How to free up memory (RAM) on a Mac
Is your Mac running painfully slowly? Has an application just hung? Did you see a "Your system has run out of application memory" message or the dreaded spinning beach ball? All of these can be signs that your memory, or RAM, is being used to the max. Read on to find out how to clear the RAM on your Mac and various helpful tips to help you clean or optimise your Mac memory, including what to do if your Mac RAM is always full. What is RAM? First a quick primer. RAM stands for Random Access Memory and it provides storage for ongoing tasks and processes. The difference between the RAM and the rest of the storage on your Mac is that it's faster, therefore your Mac is designed to keep certain things in RAM in order to speed things up. Most Macs ship with 8GB RAM - it's been a long time since Apple shipped Macs with 4GB RAM or less. 8GB RAM should be plenty if you don't run memory hungry applications and games, but even the most average user can come up against...