How to improve RAM performance on a Mac: regular and advanced tricks
Macs are great pieces of equipment. From the outset, Apple has been paying due attention to how hardware and software work together, seeking to strike the perfect balance between visual effects and performance. However, as any Mac owner will reluctantly admit, the computer — be it a laptop or a desktop of any form factor — can become sluggish, respond less vigorously, and feel heavy.
Of course, newer models are more or less immune to such predicaments, but it actually is only a matter of time before they become not-so-new and start showing signs of RAM weakness, since the software is constantly growing more and more demanding in terms of hardware resources. This means that the list of tips and tricks given below, some of them obvious and others less so, is essentially timeless, i.e., they are working now and will continue to work with approximately similar efficiency in the future.
Restart your Mac regularly
This one is simple: every reboot clears RAM. It is likely to remain relevant as long as the core architecture of computers, which has RAM as an essential component, does not change. Or unless all software developers teach their products to vacate RAM when not in use.
Close unused applications completely
This is a tricky one. Many Mac users believe that clicking the red close button does the expected job, but many applications perceive this action as a command to fade into background but not actually close. This means such apps continue to consume resources and occupy RAM.
Here are some ways to fully quit an application:
- Switch to it and press Command + Q.
- Right-click (or Control-click) the app’s icon in the Dock and select Quit.
- In the menu bar at the top, click the name of the app you want to close and choose Quit.
- If the app doesn’t respond, go to Apple menu → Force Quit, select the app, and click Force Quit.
The Force Quit menu is a good spot to check what apps you have running. Another option is to press Command + Tab, which brings up a modal showing what’s currently on.
Limit browser tabs and extensions
Yes, modern browsers can offload unused tabs, and many of them do that automatically (it is actually one of the common features in AI-based browsers), but that doesn’t mean you can relax about it. Some tabs would persist in the foreground no matter what, and some would even consume more and more RAM over time.
The same goes for browser extensions. They need RAM to work, and most of them occupy the space they need thereupon launch of the hosting browser regardless of whether they’re in use or not. Thus, it is best to review the set of extensions you have on board and get rid of everything not used on a daily basis.
Remove unnecessary login items
Login items are apps, docs, connections etc. that load at startup. Each of them, as you understand, claims a spot of varying width in the system’s RAM.
Get rid of anything that you don’t actually need:
- go to the Apple menu → System Settings → General → Login Items & Extensions;
- select the items you don’t want launched with the OS and click the - button below.
Make sure you have sufficient disk space free
macOS, same as other operating systems, resorts to using virtual memory when RAM is too crowded and in a rather large number of special cases. This “virtual memory” (swap) is simply a certain portion of space on your hard drive. Thus, to have the system run smoothly, you want to ensure at least 20% of the disk space is free at all times.
Tone down visual effects
macOS is beautiful. The latest visual design concept, Liquid Glass, may be controversial, but it surely packs a lot of visual effects, which require resources to process. Disabling or at least toning them down will make the system less sluggish, especially if the underlying hardware has seen better times.
- Transparency reduction: go to Apple menu → System Settings → Accessibility → Display, switch on “Reduce transparency” there. Everything translucent — menus, sidebars, toolbars — will become solid and less resource-hungry.
- Contrast increase: in the same Accessibility → Display section, turn on the “Increase contrast” option; the borders of windows will become darker and everything on the screen more clear. This doesn’t directly affect RAM usage but goes well with reduced transparency.
Purge!
All Mac users initiated in the use of the terminal know the sudo purge command. It’s one of the first any novice learns; on older computers, the command performs miracles. The action triggered by sudo purge is simple: clearing RAM of everything that’s not immediately needed to keep the system running. So, whenever you feel your Mac is growing slower than usual, launch the terminal and do the purge.
Use third-party macOS optimization software
There are tools that can actually boost your Mac and noticeably improve its performance. Many of them have been around for years, and the teams building such applications know the OS inside out, improving things that Apple engineers decided to skip on for whatever reasons. Some of the best of those apps can be found in the System Optimization section of the Mac Informer catalog:
