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Repair guides and disassembly information for the 16-inch MacBook Pro released in October of 2021, featuring Apple-designed M1 Pro and M1 Max SoCs. Model A2485.

MacBook Pro - RAM usage while idle

Hi everyone,

I recently noticed that my MacBook is using around 6.5GB of RAM while idle, with no heavy applications running in the background. I'm currently running macOS Sonoma.

Is this normal, or could there be a memory leak or background processes consuming more RAM than expected? I'd appreciate any insights or suggestions on how to optimize RAM usage if needed.

Thanks in advance!

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Post a screenshot of the Activity Monitor, you can find it in the utilities folder.

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How much memory does your system have? Typical idle usage of ram is normally anywhere from 20% to 30%.

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@livfe I just added a screenshot. This device has also a fresh install.

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@jmehnert 16GB of RAM.

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RAM usage is always tricky! To gain performance the system setup a cache area where the most active data is held (Apps and your work).

So if we turn this into a driving exercise between your car and mine going down the highway it’s likely one will use more fuel than the other. That also holds true with RAM! As you may setup a few more start items or even run a few Apps (even closing them) but the persistence of the cache is still present.

What you want to monitor is memory leaks where a given process keeps consuming RAM and not release it until to restart the system. Leverage Activity Monitor to review things over a period of time.

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