Therefore the only way to really make a judgement about the speed of the storage inside your Mac is to use a tool such as the BlackMagic Disk Speed Test, or the AJA System Test Lite (free from the. FreeMemory for Mac is a utility to free up unneeded memory in your Mac OS X device. It is available for free from the App Store and download sites.
“No matter what I do, my Mac is still slow”, an average tech-consultant hears this phrase multiple times a day. Give a person even the most powerful computer, and pretty soon it will be cluttered with apps, extensions, and things that are too much for it to handle. To reverse it, one has to go back and сlean up the mess, removing memory agents one by one. Prepare for a fight — every byte of memory is at stake. So let’s put your Mac on a diet and get it more free RAM to breathe freely.
First, remove desktop clutter. Get a combination of Setapp apps that clear away unneeded desktop files.
Download Declutter Free“Your system has run out of application memory”
Memory Stick Data Recovery Software Mac tool is used to retrieve lost or deleted files from Mac OS X 10.5.8 versions that include Leopard, Snow Leopard, Lion and Mountain Lion etc. This Mac recovery tool retrieves data files from emptied trash bins.
How do you know your Mac is low on memory? Floating “rainbow wheels” aside, you may notice your Mac now takes ages to load. You’ll also see many browser applications crashing. You’ll be also thrown warning messages as “Your system has run out of application memory”. To help it, you should first visit the Activity monitor to see memory usage on Mac.
How to check RAM usage on Mac
Go to Applications and type in Activity Monitor in the search bar. This invokes a good old Activity Monitor that should tell how much free memory you’ve got left.
A shortcut to open Activity Monitor:
Press F4 and start typing Activity Monitor in the search bar.
I’ve attached a screenshot from my Mac and as you can see my memory usage almost reached full capacity. Here’s what it all means:
App memory: taken by apps and processes
Wired memory: reserved by apps, can’t be freed up
Compressed: inactive, can be used by other apps
Swap used: memory used by macOS
Cached files: memory you can really use
Wired memory: reserved by apps, can’t be freed up
Compressed: inactive, can be used by other apps
Swap used: memory used by macOS
Cached files: memory you can really use
Notice the colored graph under Memory Pressure. If your graph is all but red and yellow, your Mac is really gasping for fresh memory. It seems counter-intuitive, but “available memory” your Activity Monitor is not that important after all. In fact, it’s a system intended behavior to use all memory resources when available. On the contrary, the Memory Pressure graph is much more telling, so grow a habit to check this graph in the Activity Monitor every now and then.
How to check CPU usage on Mac
Open the CPU tab in Activity Monitor to keep in check CPU-heavy processes. Normally an app would be using 0-4% of CPU. If it takes abnormally more than that, go inside that particular item in the list and press the Quit button.
How to free up memory on Mac
Tip # 1. Remove Login Items to lower Mac memory usage
Login items are programs that load automatically upon Mac startup. Some of them covertly add themselves to the list and this is no good. If you’re looking to free up RAM, they are the first candidates for deletion. Don’t worry, you’re not deleting the app itself, you just stop it from auto-launching every time.
So, to remove Login Items and at the same time reduce your memory usage of your Mac, you need to:
- Open System Preferences and select Users & Groups.
- Click your nickname on the left.
- Select the Login Items tab.
- Check programs you don’t want to load as your Mac starts.
- Press the “–” sign below.
Now, you won’t see these apps pop up the moment you turn on your Mac. Although this method doesn’t require some superpowers of yours, some special Mac optimization and memory cleaner tools may do the job faster and ensure the smooth performance of your Mac. CleanMyMac X is an excellent example of such software. Here’s how to disable Login Items with CleanMyMac X:
- Download it for free and go to the Optimization tab.
- Check Login Items to see the list of apps that get opened when you start your Mac.
- Click Remove.
As you’ve already come to the Optimization module of CleanMyMac, you can also fix hung apps and heavy memory consumers there. In this way, you’ll free up the solid amount of RAM on Mac — 100% free of charge.
Tip # 2. Free up disk space if Mac is low on memory
The available space on your Mac’s drive translates into virtual memory. This comes to save you when you’ve run out of physical RAM. So now your computer relies on your hard drive space to keep your apps going.
The classic geek rule of thumb holds it that you should keep at least 20% of disk space on your startup drive. Not only this potentially reduces your future spending on iCloud storage but it also keeps your Mac speedier.
What to delete to free up space:
- Large unused files, like movies
- Old downloads
- Rarely used applications
- System junk
But here’s a simpler solution to save your time — clean up your drive with CleanMyMac X— the app I’ve mentioned above. Many users recommend it as an excellent way to free up more space because it searches for large & old files, useless system files, Photo junk, mail attachments and shows everything you can safely delete. Interestingly, it finds about 74 GB of junk on an average computer.
