My Mac has gotten really slow and apps keep freezing, especially when I have a few programs open at once. I’m guessing the RAM is maxing out because the memory pressure in Activity Monitor is often in the red. What’s the best way to clear or free up RAM on a Mac without breaking anything, and are there any settings or tools I should be using to keep performance stable?
Short version. You are not really “clearing” RAM on macOS, you are managing what eats it.
Try this order:
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Check what is eating memory
• Open Activity Monitor → Memory tab
• Sort by “Memory” column
• If you see one app using gigabytes, quit it
• If “kernel_task” is huge, something is stressing the system, often browser tabs or some hardware issue -
Close and restart heavy apps
• Browsers eat RAM fast, esp. Chrome and many tabs
• Extensions eat memory too
• Quit and reopen browser
• Try fewer tabs, or use Safari, it uses less memory in most tests -
Kill stuck background processes
• In Activity Monitor, look for:- “Photos Agent”
- “Dropbox”, “OneDrive”, backup syncs
- Old updaters or helper tools
• If one process sits near the top all the time, select it → “X” button → Force Quit
• If it respawns and keeps eating memory, check its settings or uninstall it
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Restart the Mac
• Simple, but works
• Sleep does not clear memory, a restart does
• Do this if memory pressure stays yellow or red for long -
Reduce login items
• System Settings → General → Login Items
• Turn off tools you do not need on startup
• Less stuff at login means more free RAM -
Tweak system settings
• System Settings → Desktop & Dock- Turn off “Close windows when quitting an app” if you like clean starts
• Turn off fancy stuff like “Stage Manager” if you do not use it
• Disable unneeded menu bar apps
- Turn off “Close windows when quitting an app” if you like clean starts
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Avoid fake “RAM cleaner” apps
• Most “memory cleaner” apps fill RAM so macOS purges caches
• macOS already manages this
• Those apps often add overhead and reduce performance -
Free RAM via Terminal (only if you are comfortable)
• Open Terminal
• Run:
sudo purge
then enter your password
• This clears file caches, might help for a bit
• Expect the Mac to feel slower for a moment after, then settle -
Check storage space
• If SSD is almost full, macOS has less room for swap
• Keep at least 15 to 20 percent free
• Delete big files, old downloads, or move stuff to external storage -
Check if your RAM is simply too low
• Click Apple menu → About This Mac → Memory
• For modern macOS:- 8 GB struggles with heavy multitasking, lots of browser tabs, dev tools
- 16 GB is more comfortable for mixed work
• If you have an older Intel Mac with upgradeable RAM, consider a physical upgrade
• If it is an M1 or newer, RAM is not upgradeable, so you need to adjust workload or move to a higher spec machine later
Quick daily habits that help:
• Close apps you are not using
• Do not leave 30+ tabs open in Chrome
• Restart once every few days if you run heavy stuff like Xcode, VMs, or big creative apps
If you post a screenshot of Activity Monitor with the Memory tab sorted by “Memory”, people here can point at the exact culprit.
Couple of angles that complement what @voyageurdubois already laid out, without just repeating “close apps and restart.”
-
Look for memory leaks specifically
Not just “big apps,” but apps whose RAM keeps climbing the longer they run.- Open Activity Monitor → Memory
- Leave it open while you work for 15–30 minutes
- Watch 1 or 2 suspect apps: if their memory usage slowly creeps up even when you are not actively using them, that is a leak.
Fix is not clearing RAM, it is: - Update the app
- If it is already updated and still leaking, replace it with an alternative (different browser, different mail client, etc).
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Change how you use your browser
Everyone says “fewer tabs,” but practically:- Use one browser for “must stay open” stuff and another for quick searches, then quit the second one regularly.
- Turn on tab discarding / tab suspension extensions so background tabs unload after a while.
- Avoid having Slack, Teams, Discord, webmail, and 8 docs all as web apps at once. Split: some as native apps, some as browser tabs.
Sometimes 1 web app like Teams or Figma in Chrome eats more RAM than 10 “normal” apps.
-
Watch “Compressed Memory” and “Swap Used”
In Activity Monitor → Memory:- If “Compressed” is very high and “Swap Used” keeps climbing, macOS is actively fighting to keep things alive. That red memory pressure is not lying.
In that situation, the most effective trick is not some purge command, it is reducing concurrency: - Instead of 5 “heavy” apps open, keep 2 or 3 and rotate.
Feels annoying, but it actually keeps the machine usable.
- If “Compressed” is very high and “Swap Used” keeps climbing, macOS is actively fighting to keep things alive. That red memory pressure is not lying.
-
Use different user accounts for isolation
Slightly weird hack but works:- Create a second macOS user account for specific heavy workflows (e.g. video editing, dev work, music production).
When you log into that account, all the usual chat, menu bar junk, browsers, helpers from your main account are not loaded, so baseline RAM use is much lower.
You can switch back and forth via Fast User Switching, but usually you just work in one account at a time for “focus” sessions.
- Create a second macOS user account for specific heavy workflows (e.g. video editing, dev work, music production).
-
Turn off “Reopen windows” properly
I actually disagree a bit with treating reopened windows as harmless. If you quit and then relaunch a browser or Office app that auto‑restores dozens of docs/tabs, you just re‑inflate RAM.- When you shut down or restart, uncheck “Reopen windows when logging back in.”
- Inside individual apps, disable “restore last session” if you do not truly need it.
This keeps your “fresh start” actually fresh.
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Hardware reality check, but with nuance
People say “8 GB is not enough, buy new Mac.” Sometimes true, but:- If your tasks are mostly web, office, and light photo edits, 8 GB can be tolerable if you stay disciplined with tabs and background stuff.
- If you run Xcode, VMs, Lightroom, big spreadsheets, or Electron apps all day, then no trick will magically “clear RAM” enough. You are basically asking a small car to tow a truck.
In that case, use your slowdowns as data: note which combos of apps kill the machine and change your workflow, or start planning an upgrade instead of hunting for miracle cleaners.
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Be suspicious of “helper” tools and menubar clutter
Not just obvious sync apps. Look for:- Clipboards managers
- Window managers
- Fancy screenshot tools
- Menu bar CPU/RAM monitors ironically eating RAM themselves
You do not have to uninstall everything, but try a day with most of them disabled. If memory pressure looks way better, you have your culprits.
-
Test in Safe Mode and see how the graph looks
- Restart while holding Shift (Intel) or use the macOS Safe Mode method for Apple Silicon.
- Log in, run your usual main apps for a while.
If memory pressure stays green in Safe Mode with the same apps, then third‑party extensions, kexts, or login items in normal mode are guilty.
-
Accept that “clearing RAM” is usually the wrong mental model
macOS is designed to use RAM for caching, not leave it “free.” Trying to make it look “empty” makes it slower in the long run.
Your actual goal:- Keep memory pressure in green or light yellow most of the time
- Keep swap from exploding
- Avoid apps that grow unbounded
That is about app choices and habits, not a one‑click “clear.”
So, practical TL;DR specific to your case:
- Spend 10–15 minutes just observing Activity Monitor over time, not just taking a single snapshot. Identify any app with creeping memory use.
- Trim menu bar and login items aggressively, and disable “reopen windows.”
- Consider splitting heavy tasks into a separate macOS user or changing browser usage patterns.
- If after all that, memory pressure still spikes red with just a browser + office + one other big app, your workload has probably outgrown the RAM in that machine.