Checking your Mac’s installed RAM won’t tell you how much memory it’s using right now. Activity Monitor shows your current usage, the processes using the most memory, and how your Mac is handling your workload. Start with its Memory tab, then check individual apps or browser tabs for a closer look.
Check live RAM usage in Activity Monitor
Looking at hardware information instead of live statistics gives you RAM capacity rather than current usage.
Press Command-Space to open Spotlight.
Type Activity Monitor and press Return.
Click Memory. At the bottom of the window, Memory Used shows current RAM usage, while Physical Memory shows the amount installed in your Mac.
The Memory Used breakdown includes App Memory, Wired Memory, and Compressed. Cached Files is reusable cached data. Swap Used is the disk space used for swapping.
If the shortcut doesn’t open Spotlight, open Finder.
Go to Applications > Utilities > Activity Monitor.
Click Memory to reach the same readings.
Read Memory Pressure before judging a high number
A high usage number doesn’t tell the whole story. Apple recommends Memory Pressure to assess whether your Mac has enough memory for what you’re doing.
Keep Activity Monitor on the Memory tab while you perform your normal tasks.
Watch the Memory Pressure graph at the bottom. Green indicates efficient memory use. Yellow warns you to assess whether your Mac needs more RAM. Red indicates insufficient RAM.
If the graph leaves you wondering which app is using that memory, click the Memory column heading to sort the process list, as described below.
Find the apps using the most memory
In Activity Monitor, click Memory.
Choose View > All Processes to include apps, system processes, and background processes.
Click the Memory column heading to sort the list.
Click it again if the largest values aren’t at the top.
Use the Search field to locate a particular app or process.
Double-click a process to inspect its details.
Choose View > All Processes, Hierarchically to see parent and child relationships. This groups related processes without guaranteeing a combined memory total for each app.
Tip: Compare the largest process readings with Memory Pressure to see both what’s using memory and how your Mac is handling the workload.
Inspect Chrome tabs and extensions
Chrome’s Task Manager identifies memory-heavy tabs, extensions, and background tasks; use Activity Monitor for whole-Mac usage.
- 1.Open Chrome’s More menu.
- 2.Select More tools > Task Manager.
- 3.Click the Memory column heading, labeled Memory footprint in some versions, to sort the tasks.
- 4.For a quick tab-by-tab readout, open More > Settings > Appearance.
- 5.Turn on Show memory usage on tab hover preview card.
- 6.Hover your pointer over a tab to see its reported memory usage.
Adjust how often the readings update
Activity Monitor’s default five-second refresh interval explains the pause between updates.
With the Memory tab open, choose View > Update Frequency.
Select your preferred interval.
For easier access next time, Control-click the Activity Monitor icon in the Dock.
Choose Options > Keep in Dock.
Click that Dock icon whenever you want to check RAM usage.
Select Memory to see the readings.
Keep a RAM readout in the menu bar
The free Stats app provides a persistent menu bar monitor on supported stable versions of macOS 12 and later.
- 1.Download Stats from its official product page.
- 2.Open the downloaded disk image and move Stats to Applications.
- 3.Open Stats settings and enable the RAM module and at least one menu bar widget.
- 4.Click its menu bar readout to see usage, memory pressure, swap, and top processes.
- 5.If the icon is missing on macOS Tahoe or later, open System Settings > Menu Bar and allow Stats.
Use Terminal for a live memory report
Terminal gives you another way to check memory usage and sort processes.
Open Terminal.
Enter top -o mem and press Return to start a live display sorted by process memory.
Read the PhysMem line and the process memory values.
Press Q to exit the live display.
For a single snapshot of the ten largest processes, run top -l 1 -o mem -n 10 -stats pid,command,mem.
If the output is difficult to interpret, open Activity Monitor > Memory for the Memory Used total and the color-coded Memory Pressure graph.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I add more measurements to Activity Monitor?
Yes. In Activity Monitor, choose View > Columns to select additional measurements.
Can I check RAM usage in About This Mac or the Force Quit window?
About This Mac and System Information show hardware and configuration information. The ordinary Force Quit window opened with Option-Command-Esc has no official RAM-monitoring function. Use Activity Monitor > Memory for live usage.
Why do two memory-monitoring apps show different numbers?
Different tools measure memory footprint, resident memory, JavaScript heap allocations, or available memory. Some also combine related app processes. Those readings describe different things, so they don’t have to match.
Can I check memory usage in Firefox or Microsoft Edge?
Yes. In Firefox, open the menu button and choose More Tools > Task Manager. Click Memory to sort. In Edge, choose Settings and more (...) > More tools > Browser Task Manager and check the Memory column. Both show browser measurements rather than total Mac RAM usage.