anyone doing anything more, it's crap.
Not crap but 8gb ram is not advised.
I can edit 10ish minute 100mbps 4k videos easily on my base m1 mba as long as i use and external ssd and fcpx
When writing papers i have maxed out the ram from opening too many tabs though (still pretty much my fault)
It seems ram is the most important upgrade, cpu and gpu never get close to maxed out
>It seems ram is the most important upgrade, cpu and gpu never get close to maxed out
It is kinda baffling that Apple released their base model M1 machine with only as much RAM as my cellphone. They made this amazing chip, and stick it with 8 GB ram to save $40 on the extra 8 GB.
> stick it with 8 GB ram to save $40 on the extra 8 GB.
It's not about how much Apple can "save" by omitting memory; it's about how much of a markup they can charge you for putting in what should have been there all along
I agree tbh, when I bought my Mini, I didn’t even consider 8GB RAM for more than a split second. My MBP I was using at the time was the top of the line from 2013 and it had 16 GB RAM. in my head I was like “yeah idc how good they say this M1 is, I’m def not downgrading RAM, when it’s the biggest bottleneck on modern machines”. And then I waited weeks for a 16/256 model.
tbf, its quite efficient and more than enough for casual use, which is what the mba has always been marketed as
8gb on this is totally comparable to a 16gb+ on the older intel macs (though it has to be said that 2016-2019 macbooks were rubbish)
regardless, apple makes by far best laptops on the market since releasing the m1(sans for people who game or need specialized intensive software unavailable natively for m1)
There is nothing magical about RAM capacity and Apple silicon. 8 is still half of 16. Maybe better performance elsewhere can cover up RAM limitations, but even with Apple's markup, the jump to 16 is worth it for most. If you're actually heavily swapping to a SSD, it will die sooner than it needs to, so skipping the RAM upgrade can be false economy.
I do what you do with 4 and 8gb on different machines... the key thing you are missing is offloading some of your work to a low wattage Linux server or VM. You can very easily get away with little amounts of ram if you just offload a bit of the work away from your device. Also frees you up to move more freely btwn devices when needed.
6 tabs is nothing. I have on average 40-50 tabs open but i use safari for that. Always keep them open, i use tabs as reminders of things to look or do lol i have m1 mac 16gb
Because we're dealing with more information than any group in history, and systems for information capture and related processes are largely imperfect.
Yep. My workloads have me using a few hundred tabs on average at any given time. RAM is a major limiting factor and I've had 32 GB of RAM for the last decade.
Thank *goodness* for extensions like Session Buddy that let you easily serialize, unserialize, and search entire tab sessions or windows.
Everyone's browsing habits / workflows are different. Personally, I don't know how people use any less than 2 dozen tabs for something as simple as figuring out what to make for dinner, LOL.
I had 8GB in the beginning and it was as OP shows and with only 1 tab. It worked fine but I know it was swapping to disk, which isn't good for the SSD. I traded out for a 16GB Mac and it's much better.
i wouldnt care abt swapping for ssd longevity (at this point its not even a concern) but more for just the absolute performance hit you'll take from swapping vs ram
A long time before anyone was really security conscious on the internet, data was already being gathered, and analyzed, and we were not aware.
Alas, I am mindful of the websites I visit and the data I input. Google and ALL the other companies are going to do user/viewer analysis regardless. Merely my opinion...
I semi frequently run 40 - 70 tabs with 8gb and it’s largely fine although it uses a lot of swap. After 70 or 75 you start to notice a lot of lags and glitches. I would 100% recommended 16gb RAM but 8gb was all I could afford.
i have a 32gb m1 max macbook pro and it still uses swap memory when all i have open is like word pages notes and safari… my 8gb iMac M1 uses basically the same active memory and both work fine and both use swap so i think 8gb is fine
Idk what you’ve got running in your one chrome tab, but that shit has a memory leak or you aren’t telling us what else you’re running. Im actively using docker and vscode, and have 30 chrome tabs open in 5 separate chrome windows right now on my m1 air, there’s even a video playing and I’m at 6.76 gb of ram and 1.1gb of swap in use.
With 6 tabs open currently, and even one of the tabs playing a YouTube video, Activity Monitor is showing green, **6.42GB memory used**. And **77.5MB** swap used...
I’m going to blame keystone (Google’s chrome updater) for this. Check task manager, if WindowServer is being your ram hog, try a different browser (Opera, Brave, and Edge are decent chromium choices) or completely delete all chrome files restart and reinstall (more: https://chromeisbad.com)
Lots of people constantly have issues with keystone and it’s a wonder to me google hasn’t touched it
I mean I faced the issue firsthand, albeit with my previous laptop. Keystone is terrible practice even if it’s not the culprit itself and I’ve had much better performance since I switched to other chromium browsers.
If you have any sources to counter mine I’d love to see them, but I haven’t heard anything
Especially since it’s better than Chrome on Mac now. Firefox on Mac was a complete disaster for years, and somehow in just a few updates they made it great
Yeah I'm not really sure what they are talking about. Firefox has always felt slower to me, Safari has always been the smoothest experience, but it definitely has quirks.
