Have you noticed lately that your MacBook isn’t running quite like it used to? You’re hearing the fan turn on a lot more and maybe it’s starting to freeze up when you have too many windows or browser tabs open. It’s not necessarily time to buy a brand new Mac or even upgrade the internal hardware. It sounds more like your RAM is the culprit.
Go to the Apple logo at the top left and click on it. Select ‘About This Mac.’. On the window that opens, go to the ‘Overview’ tab. Here various details of your Mac are shown, including Memory usage. For more information, click on the ‘System Report’ button. Under hardware, find the Memory tab. Before you think about installing more RAM, you should first try the tips listed below to free up your Mac memory. How to Free Up RAM on macOS Mojave. There are several things you can do to manage your Mac memory usage and fix any RAM-related problems you are experiencing. Reboot Your Mac. The first thing you should do when you free up RAM is.
Random access memory, or RAM, acts as storage for ongoing tasks and functions necessary for modern computing. It’s best known for its role in multitasking. If you’re using up most or all of your RAM, you could run into issues. While previously you might have been able to upgrade your Mac’s RAM, many MacBooks nowadays don’t allow for this. My 2011 MacBook Air has 4GB of RAM and I’m stuck with it until I buy a new laptop.
What you can do instead, to somewhat remedy the issue, is use software tools to free up some RAM. Here are two good options.
Quick Fix: Memory Clean 2
My once almost consistently quiet MacBook Air now has the fan spinning even when I only have a browser window and Messages open. Upon inspecting what could be the cause, I found that at any given time I only had 100MB to 500MB of available RAM. So I looked for an easy solution and found one in the Mac App Store: Memory Clean 2.
With the click of a button, Memory Clean digs around for areas behind the scenes where it can free up memory.
Memory Clean sounds exactly like what it does, it cleans your memory. You won’t lose any data or anything like that. The app shows you a breakdown of how your Mac is using up RAM and how much is available. With the click of a button, Memory Clean digs around for areas behind the scenes where it can free up memory and does just that.
The app is free and on average I manage to clean 100MB to 300MB every time I use it. You can always just keep cleaning Clean after each cycle until it frees up the amount you want, though with each click the amount it can clean gets smaller.
I also recommend the $4.99 paid upgrade for “Extreme Clean” which tends to clean anywhere from 400MB to 700MB for me. It takes a few seconds longer to work, but after one run-through I can already begin to hear my MacBook’s fan slowing down. The only downside is that once you start doing other things on your Mac again, RAM usage goes back up.
Detailed Fix: Activity Monitor
If you want to get the job done yourself and make some more permanent changes to your RAM usage, use Activity Monitor. This is an app that comes with macOS and lets you monitor CPU usage, battery life and memory among other things.
Open Activity Monitor and click the Memory tab. At the top of the list, click Memory to sort processes by memory usage and make sure ones using the most are at the top. If you recognize the process or app hogging your RAM, click the Information icon and click Quit to ditch it and free up that memory. Note that this will close the app.
There are likely a lot of running processes here you don’t recognize. You’re better off leaving these alone as they could be essential to your Mac.
Once you figure out which apps hog memory that you don’t necessarily need, you should then prevent them from automatically launching at startup too.
ALSO READ: How To Speed Up a Slow Mac
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Updated: June 12, 2021 Home » Freeware and Software Reviews » System Optimization and Registry Cleaner
Increasingly both Microsoft Windows and Apple macOS are intelligent enough to manage the amount of RAM available in the system, especially newer operating systems such as Windows 10 and macOS. Memory optimization software is not necessary unless you are still using a very old OS such as XP or you have very little RAM to spare. Works great on Microsoft’s Windows 10 and Apple’s macOS.
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↓ 01 – Memory Cleaner X | macOS
Memory Cleaner X monitors your memory usage and cleans up your Mac’s memory, increasing performance. Cached memory can take up the memory needed for new apps, and Memory Cleaner X increases performance by cleaning cached memory. Memory Cleaner X also monitors RAM usage on your computer, and you can free up unused memory in just one click.
