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Sebastiansad's avatar
Sebastiansad
Tin Contributor
Sep 07, 2026

How can I free up or clear RAM on my Mac?

My MacBook Air has been feeling slower than usual lately, especially when I have several browser tabs and a few apps open at the same time. When I check Activity Monitor, the memory usage looks pret...
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Makaylarivera's avatar
Makaylarivera
Steel Contributor
Sep 08, 2026

Browsers (especially Chrome) and apps like Slack, Photoshop, or Docker are usually the biggest RAM consumers.

How to free up more RAM on Mac

1. Go to Applications > Utilities > Activity Monitor, or search for it with Spotlight (Cmd + Space, then type 'Activity Monitor').

2. Click the 'Memory' tab at the top of the window. This shows every running process and how much RAM each one is using.

3. Click the 'Memory' column header to sort processes from highest to lowest usage. This puts your biggest RAM consumers at the top of the list.

4. Look for common culprits: web browsers (each tab can use 100-500MB+), Slack, Docker, Photoshop, Chrome helper processes, and Electron-based apps (Discord, Spotify, VS Code) tend to be the worst offenders.

4. Select an app you don't currently need and click the 'X' button in the toolbar (or right-click and choose Quit) to force it to close and release its memory.

One thing worth noting when freeing up RAM on Mac: quitting an app fully (Cmd+Q) frees more memory than just closing its window, since many Mac apps keep running in the background even after you close the window (the Dock icon with a dot underneath means it's still active).