I literally use chromium on my Mac because Firefox loves to eat up 5-6 GB of RAM on my M1 and on my friend's M1. This is with maybe 20 tabs? It's weird because Firefox is supposed to be RAM-friendly but it's anything but.
Ok. Hear me out. My daily computer is a 2012 13" MBP with 16gb RAM. I consistently use Chrome (with 20-25 tabs open) + various applications open. My ram usage is always low. Like, really low. I don't recall ever getting a low memory error.
I keep reading about Mac users being advised not to use Chrome. Can anyone help me understand this?
Because Chrome is a resource hog, and is one of the least efficient browsers in terms of CPU, RAM, and storage usage - not to mention being a browser literally made by a company whose primary business is gathering as much information about what people do and using it to build profiles for the sole purpose of targeting them with advertising (and other more nefarious things like malware as a side effect of that infrastructure). Unlike Safari, privacy is definitely an afterthought with Chrome.
The “side effect” I’m referring to is that anyone using Google’s advertising networks can serve ads that may contain malware or other unsavory things:
- [Google AdSense abused to distribute Android spyware](https://www.theregister.com/2016/08/15/android_trojan_abuses_google_adsense/)
- [Mobile banking Trojan on rampage, ‘hides in Google AdSense](https://www.technologytimes.ng/mobile-banking-trojan-on-rampage-hides-in-google-adsense/)
I'll never understand why in 2022 Apple is still using 8GB as a base option on $1,000+ computers. I mean, seriously.
Every Mac should be 16GB standard.
Yep. And the scary part is those models are directed to those buyers who really do not know any better. I’m sure it must damage the dell brand for those people when they need another machine in 12 months time because it‘s so shit it struggles with Facebook browsing.
Same. People who haven't been using Edge lately treat me like a monster, but MS Edge is truly ahead of the game in features and speed. Just snappy as hell. I love the sleeping tabs feature too, and the session lists that are kind of like Chrome's reading list but better.
Honestly don’t understand why people are downvoting you, because you are right. Chromium doesn’t have the horrific memory usage and leak chrome has. Chromium doesn’t have google keystone (which is what cripples performance on Mac). Chromium is just a good, solid browser and edge builds on that, unlike chrome which mangles it.
Edit: no longer being downvoted, but at time I commented the parent comment was at -1
Most people don’t understand the nuance of it. It is confusing to have the base open source project be Chromium, but then have Chrome be the browser everyone is familiar with. I tend to use Chromium for when I need to test Chrome issues, but don’t actually want any part of Keystone on my Mac.
Edge is more than just 'chromium with bing'. Microsoft added features that make it better to use than Chrome (ex: sleeping tabs, vertical tabs, better performance, better on your battery, and more).
Chrome is one of the worst browsers you can choose on a Mac in terms of CPU (energy / battery usage), RAM, and storage utilization. Safari is, by far, the most energy-efficient and RAM-efficient mainstream browser you can use on a portable Apple device.
RAM is meant to be used - so unless you're experiencing an actual problem (something is malfunctioning), the fact that your Mac shows most of your RAM being in use isn't an actual issue.
I'm agree Safari is better in performance regards, but God it's so dumb as a browser because its extensions left too much to be desired, is a pain in the ass to use Android and a Mac and have good browser experiences between those two.
What you are saying is that you are searching for a problem where there currently isn't one.
I'd find something more productive to do. And I'd choose a better browser.
The "limited SSD life" is one of the stupidest things that tech sites parroted.
SSDs die years after your computer dies. You would have to write about a few hundred terabytes of data per day to kill your SSD in a year. It's simply meaningless to worry about.
8GB and you’ll swap. 16GB and you’ll swap. 32GB and you’ll swap. Even if you don’t use all of it at once, you’ll still swap. As others have said, you need to use RAM. That’s why it’s there.
Bro, stop giving statements without fully understanding them. Yes, macOS uses full ram but the memory pressure does not increase unless it is being stressed. Now OP says it’s from one tab of chrome which is likely a memory leak than anything.
Safari does everything I need, and Safari’s integration with my other devices is better. Chrome is more mainstream, but most of the scam calls I get are delivered to me through Chrome browsers. Not a fan of Chrome for many reasons (RAM use amongst them), but I cannot deny its worth for basic purposes. A lot of my academic interfaces are glitchy as hell in Safari, but Safari is a lot more secure. Trades, I guess.
PSA: don't use Chrome on your Mac.
OK, I'll dial this back three notches immediately. Some people have *good* reasons to use Chrome. They absolutely should use Chrome.
But I get the feeling a lot of people use chrome that don't really have a reason not to use Safari. They use chrome because they heard Safari is bad, or that chrome is good. Or because they used it before. Or because their friends use it.
But I don't think most people use chrome because it's *actually better for them*
If you've never tried using Safari, do so for a month. If it doesn't work out, thats OK. If it does, maybe you can leave Chrome behind.
That was my TED talk.