The application monitors RAM usage on your computer and frees up unused memory with one click. With Memory Cleaner X, you can easily manage your memory usage. An animated status icon in the menu bar shows you the percentage of memory being used, as well as memory cleaning being run. Features:
- Memory usage information displayed in the menu bar
- Memory usage per application
- Manual memory free up when needed
- Automatic memory free up
↓ 02 – CleanMem Free | Windows
CleanMem is still a set it and forget program and is totally free. When you install CleanMem it will auto run every 15 min by the Windows Task Scheduler. Once installed it is set and forgotten. Just as it always has been. You can configure CleanMem to do more advanced things such as ignore lists, only lists, and log files. These can be set by the CleanMem Settings program in the start menu.
↓ 03 – Memory Clean 2 | macOS
Memory Clean is the ultimate app for optimizing your Mac’s memory and is best used after you have finished using a memory (RAM) intensive app or game. It replicates the feeling of a fresh system restart. Memory Clean works by purging the Mac’s inactive memory and is best used when you close an intensive program that you do not plan to use again quickly within a few hours.
↓ 04 – RAMRush | Windows
RAMRush is a free memory management and optimization tool. It can efficiently optimize memory usages of your Windows system, free up physical RAM and make your system work better. RAMRush uses an intelligent way to manage the physical memory and lets the RAM work in a better performance. It will help you to prevent system crashes, memory leaks and keep your computer running more efficiently.
- Increase system performance
- Increase the amount of memory available
- Defragment system physical memory
- Recover memory from Windows applications
- Remove memory leaks
- Prevent system crashes caused by memory problems
↓ 05 – Wise Memory Optimizer | Windows
Most PC users have known and unknown applications running in the background that take up your computer’s physical memory and thereby affect its performance. Wise Memory Optimizer helps you free up and tune up the physical memory taken up by some useless applications to boost PC performance. The application requires a pretty low quantity of CPU and system memory, has a good response time and rapidly finishes an optimization job. Better yet, it also has a portable version. You can drop the program files anywhere on the hard drive or a flash drive and run it on any computer without prior install operations.
↓ 06 – Mz RAM Booster | Windows
Mz RAM Booster is a program created to improve the performance of your computer by auto-recovering RAM and fine tuning some Windows system settings! It uses minimal resources and almost no CPU time. Speed up your computer, stop memory leaks and increase free RAM.
↓ 07 – Memory Cleaner | macOS
Memory Cleaner can increase your free memory with a simple click and monitor memory usage in the menu bar. Memory Cleaner is the perfect tool to keep your computer going full speed and helps you to optimize your memory (RAM) usage with a simple click.
Memory Cleaner keeps your system’s memory (RAM) clean by monitoring and optimizing the memory usage. Helps you to quickly access detailed memory information and diagnosis from your menu bar and CLEAN your memory with a simple click. Main Features:
- One-click and automatic system memory optimization
- List of apps with significant memory usage
- Memory pressure meter and notifications
- Dynamic and customizable menu bar
- Detailed memory information
↓ 08 – Mem Reduct | Windows
Lightweight real-time memory management application to monitor and clean system memory on your computer. The program used undocumented internal system features (Native API) to clear system cache (system working set, working set, standby page lists, modified page lists) with variable result ~10-50%. It is compatible with Windows XP SP3 and higher operating systems, but some general features available only since Windows Vista.
↓ 09 – MemPlus | Windows
Freeing Up Ram On Mac
MemPlus can be used to monitor the RAM usage on your device. You can clear the memory of any non-essential processes by clicking the “Clear memory” button which is visible in the main window. This will clear both the working sets of processes and the FileSystem cache, if enabled. You also have the ability to clear the working set or FileSystem cache separately.
- RAM Optimizer – MemPlus can be used to reduce the amount of RAM that is being used by applications on your system. In essence, freeing up memory so that more memory is available to you!
- RAM Analyzer – MemPlus can help recover the specification of the RAM that is installed on your system. This information can be exported in TEXT, HTML, CSV and Excel formats.
Free Up Space On Mac
↓ 10 – Memory Optimizer [ Not Free Anymore ] | Windows
How To Clear Space On Macbook
Lacking memory? Optimize with Memory Optimizer. You’d be surprised how much you can recover! Understand your computer’s memory usage and keep it under control – Memory Optimizer will graph your computer’s memory showing you what’s using it and giving you an easy way to optimize it’s usage. Just click “Optimize” and speed your computer up immediately!
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