Extra trick: How to free up RAM on Mac with CleanMyMac X
If you have downloaded CleanMyMac, you may also take advantage of its amazing feature — the ability to free up RAM in a few seconds. Try this next time you see “Your system has run out of application memory” message.
- Go to the Maintenance tab on the left.
- Click Free Up RAM.
- Click Run.
As simple as that!
And you can do it even if you download a free version of the app.
Tip # 3. Clean up your Desktop
This tip always comes at the bottom of instructions and unfairly so as it is quite effective. Without even looking at your Desktop I would assume it’s cluttered with mountains of icons. Thing is, your macOS was designed in a way that it treats every Desktop icon as a little active window. The more icons, the heavier memory usage on Mac. So in order to release available memory resources, it’s recommended to keep your Desktop clean.
You don’t have to do it all by yourself. With apps like Declutter and Spotless, every desktop cleaning session will be scheduled in advance and executed automatically. Your only job is to define the rules on how your files should be organized.
Tip #4. Clear cache files
Another way to free up RAM on Mac is to clear it of cache files. Of course, it won’t save you gigabytes of space, but deleting cache regularly, you can help your Mac run faster and avoid system issues.
It has a file explorer, map and dynamic helper, along with panes for search effects, call stacks, locals, bookmarks, or mistakes. Codelobster for mac os.
So, to remove cache files on your Mac, you need to:
- Open Finder.
- From the Go menu, select Go to Folder.
- Type ~/Library/Caches in the field and press Go.
- In the window that appears, you will see all your cache files.
- Press Command+A to select all files or delete files one by one.
- Enter your user name and password to confirm.
If you find some files still in the folder after you emptied it, maybe you have some windows open on your Mac. Just like that, you can save up some space on your Mac. Don’t forget to empty the bin afterward.
Tip # 5. Tune up Chrome’s Task Manager
Although Google Chrome is not the one to blame for massive memory usage, it can indeed affect your Mac's performance. If you use Chrome as your primary browser, you probably have many windows opened there. Chrome runs a lot of processes to ensure a fast browsing experience for you. So, it uses your RAM for storing your tabs, plugins, and extensions. Look at how many entries Google Chrome has in Activity Monitor:
The question then arises, 'Why does Chrome use so much RAM?' The thing is that each process is responsible for a separate plugin or extension of your browser. For example, when a tab unexpectedly falls, you need to refresh it to continue your work there. If one process were responsible for all tabs and extensions, you would need to restart the whole browser instead. Can you imagine how many times would you do that? That’s the proper answer to why Chrome uses so much RAM.
I’ve been using Chrome for some years only to discover (recently) that Chrome had a task manager of its own. You can use it to force quit memory-heavy processes in the browser. It’s a handy tool because it lets you see how a page weighs on CPU usage on a Mac.
- Go to Chrome settings (dotted icon in the top right corner)
- Click More tools -> Task Manager
To free up even more RAM, close the GPU process. The GPU Process, though helpful in theory to accelerate pages, eats up a considerable amount of memory. Click to end it to free up RAM on your Mac.
Tip # 6. Manage RAM usage with CleanMyMac X menu
CleanMyMac X has another useful and convenient feature for managing your Mac’s performance and memory usage. As you install CleanMyMac X and start it for the first time, it’s icon will appear in your menu bar. Click the icon to open the CleanMyMac X menu. Here you can find updates on the current condition of your Mac and perform quick tweaks to increase your Mac's speed. Whenever you feel like your Mac underperforms, open the CleanMyMac X menu to check how much RAM is available and free it up as well.
Tip # 7. Close Finder windows
Okay, suppose you’re still asking yourself, how do I clear RAM on my MacBook Pro/MacBook Air. The next trick is as magical (you’ll see for yourself) as it is time-saving. It’s no secret that each window in the Finder eats up RAM. 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:
Click on Finder > Window > Merge All Windows
Now you can manage Finder windows more effectively and free up memory on MacBook.
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What else you can do to minimize memory usage on Mac
I’ve saved the easiest tips for the end, as long as these ones are self-explanatory.
- Replace AdBlock (very memory-demanding) with a lighter extension
- Keep fewer opened tabs in the browser
- Restart your Mac more often to free up RAM
- Close all hung-up print queues
That was my take on how to make your Mac a bit speedier to use. If you’re looking for more guidance, check simple ways to speed up your Mac.
Frequently Asked Questions
How to check application memory on Mac?