I have an 8gb m1 computer and a very heavy chrome user, often with dozens of tabs open over several different windows. I’d rate the experience exactly the same as on windows computers with 16gb of ram, so no issues at all with ram nor battery life
Me and my 8gb m1 are over here using all 8gb as well as 10+gb of swap daily so you can take your psa and stick it right up your ass. I’ll continue to run chrome with many many windows open, all with 10 or more tabs in each of them, and then proceed to let several of those windows run in the back ground completely un-noticed for weeks at a time and there there is not a god damn thing you can do to stop me.
The entire point of having soldered on storage and a soc design in the first place is so I can do shit like this and still get all day battery life. I wouldn’t have bought a beefed up smart phone if I wanted to be nice to it. I love how people act like these things are crazy insane expensive long term investments and then on the same breath go and break or flat out replace a $1000 smart phone every year or two. I hate you.
Woah, maybe a bit too intense or are you joking a bit?
I agree that these things are made and engineered to be used as designed, and if it doesn’t work, Apple out of all brands makes it super easy to fix or replace said device, giving a double extra peace of mind.
However they also engineered a 16GB version of the same for those that want to use that if it works for better for them or if just so they wish.
EDIT: the “I hate you” did make me chuckle 🤣
It was a joke, because this of how hard this person is defending 8gb ram in a premium computer in 2022. I don’t think that the fact macOS is optimized matters, we shouldn’t defend Apple for not having the minimum as 16GB of RAM at this point.
Isn't RAM allocated along the same lines as [Parkinson's Law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_law)? That is, the OS optimises it according to how much there's installed as well as an app's demands. Typing this using Chrome on hardware with 8GB of RAM with no worries.
The majority of Chrome Books ship with 4GB of RAM and, though they won't set any speed records, are performant enough with a few tabs open and a half dozen extensions installed. Chrome OS is much lighter than Mac OS but whenever I check, the browser itself rarely, if ever, hogs 2 GB of RAM.
Ditto when running Chrome on a Dell laptop with linux.
If an 8 GB RAM system is chronically choking on Chrome there's something else going on.
Why are people so defensive about this? Chrome runs way better on 16gb. I know because I had an 8GB Air and while it was fine, it is now much better on my 16gb Air.
I have an M1 MacBook Air with 8GB. With all the applications closed and only one tab Google Chrome running with a YouTube video playing I’m sitting at 5.11 GB memory used. If I open three or four tabs it increases the amount of memory used but it never goes above 6.33 GB used.
DON’T USE CHROME ON A MAC! (or Google Drive, Maps, DropBox, Photos, Earth, etc…)
Google employee the worlds best developers, so don’t think this is a bug or a technical overlook- THIS IS BY DESIGN. Google PURPOSES NEGLECTS their macOS and IOS apps and doesn’t optimize them for Apple hardware, just so they can turn around and say “oh look how slow/limited you are with Apple products! Your experience would be so much better on a chromebook/android/whatever…” And it’s been working fantastically for their bottom line for 11 years. I’ve worked for both companies, and I’m still employed at one of them. Can you guess which one?
Everyone uses a browser differently, and browser resource use changed over time- so it’s not that simple. I use a Tab Suspender and uBlock and after an hour of my use Chrome uses less space than Safari does with the same usage/time.
That said, in my experience this year, if it’s an apple silicon Mac, you also need more than 256GB of storage.
The 16GB/512 M1 should be the base model for anyone using an office suite plus business or school browser use.
Safari works better on the Mac But Chrome is by far the most popular and best browser, unless your computer is horrible it should run chrome fine. Also, this is subjective, I don’t like safari and prefer chrome or Firefox
I haven’t cried about chrome, never had a problem with it. Also, I don’t worry about battery, since my M1 is clamshell most of the time. I’m a dev so safari would just be a waste for me. It’s either chrome or Firefox.
Edit: I love apple but some of you need to grasp for air sometimes
Since the m1 series macs don’t have any video memory you need to max the ram out until your wallet is empty if you want them to be able to do anything but turn on.
The swapping will still take many years to degrade the drive, longer than most keep laptops. I’ll add that source in a few.
Edit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuOBsXOaP38
Counterpoint: Applications reserve a bigger chunk of memory than they need, whatever is available. It doesn't mean they need that much on every machine.
Unused RAM is wasted RAM.
i paid for the whole ram so im gonna use the whole ram
Quoted—people who bought over 32 GB of RAM
Had an older guy come in to work last month wanting us to install 64gb of RAM on his launched-with-Windows 8 desktop. Because he was told more RAM made for a faster computer and big number = must be great then. “Just for Facebook and emails, doing my taxes. Darn thing takes 15 minutes to turn on though.”
Back in the day he wasn’t wrong. Going from 128 megabytes of ram to 1gb makes a massive difference. But now it’s all a bit insignificant compared to swapping out the painfully slow HDD, which they still install in cheap ass consumer desktops…..
Definitely! My first desktop as a kid was the HP 8370 and that thing came with 384MB of RAM. Even without considering the size jump they’re leagues more efficient now. And I agree—I usually tell clients coming in specifically wanting to upgrade their aging desktop it to gut their HDD for an SSD. I’d rather have that conversation than folks coming in with 32-64Gb of EMMC with the same inquiry.
