Mac os x clean swap files

For example, you can set it to Downloads or whatever folder you like.

Now close Finder. The last step is to relaunch Finder: So now your computer relies on your hard drive space to keep your apps going. Interestingly, it finds about 74 GB of junk on an average computer. If you have downloaded CleanMyMac, you may also take advantage of its amazing feature — the ability to free up RAM in a few seconds. Gmail alone could take up the appreciable amount of your RAM. And when the extensions are too many they seriously slow your Mac down.

How to remove them? Each browser goes about it differently, but you would typically find them in Settings under three-dot burger menu. At this point, you may not even be aware what widgets and plugins your browser is dragging behind. So, how to free up RAM on Mac? But how many open windows are there? Some of them are collapsed or stacked in some blind spot on your screen. This Finder command merges all your windows into one.

See how to do it:. This results in having both inactive and swapped-out pages. Why not preemptively swapping-in pages? Because that would be betting against the odds: Let's think of a simplified example: Program A is still running and all the swapped-out pages belong to A.

Program B has quitted and all the inactive pages belong to B. Also take into account that swapping-out writing to disk is more expensive than swapping-in reading from disk.

Which makes this "bet" even more unatractive. Turns out that inactive memory doesn't work as the Using Activity Monitor to read System Memory article has led many people to believe it works. The definition given in the article for inactive memory is correct:. But the following example is totally misleading and over-simplified like my example to be frank:.

Inactive memory is available for use by another application, just like Free memory. However, if you open Mail before its Inactive memory is used by a different application, Mail will open quicker because its Inactive memory is converted to Active memory, instead of loading it from the slower drive. I searched for more online resources and ended up to this thread in the darwin kernel mailing list which is quite informative. Quoting Jim Magee from the darwin team - I think:.

In short, the kernel VM system when dealing with memory pressure scans through in-use pages and tries to keep them in a balance between active and inactive markings. The inactive pages are scanned for reuse while marked as inactive.

All replies

If they have been reused, they are marked as active and some other page must move from active to inactive state to detect if it is in active use. So, inactive is a misnomer. It is shorthand for "possibly inactive, lets try to verify that. This explains the behaviour you observe. So, when you fire-up a new program, inactive pages are swapped out.

• Simple Ways to Reduce Memory Usage on Mac (MacBook Pro, Air, iMac).
• Ways to reduce memory usage on Mac (and free up your RAM)?
• xcode - How to clear swap files in Mac - Stack Overflow!
• Free Up Inactive Memory in Mac OS X with Purge Command.
• What is the Mac swapfile?.

The thread also contains some suggestions to learn more about the darwin internals. There are also some suggestions in case you started investigating the memory usage because of beachball problems which usually have little to do with it. You can also disable Spotlight to free up more ram and reduce disk activity. The following commands are used to disable and enable Spotlight. There's not much you can do.

Why it does that?

Because it's just how OS X works. The interesting part is how the occupied memory is getting bigger with every sleep the Mac gets. The system is working as designed. Even when there's no memory pressure, it can make sense to write some pages that cannot be discarded but haven't been recently used to swap when the system isn't busy.

That way, if there is memory pressure later, these pages can be evicted from RAM without having to first write them to swap while the system is busy. By clicking "Post Your Answer", you acknowledge that you have read our updated terms of service , privacy policy and cookie policy , and that your continued use of the website is subject to these policies.

Your Answer

Home Questions Tags Users Unanswered. Ask Question. Here a screen that shows what I mean: Balchev Balchev 1 2 8. Page content loaded. Dec 26, 3: In response to V. Dec 26, 4: Dec 26, 8: Dec 27, 5: Clearing swap? More Less. Communities Contact Support. Sign in. Browse Search. Ask a question. User profile for user: Eli L Eli L. Is there a way to do this in OSX?