To check RAM usage on your Mac, go to Activity Monitor (Applications > Utilities). In the Memory tab, you will see all the active processes that are using your Mac’s RAM. At the end of the window, there is a Memory Used graph, which indicates how much application memory is used.
How to find out whether your Mac needs more RAM?
Your Mac may be using almost all its RAM, but you don’t need more if it’s using it efficiently. Open Activity Monitor and go to the Memory tab. The Memory Pressure graph shows the current condition of your RAM: green color means your Mac’s using RAM effectively, while yellow is a sign that some application or process is using too much of application memory. The red memory pressure signals that your Mac needs more RAM.
How to quickly free up RAM on your MacBook?
To free up RAM on your Mac, firstly, you should find out what app uses so much of your memory. The memory-heavy programs are listed in Activity Monitor, Memory tab. If there is an app you aren’t using at the moment, click it and press the “X” sign to quit it. This will, in turn, free some of the application memory
These might also interest you:
This article is an overview of current methods and tools for volatile memory analysis of a Apple Mac OS X system; additional references for each subject are listed. This is not a guide for dumping or analysing memory.
The forensic analysis of a computer involves many complex and delicate tasks. To make an accurate and reliable copy of the data stored on hard disks, there are well documented and reliable procedures. The reasons are simple: the acquisition procedure is quite easy, so an expert is not strictly required, and there are a plenty of examination tools available on the market that can be used to investigate the collected data. More complex and unreliable is the acquisition of volatile memory.
The Random-Access Memory (RAM) is an area of the computer which is used to store data while the computer is working on it. A large amount of clear text sensitive information resides only within the RAM, assuming that the OS will prevent unauthorized access and that when the computer is powered off the content will be unavailable.
It is quite obvious that we can loose evidence if we omit volatile data during an acquisition procedure. Additionally, a growing number of infections show us that the memory content will be the only place where evidence can be found.
From a forensic perspective, RAM is extremely important, because it gives an idea of what the computer was doing at the time of analysis. With the increasing number of Apple Macintosh computers in the industry, the investigation of Mac OSXRAM Securecrt for mac os x. content is becoming very important.
Most standards and best practice guidelines, such as the “Computer Security Incident Handling Guide” from NIST or RFC 3227 “Guidelines for Evidence Collection and Archiving”, include procedures of gathering volatile data: current network connections, running processes, users sessions, kernel parameters, open files etc. The problem is that to acquire data, some tools like netstat, lsof, ifconfig must be executed. These tools collect only obvious data, leaving most of the system’s memory unanalyzed. Moreover, these tools are executed from user mode and even if statically linked they can print unreliable data because of a kernel level modification. The perfect tool for collecting volatile data should not rely on an operating system (see the Tribble PCI device, [Carrier2003]).
A memory acquisition procedure should be useful in different environments so in most cases it relies on a software solution, and, if well designed, just uses a very short collection process, if possible, reduced to a single command in order to minimize the impact on the machine.
Several methods for the acquisition of the memory of a Mac OSX system may be used, all with some problems/limitations. Following a list of currently most used procedures some of them not specific for the Mac world.
This method, implemented for example in MacMemoryReader, uses a kernel extension to create temporary, read-only /dev/mem and /dev/pmap devices. /dev/mem provides the same functionality provided by /dev/mem on other Unix operating systems and gives access to physical memory of the following types, as defined by EFI: “available”, Loader Code, Loader Data, Bootstrap Code, Bootstrap Data, Runtime Code, Runtime Data, and, optionally, “reserved”.
It does not allow access to memory ports or memory-mapped I/O devices, so it cannot be used to write device drivers.
Superuser access is required to load the extension. In addition, since something is loaded in the memory, a footprint is left in the memory itself and changes the state of the acquired system.
As a trivial alternative to the kernel extension, it is possible to use the kmem=1 boot-time argument. If kernel supports the argument, this setting will reenable the kernel memory device. Since is a boot-time argument, a reboot is required, so it is useless in case acquisition of a running computer.
This method uses a “feature” of the Firewire spec (OHCI-1394), that allows read/write access to physical memory (via DMA) for external Firewire devices. As this is DMA, the CPU/OS will not even know what’s going on, so may work regardless of whether you have locked your screen; If not mitigated, Mac OSX prior to Lion 10.7.2 was vulnerable to this kind of attack; in Lion 10.7.2 it only works if a user is logged in.
Due to the firewire bus limitation, only 2GB on memory can be dumped, so with the growing memory size in modern machines, this method may be limited.