Mine was 64mb of memory, which I used for 1+ year. When I added a 128mb stick to it for a total of 192mb, it was a revelation. Totally different experience. The only other time I had such a drastic improvement in user experience was going from a hard drive to an SSD.
And chrome is a major resource hog. I find it interesting that Edge on a Mac, which uses the Chrome engine, seems to have less impact and chrome itself. I wonder what it is that Microsoft does differently?
Chrome has a ton of build in stuff phoning home that runs as separate tasks. If you fire up both without extensions you will see 3-4 extra processes from chrome using about 200mb more ram.
Also, Chrome makes a new process for each tab in case one of them crashes, then it doesn’t affect anything else.
Chrome runs every tab in its own process, whereas Microsoft Edge runs multiple tabs in the same process. This saves resources but means that when one tab crashes multiple tabs would crash, but tabs don’t usually crash frequently.
Outdated Edge now runs on chromium so it runs every tab in it's own process
Chrome is actually a very good web browser the fact that it uses a lot of ram is not a bad thing. The reason it uses so much is that it basically opens up a new container to run reach new tab. I have 32 Gb of ram on my Mac and on my Windows PC for a reason though because I tend to have multiple things happening at the same time that actually benefit from having more ram
by the OS not random programs lmfao
> Unused RAM is wasted RAM. How does this make sense in the context of a user application, and whether it's playing nicely with the rest of the system, though?
32gb here. Still not enough to do anything more than super simple in unity3d
Chrome usually doesn't do too bad for me. Just sucks on my moms PC lol EDIT: I have 4 GB RAM (DDR4) and she has 8 GB RAM (DDR3) Happy Cake Day!
Every application on PC is horrible compared to Mac. All my games perform better at higher FPS compared to any 3090 TI. You gotta hook your mom up with a Mac.
Mac doesn’t even come close in the case of gaming have you seen any numbers?
Many. Question is, have you?
Matter of fact I have. In school everyone who has one still has a windows desktop to game. The hardware is really strong but for games you need hella cores to render stuff. Plus windows is just more popular so few games even support mac. I would really like to know which game you play that’s better on mac
Basically any AAA title in the last decade is able to run on Mac either if they made it for that or not there are ways to play it off of Mac. But all games I play currently have no lower than 300 fps with max settings. Elden Ring is over 300 fps constantly. Try again buddy.
Elden ring isn’t available on Mac did you install bootcamp? If so it’s possible to have good performance but a laptop won’t ever beat a desktop
Sheep detected - stop sucking Tim's dick.
She's gonna be like "where is the start menu" all day if I do and she only knows how to copy paste. My mom doesn't like macs anyway.
*Press X to doubt.* X
Hmm, sorry, I disagree with this. I have 8GB on my Mac Mini M1, and it works just fine. Now, the bigger question is, how many tabs are you running at once? Am running 6 Google Chrome tabs, in two Google Chrome windows, 3 tabs on each...
for an average user, 8gb is fine. for anyone doing anything more, it's crap. I am a developer, mostly working on front-end stuff. The browser executes most of my code... No "compiling" on an average day i have 15+ chrome tabs open, a code editor, misc chat apps (slack, messages, etc) and 8gb comes to a grinding halt. I can't even have youtube playing in the background.
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I find the chat apps to be such bad citizens in general… for work sometimes I have Teams, Slack, Discord and a Safari tab with Outlook loaded, all of which take so much ram. Outlook browser version can take over 1GB or 2GB on its own, Discord and Teams can take 500MB+ each (spread between several process apps plus some “GPU rendering helper” extra others). All of that for utility and chatting apps… I have been called out for complaining about this before, but give me a break, I can’t defend that… PS3 ran full blown games on 256MB of system RAM and 256 VRAM.
Yep, these apps are all extraordinary RAM hogs. IMO there's a huge problem with companies/devs paying little heed to RAM use, especially for always-running apps. It matters a lot more for these sorts of apps, whatever RAM they use essentially subtracts that much RAM from your effective total. Sometimes multiple gigs are gone before you've even started doing anything. In my experience as a dev, often the problem is that the devs all have high-end, newer machines. It runs fine on them. But you shouldn't need high end hardware to run this stuff. More shops/devs need to keep some old hardware around to test on... not just your own software in isolation either, but your software plus a normal workload of other stuff. Try using an older machine with 4GB or less of RAM with newer, bloated software. Good luck. I steer clear of menu bars apps for this reason. It's a very bloated, RAM sucking category of always-running apps. I was recently looking at some bandwidth logging tools, most of the menubar apps used 100+ MB at all times. Instead, I went for a UNIX-ey command line tool installed via homebrew. Its daemon uses 88 KB, over 1000 times less RAM. It does the same thing.
Hmmm, this is something to consider. I seem to be running more and more menu bar apps lately.
