Finder & real memory resources.

Joined
Jun 22, 2008
Messages
3,343
Reaction score
213
Points
63
Location
Forest Hills, NYC
Your Mac's Specs
15-inch Early 2008; Processor 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo; Memory 4 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM; 10.7.5
What could be the cause of finder using 90 MB of real memory ? I was trying out Songbird (again) and looking at the resources it consumed, when I noticed that Finder (with no windows open) was hogging up 90 MB of real memory.

I decided to re-launch Finder then, and found that it went back to using about 11 MB. That was about 7 minutes ago, and is holding steady there. I also tried opening a slew of other finder windows to see what the consumption would be then, but I only got it up to about 34 MB that way.

So what could it be that makes Finder jump from such low to such high memory consumption ?

Doug
Edit: Just tried something and have a partial answer. Previewing files in finder really eats up memory. Unfortunately though, after the Finder window is closed, the memory consumption doesn't really go back down to where it started (around 11 MB) I just got it up to about 70 MB from the 11, and then closed the finder window. It's now at 53.7 MB being used.

Would that be considered a memory leak ?
 
Joined
Dec 13, 2007
Messages
256
Reaction score
10
Points
18
Location
United States of America
Your Mac's Specs
2.1GHz MacBook with 4GB RAM, Mac OS X 10.6, iLife and iWork ‘09
It looks like you pretty much answered your question. I can verify that previewing files takes a considerable amount of memory; opening a folder of about 500 images in Cover Flow and waiting for each preview to generate nearly tripled Finder's real memory for me, from 17MB to 46MB. Closing the window only restored about 10MB. However, I wouldn't call this so much a leak as a feature; if you notice, opening the same folder again will have the previews load much quicker—if not instantaneously—which leads me to think that Finder is simply caching the previews in case you want them again. I doubt Apple would leave such a huge memory leak in the Finder (though I could be wrong, of course).
 

Slydude

Well-known member
Staff member
Moderator
Joined
Nov 15, 2009
Messages
17,596
Reaction score
1,072
Points
113
Location
North Louisiana, USA
Your Mac's Specs
M1 MacMini 16 GB - Ventura, iPhone 14 Pro Max, 2015 iMac 16 GB Monterey
I think you are right on track about why the memory does not release to its original levels. OS X is pretty smart for the most part about memory management.
 

Shop Amazon


Shop for your Apple, Mac, iPhone and other computer products on Amazon.
We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon and affiliated sites.
Top