With specific HW, Macs with only the new Thunderbolt interface are also vulnerable. A summary of papers, attacks and tools related to the Firewire DMA attack can be found at Physical memory attacks via Firewire/DMA
Powering off a computer has the consequence of RAM clearing, but not immediately! Research demonstrate that without power, memory chips may retain values for a short period of time (from seconds to minutes) giving the possibilities to read the full memory content. Additionally, if the chips are cooled, they may retain values for hours.
This is deadly for disk encryption products because they rely on keeping master decryption keys in DRAM. Placing the key in memory was thought to be safe because the operating system protect them while running, and there was no way to get rid of the operating system without cutting power to the machine, which “everybody knew” would cause the keys to be erased.
If the computer if configured to go in sleep mode, the content of the memory is saved to /var/vm/sleepimage for future restore of the exact state; this file can be used to analyze the memory. It is not a perfect image of the running system, because a process is started to put the machine in sleep-mode influencing the content itself, but a lot of valuable information can still be collected.
Chrome For Mac Os X
Having a memory dump is the first step, methods to extract useful information from memory such as opened files, detailed information about each process (start/stop …), network status etc. are still needed.
Compared to Microsoft world, the Mac OSX tools are in an prehistoric era. As stated in the the MacMemoryReader Readme.txt,
There are currently very few tools to analyze physical memory dumps from Mac OS X machines. Hex editors, string extraction tools, search tools, and file carvers are all useful for extracting data.
In addition, the memory can be dumped in different formats (using different offsets), and this may make some investigating tools useless.
For example, MacMemoryReader, the plug-and-play dumper, dumps the data in Mach-O binary or raw-format, while volafox (the analysis tool) requires the “linear” format (for memory addressing mechanism, consult the Intel Programmers Handbook), unless you checkout the head volafox version.
Os X Version Mac
Some information can be extracted from the mach-O dump format using the command “string” and grepping for interesting sequences like – as example – “Plongname”: around this string the current logged username/password can be found.
But this is a trial & error method; just dumping strings and looking around may be useful but is prone to errors and very time consuming.
- Mac Memory Reader: Mac Memory Reader is an easy to use command-line utility to capture the contents of physical RAM on a suspect computer, letting an investigator gather volatile state information prior to shutting the machine down. Results are stored in a Mach-O binary or raw-format file for later off-line analysis by the investigator. The “MacMemoryReader” can be downloaded from here.
- volafox: Kyeong-Sik Lee and the Korean Digital Forensic Research Center have released Volafox, a free and open-source tool to analyze Mac OS X memory images. Volafox is based on work by Matthieu Suiche and the Volatility memory analysis framework. Volafox is the only open source tool that can extract some memory information automagically; running volafox against a linear memory dump may extract following information: os_version, machine_info, mount_info, kern_kext_info, kext_info, proc_info, syscall_info, net_info. “volafox” can be downloaded from here or checked out from http://volafox.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/. The svn checkout has the ability to read the MacMemoryReader format.
- system tools: The string functions manipulate strings that are terminated by a null byte; can be used to extract ASCII strings from the image. Object file displaying tool command displays specified parts of object files or libraries; can be used to look at the mach-O export made with MacMemoryReader.
- Goldfish: Goldfish is a free MAC OS X live forensic tool for use only by law enforcement. Its main purpose is to provide an easy to use interface to dump system RAM of a target machine via a firewire connection. It then automatically extracts the current user login password and any open AIM conversation fragments that may be available. A short presentation about Goldfish is available
The methods and tools to analyze a Mac OSX memory dump are still a work in progress; currently the only tool that can extract useful information from a memory image is “volafox”; the usage of filecarvers, string and grep for known signatures is ineffiecient and may lead to false positive.
Basically it’s possible to use following patterns:
- MacMemoryReader -> mach-O dump -> string/grep/otool -> some unorganized and informal results
- DMA memory dump -> volafox -> predefined set of information
- MacMemoryReader -> volafox -> predefined set of information
![For For](/uploads/1/1/9/8/119844979/373826102.jpg)
- [Singh2006] A.Singh, Mac OSX Internals: A Systems Approach, Addison Wesley Professional 2006, Chapter 8
- [Suiche2010] M.Suiche, Advanced Mac OSX Physical Memory Analysis, Blackhat 2010
- [Haldermann2008] Haldermann et al, Lest we remember: Cold Boot Attacks on Encryptions Keys
- [Ligh2011] S.Adair; B.Hartstein; M.Richard, Malware Analyst’s Cookbook and DVD: Tools and Techniques for Fighting Malicious Code, Wiley 2011
- [Boileau2006] A.Boileau, Hit by a Bus: Physical Access Attacks with FireWire
- [Carrier2003] B.Carrier; J.Grand, A Hardware-Based Memory Acquisition Procedure for Digital Investigations
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