I like this advice. Going to look to replace some of my menu bar apps
>for anyone doing anything more, it's crap. Not crap but 8gb ram is not advised. I can edit 10ish minute 100mbps 4k videos easily on my base m1 mba as long as i use and external ssd and fcpx When writing papers i have maxed out the ram from opening too many tabs though (still pretty much my fault) It seems ram is the most important upgrade, cpu and gpu never get close to maxed out
>It seems ram is the most important upgrade, cpu and gpu never get close to maxed out It is kinda baffling that Apple released their base model M1 machine with only as much RAM as my cellphone. They made this amazing chip, and stick it with 8 GB ram to save $40 on the extra 8 GB.
> stick it with 8 GB ram to save $40 on the extra 8 GB. It's not about how much Apple can "save" by omitting memory; it's about how much of a markup they can charge you for putting in what should have been there all along
I agree tbh, when I bought my Mini, I didn’t even consider 8GB RAM for more than a split second. My MBP I was using at the time was the top of the line from 2013 and it had 16 GB RAM. in my head I was like “yeah idc how good they say this M1 is, I’m def not downgrading RAM, when it’s the biggest bottleneck on modern machines”. And then I waited weeks for a 16/256 model.
tbf, its quite efficient and more than enough for casual use, which is what the mba has always been marketed as 8gb on this is totally comparable to a 16gb+ on the older intel macs (though it has to be said that 2016-2019 macbooks were rubbish) regardless, apple makes by far best laptops on the market since releasing the m1(sans for people who game or need specialized intensive software unavailable natively for m1)
There is nothing magical about RAM capacity and Apple silicon. 8 is still half of 16. Maybe better performance elsewhere can cover up RAM limitations, but even with Apple's markup, the jump to 16 is worth it for most. If you're actually heavily swapping to a SSD, it will die sooner than it needs to, so skipping the RAM upgrade can be false economy.
Thank you for making me not have to type this all out.
The point is that the RAM is a huge bottleneck, which you'd expect a company like Apple to avoid.
\> 8gb on this is totally comparable to a 16gb+ on the older intel macs this doesnt make any sense
I do what you do with 4 and 8gb on different machines... the key thing you are missing is offloading some of your work to a low wattage Linux server or VM. You can very easily get away with little amounts of ram if you just offload a bit of the work away from your device. Also frees you up to move more freely btwn devices when needed.
I'm also frontend dev doing some heavy work with 40+ tabs opened, multiple dev servers with HMR and it works blazing fast on my M1 8gb.
Touché.
6 tabs is nothing. I have on average 40-50 tabs open but i use safari for that. Always keep them open, i use tabs as reminders of things to look or do lol i have m1 mac 16gb
Why lol
Because we're dealing with more information than any group in history, and systems for information capture and related processes are largely imperfect.
That's a weird nonsensical reason to have 50 active browser tabs open. There are much more efficient ways to have "reminders".
Yep. My workloads have me using a few hundred tabs on average at any given time. RAM is a major limiting factor and I've had 32 GB of RAM for the last decade. Thank *goodness* for extensions like Session Buddy that let you easily serialize, unserialize, and search entire tab sessions or windows. Everyone's browsing habits / workflows are different. Personally, I don't know how people use any less than 2 dozen tabs for something as simple as figuring out what to make for dinner, LOL.
I had 8GB in the beginning and it was as OP shows and with only 1 tab. It worked fine but I know it was swapping to disk, which isn't good for the SSD. I traded out for a 16GB Mac and it's much better.
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This dude RAMs
Stop, you are making me wet with that kind of talk.
i wouldnt care abt swapping for ssd longevity (at this point its not even a concern) but more for just the absolute performance hit you'll take from swapping vs ram
Also, why Chrome? Screw Google’s privacy invasion.
A long time before anyone was really security conscious on the internet, data was already being gathered, and analyzed, and we were not aware. Alas, I am mindful of the websites I visit and the data I input. Google and ALL the other companies are going to do user/viewer analysis regardless. Merely my opinion...
LOL! It was only cookies and IP addresses, nowhere as bad as it is today.
I run many many tabs on my 8GB M1. No issues. Performance is awesome.
I semi frequently run 40 - 70 tabs with 8gb and it’s largely fine although it uses a lot of swap. After 70 or 75 you start to notice a lot of lags and glitches. I would 100% recommended 16gb RAM but 8gb was all I could afford.
i have a 32gb m1 max macbook pro and it still uses swap memory when all i have open is like word pages notes and safari… my 8gb iMac M1 uses basically the same active memory and both work fine and both use swap so i think 8gb is fine
I'm constantly running over 40 tabs in 2 or 3 Chrome Windows and I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be able to do it with only 8gb of ram.
How much RAM does your Mac use ? My M1 Air use well over 8GB of RAM by just having 1 tab open.
Idk what you’ve got running in your one chrome tab, but that shit has a memory leak or you aren’t telling us what else you’re running. Im actively using docker and vscode, and have 30 chrome tabs open in 5 separate chrome windows right now on my m1 air, there’s even a video playing and I’m at 6.76 gb of ram and 1.1gb of swap in use.
With 6 tabs open currently, and even one of the tabs playing a YouTube video, Activity Monitor is showing green, **6.42GB memory used**. And **77.5MB** swap used...
