32 Macworld • January 2022MAC
Safari sites spiking memory use happen on a regular basis.better, because all the aspects
of the processor can access all
of the system memory, there’s no
performance hit when the graphics
cores need to access something that
was previously being accessed by a
processor core. On other systems,
the data has to be copied from one
portion of memory to another – but on
the M1, it’s just instantly accessible.”
It’s possible that macOS isn’t
managing this unified memory
structure properly, and will continue
to allocate RAM beyond what is
available without freeing up RAM that
is no longer needed. This is commonly
referred to as a ‘memory leak’.
Performance gradually deteriorates
until you need to either wait for the
RAM to clear, force-quit the app, or
restart the machine.
Sometimes a warning will appear
when no single app is even using
that much memory and other times
apps are seemingly using way more
memory than is available. I’ve seen
single websites report using as much
as 20GB of RAM for no discernible
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 haven’t heard back,
and it’s entirely possible that Apple
fixes it in a future version of macOS
without ever addressing the issue
publicly. That’s what happened with
the excessive SSD usage earlier this
year, though that Apple says that
was a “data reporting error” and not
an actual problem. The memory bug
is an actual issue that needs to be
fixed as soon as possible.
In the meantime, there are a few
ways to mitigate the issue. The first is
to be vigilant. As I said, keep Activity
Monitor open, and when you see
an app’s memory usage creeping
up, address it. You can also use a
third-party memory cleaner that
lets you quickly clear RAM. Running
that periodically will help keep your
resources available. And finally, stay
up to date with the latest version
of Big Sur or Monterey, as a fix will
hopefully arrive soon.