Force Quit

[MacInWin]

Couldn't find it, it was just referred to.

I saw where you opened a thread there, but the three older references were all to a problem a long time ago.

"Memory leak" is what happens when a bit of code in an app asks for memory to be allocated for some function, then when that function is complete it does NOT release that memory back for it to be reused. So, as the app runs and that code continues to execute, memory is consumed by being tied up, although not really being used.

Imagine a parking lot where you have to reserve a spot. If a car arrives and asks for a spot, gets it, and then leaves without releasing that spot, returns and asks for another spot, gets it, now it has two spots reserved. Now repeat that sequence a couple of hundred times, never releasing a reserved spot. Eventually the entire parking lot ends up being reserved, but might be totally empty because the one car never released the reservation on any of the spots it reserved. That's a memory leak.

 

[Jimmysb]

@MacInWin many thanks, a very well put explanation.

 

[Jimmysb]

I have had activity monitor open all week, and after a couple of TB spikes, and quit and re-start things started to settle down. Then "VTDecoderXPCService" was at the top of my activity list (1.8 GB), check what it is used for Audio and Video, not have any of these run I shut down TB, then Firefox, these did noting for it, I then quit VTDecoderXPCService, but was replaced by Kernel Service. Re-boot the Mac and its has all gone quiet - great. Next morning wakes the computor and VTDecoderXPCService is back again (immediately) though now around 450 MB. So just monitoring my activity