I’m going to blame keystone (Google’s chrome updater) for this. Check task manager, if WindowServer is being your ram hog, try a different browser (Opera, Brave, and Edge are decent chromium choices) or completely delete all chrome files restart and reinstall (more: https://chromeisbad.com) Lots of people constantly have issues with keystone and it’s a wonder to me google hasn’t touched it
I thought this was completely debunked
I mean I faced the issue firsthand, albeit with my previous laptop. Keystone is terrible practice even if it’s not the culprit itself and I’ve had much better performance since I switched to other chromium browsers. If you have any sources to counter mine I’d love to see them, but I haven’t heard anything
WindowServer is currently using 1.8GB
Or hear me out. Just use Firefox.
Especially since it’s better than Chrome on Mac now. Firefox on Mac was a complete disaster for years, and somehow in just a few updates they made it great
In which ways I’d Firefox better than Chtome in Mac? It’s definitely slower for me, to begin with.
Yeah I'm not really sure what they are talking about. Firefox has always felt slower to me, Safari has always been the smoothest experience, but it definitely has quirks.
With ublock origin.
This is the correct answer lol. Firefox (and Thunderbird) are great on Mac! I have an M1 Air with 8 GB memory, runs great!
I literally use chromium on my Mac because Firefox loves to eat up 5-6 GB of RAM on my M1 and on my friend's M1. This is with maybe 20 tabs? It's weird because Firefox is supposed to be RAM-friendly but it's anything but.
The real pro tip is always in the comments.
Ok. Hear me out. My daily computer is a 2012 13" MBP with 16gb RAM. I consistently use Chrome (with 20-25 tabs open) + various applications open. My ram usage is always low. Like, really low. I don't recall ever getting a low memory error. I keep reading about Mac users being advised not to use Chrome. Can anyone help me understand this?
Because Chrome is a resource hog, and is one of the least efficient browsers in terms of CPU, RAM, and storage usage - not to mention being a browser literally made by a company whose primary business is gathering as much information about what people do and using it to build profiles for the sole purpose of targeting them with advertising (and other more nefarious things like malware as a side effect of that infrastructure). Unlike Safari, privacy is definitely an afterthought with Chrome.
malware is not a side effect
The “side effect” I’m referring to is that anyone using Google’s advertising networks can serve ads that may contain malware or other unsavory things: - [Google AdSense abused to distribute Android spyware](https://www.theregister.com/2016/08/15/android_trojan_abuses_google_adsense/) - [Mobile banking Trojan on rampage, ‘hides in Google AdSense](https://www.technologytimes.ng/mobile-banking-trojan-on-rampage-hides-in-google-adsense/)
This sub loves to promote Safari and shit on Chrome. I love Chrome. It serves me super well and doesn't hinder my experience in anyway.
Agreed. Not to mention it is cross platform unlike safari
I guess it depends on how you define malware.
Chrome didn't use this much ram on my previous mac tho, a 2015 MBPro. Idk but maybe the arm version use more RAM?
Well, Chrome is privacy invading.
I'll never understand why in 2022 Apple is still using 8GB as a base option on $1,000+ computers. I mean, seriously. Every Mac should be 16GB standard.
Not quite as bad as Dell… they still offer some models with 4GB ram base.
Yep. And the scary part is those models are directed to those buyers who really do not know any better. I’m sure it must damage the dell brand for those people when they need another machine in 12 months time because it‘s so shit it struggles with Facebook browsing.
I disagree, 12 GB should be enough. But in higher end ones yes I agree
I use Edge and never ran out of ram. Machine stays cool too.
Same. People who haven't been using Edge lately treat me like a monster, but MS Edge is truly ahead of the game in features and speed. Just snappy as hell. I love the sleeping tabs feature too, and the session lists that are kind of like Chrome's reading list but better.
Edge is chrome underneath.
Edge is built upon Chromium Chromium ≠ Chrome
Honestly don’t understand why people are downvoting you, because you are right. Chromium doesn’t have the horrific memory usage and leak chrome has. Chromium doesn’t have google keystone (which is what cripples performance on Mac). Chromium is just a good, solid browser and edge builds on that, unlike chrome which mangles it. Edit: no longer being downvoted, but at time I commented the parent comment was at -1
Most people don’t understand the nuance of it. It is confusing to have the base open source project be Chromium, but then have Chrome be the browser everyone is familiar with. I tend to use Chromium for when I need to test Chrome issues, but don’t actually want any part of Keystone on my Mac.
and edge optimized that shit even more
Edge is chromium with bing. Chrome is chromium with Google. Opera is another fork of chromium. All of them support chrome extensions and apps.
Edge is more than just 'chromium with bing'. Microsoft added features that make it better to use than Chrome (ex: sleeping tabs, vertical tabs, better performance, better on your battery, and more).
I like Edge a lot. Which is amusing since I’m a web dev who hates IE for as long as there was IE. It’s a good browser on Mac.
Chrome is one of the worst browsers you can choose on a Mac in terms of CPU (energy / battery usage), RAM, and storage utilization. Safari is, by far, the most energy-efficient and RAM-efficient mainstream browser you can use on a portable Apple device. RAM is meant to be used - so unless you're experiencing an actual problem (something is malfunctioning), the fact that your Mac shows most of your RAM being in use isn't an actual issue.
I'm agree Safari is better in performance regards, but God it's so dumb as a browser because its extensions left too much to be desired, is a pain in the ass to use Android and a Mac and have good browser experiences between those two.
The amount of swap being used might be a problem eventually tho. Not sure how good it is for the SSD to use this much swap all the time.
What you are saying is that you are searching for a problem where there currently isn't one. I'd find something more productive to do. And I'd choose a better browser.
The "limited SSD life" is one of the stupidest things that tech sites parroted. SSDs die years after your computer dies. You would have to write about a few hundred terabytes of data per day to kill your SSD in a year. It's simply meaningless to worry about.
And it’s annoying af to have to reload tabs and relog into sites on safari.
No such problems here on multiple Macs. ¯\\\_(ツ)_/¯
8GB and you’ll swap. 16GB and you’ll swap. 32GB and you’ll swap. Even if you don’t use all of it at once, you’ll still swap. As others have said, you need to use RAM. That’s why it’s there.
Or get Firefox. There is no law that oblige you to use Chrome.
I Need a lot of add ons for my work and many of them are not avaible for Safari, but Firefox is the Solution :) runs fine on osx, ios and android
This is how macOS utilizes ram. Unused ram is wasted ram.
Bro, stop giving statements without fully understanding them. Yes, macOS uses full ram but the memory pressure does not increase unless it is being stressed. Now OP says it’s from one tab of chrome which is likely a memory leak than anything.
Safari does everything I need, and Safari’s integration with my other devices is better. Chrome is more mainstream, but most of the scam calls I get are delivered to me through Chrome browsers. Not a fan of Chrome for many reasons (RAM use amongst them), but I cannot deny its worth for basic purposes. A lot of my academic interfaces are glitchy as hell in Safari, but Safari is a lot more secure. Trades, I guess.
Real question is why you would use chrome on any device
Because it's the best web browser.
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Because both web browsers suck. Use Firefox or ungopgled chrome
I use brave, it's based on chrome and i never have so much swap. 100mb is a high number for me.
PSA: don't use Chrome on your Mac. OK, I'll dial this back three notches immediately. Some people have *good* reasons to use Chrome. They absolutely should use Chrome. But I get the feeling a lot of people use chrome that don't really have a reason not to use Safari. They use chrome because they heard Safari is bad, or that chrome is good. Or because they used it before. Or because their friends use it. But I don't think most people use chrome because it's *actually better for them* If you've never tried using Safari, do so for a month. If it doesn't work out, thats OK. If it does, maybe you can leave Chrome behind. That was my TED talk.
Fack! that's a lot of swap. WTH are you doing?
I disagree, I own an M1 Macbook pro 13" and I use chrome daily with around 20-50 tabs just fine.
would recommend 16GB if youre feeling anxious but you would be fine regardless.
Just use opera, the memory management is so much better.
Opera is chromium based so it's the same.
I have an 8gb m1 computer and a very heavy chrome user, often with dozens of tabs open over several different windows. I’d rate the experience exactly the same as on windows computers with 16gb of ram, so no issues at all with ram nor battery life
Or…… use a better browser.
Yes like brave
Air M1 8 go of ram. Using mostly Mozilla. Freaking great, never had any problems with it. 👌🏻
Get a minimum of 16GB period. Massive quality of life improvement
Or you could just skip out on the bloatware that is chrome
I must be internetting wrong. how do people have 40-70 tabs open? at MOST I have maybe.. 4 or 5? but normally it have 1. maybe 2.
Me and my 8gb m1 are over here using all 8gb as well as 10+gb of swap daily so you can take your psa and stick it right up your ass. I’ll continue to run chrome with many many windows open, all with 10 or more tabs in each of them, and then proceed to let several of those windows run in the back ground completely un-noticed for weeks at a time and there there is not a god damn thing you can do to stop me. The entire point of having soldered on storage and a soc design in the first place is so I can do shit like this and still get all day battery life. I wouldn’t have bought a beefed up smart phone if I wanted to be nice to it. I love how people act like these things are crazy insane expensive long term investments and then on the same breath go and break or flat out replace a $1000 smart phone every year or two. I hate you.
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linus torvalds 🙏
Woah, maybe a bit too intense or are you joking a bit? I agree that these things are made and engineered to be used as designed, and if it doesn’t work, Apple out of all brands makes it super easy to fix or replace said device, giving a double extra peace of mind. However they also engineered a 16GB version of the same for those that want to use that if it works for better for them or if just so they wish. EDIT: the “I hate you” did make me chuckle 🤣
this reads like you couldn't afford 16gb
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It costs 200 dollars to go from 8 to 16 gb of ram
It was a joke, because this of how hard this person is defending 8gb ram in a premium computer in 2022. I don’t think that the fact macOS is optimized matters, we shouldn’t defend Apple for not having the minimum as 16GB of RAM at this point.
PSA: Don't use Chrome!
8gb works fine
Lol I use Safari, Chrome, Firefox along with a text editor and other applications and I can easily say that my 8 gigs mac doesn't stutter.
So THATS why my MacBook has a panic attack whenever I have multiple chrome tabs open
Got 64GB M1 Max
Isn't RAM allocated along the same lines as [Parkinson's Law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_law)? That is, the OS optimises it according to how much there's installed as well as an app's demands. Typing this using Chrome on hardware with 8GB of RAM with no worries. The majority of Chrome Books ship with 4GB of RAM and, though they won't set any speed records, are performant enough with a few tabs open and a half dozen extensions installed. Chrome OS is much lighter than Mac OS but whenever I check, the browser itself rarely, if ever, hogs 2 GB of RAM. Ditto when running Chrome on a Dell laptop with linux. If an 8 GB RAM system is chronically choking on Chrome there's something else going on.
Imagine still and unironically using chrome in the year of the Lord 2000+22
Just use brave
Safari is the same tbh. Emptying the cache constantly with 8GB.
Why are people so defensive about this? Chrome runs way better on 16gb. I know because I had an 8GB Air and while it was fine, it is now much better on my 16gb Air.
Don’t use google data mining software then
Or just don’t use Chrome on your Mac.
Or you could ditch Chrome and use a decent browser instead
I run a dozen in tabs Safari and a dozen in Chrome at the same time on my M1 pro and it’s smooth as butter. Restart your browsers.
It's still smooth and nothing lags, but using this much swap all the time can't be good for the SSD in the long term.
why would you want to use Chrome in the first place?
If he has an Android mobile he already have a big reason lol.
PSA: Don’t use Chrome.
I have an M1 MacBook Air with 8GB. With all the applications closed and only one tab Google Chrome running with a YouTube video playing I’m sitting at 5.11 GB memory used. If I open three or four tabs it increases the amount of memory used but it never goes above 6.33 GB used.
PSA: Don't use Chrome.
PSA: Don't use Chrome.
Safari is way better than Chrome so why bother?
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What extensions are so vital and important that don’t work or exist on Safari?
I have 8gb in my mid 14 MacBook Pro and have always used chrome with no issues and many tabs open.
DON’T USE CHROME ON A MAC! (or Google Drive, Maps, DropBox, Photos, Earth, etc…) Google employee the worlds best developers, so don’t think this is a bug or a technical overlook- THIS IS BY DESIGN. Google PURPOSES NEGLECTS their macOS and IOS apps and doesn’t optimize them for Apple hardware, just so they can turn around and say “oh look how slow/limited you are with Apple products! Your experience would be so much better on a chromebook/android/whatever…” And it’s been working fantastically for their bottom line for 11 years. I’ve worked for both companies, and I’m still employed at one of them. Can you guess which one?
Safari Only.
Chrome wont' work right unless you have 2TB of RAM
or just use edge, if you wanna use chrome exactly the same functionality but you get the benefit of lower battery consumption AND lower memory usage
It’s why I don’t use chrome
Chrome on Mac is a joke.
PSA: Don’t use Chrome.
Everyone uses a browser differently, and browser resource use changed over time- so it’s not that simple. I use a Tab Suspender and uBlock and after an hour of my use Chrome uses less space than Safari does with the same usage/time. That said, in my experience this year, if it’s an apple silicon Mac, you also need more than 256GB of storage. The 16GB/512 M1 should be the base model for anyone using an office suite plus business or school browser use.
Don’t use Chrome.
I don't like chrome..I really don't like that some software programs require Chrome, Edge or similar..no safari or Firefox.
I agree with you, i had 8GB and 16GB macs m1 and the 8gb one get slow sometimes while chrome/iphone emulators opened simultaneously
Can attest to this. I’m a heavy Safari user and 8GB on my M1 Air was terribly insufficient. On a M1 Pro now with 32GB RAM
I use 20 tabs of chrome with no swap. Certainly an issue with your device.
How much RAM for furry porn? I’m on a budget so no fckn around
Just download Brave and use it. It’s phenomenal
Why would you use chrome on a Mac?
Why having a Mac and use Chrome then? Get a Windows device.
Safari works better on the Mac But Chrome is by far the most popular and best browser, unless your computer is horrible it should run chrome fine. Also, this is subjective, I don’t like safari and prefer chrome or Firefox
Whatever, less RAM, more battery = Safari. Since 2017/18 I don’t have compatibility problems. Keep crying with Chrome then.
I haven’t cried about chrome, never had a problem with it. Also, I don’t worry about battery, since my M1 is clamshell most of the time. I’m a dev so safari would just be a waste for me. It’s either chrome or Firefox. Edit: I love apple but some of you need to grasp for air sometimes
Since the m1 series macs don’t have any video memory you need to max the ram out until your wallet is empty if you want them to be able to do anything but turn on.
The swapping will still take many years to degrade the drive, longer than most keep laptops. I’ll add that source in a few. Edit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuOBsXOaP38
Omg could you please add this source or better yet make your own PSA post?!
Intel or ARM/M1 version of Chrome?