M4 iMac spinning beach ball

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Level 1

4 points

M4 iMac spinning beach ball

I’m curious as to what to do. In November 2024, I purchased (from my local Apple Store) an iMac 10 core GPU & CPU with 16 Gb RAM, and 512 Gb SSD.

I now realize that rather than upgrading the SSD, I should have added RAM.

What I’ve found, on a few occasions is that if I have a couple browser windows open AND a Pages document, sometimes I’ll get the spinning beach ball when simple tasks are being performed.

Any and all suggestions would be most appreciated !

iMac 24″, macOS 15.3

Posted on Feb 17, 2025 02:46 PM

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Answer 1

rkaufmann87

Level 10

148,032 points

Feb 17, 2025 03:15 PM in response to TheDins

Learn what is using your RAM by learning to use Activity Monitor. Apple explains in View memory usage in Activity Monitor on Mac - Apple Support. Yes having multiple browser windows open will use a lot of RAM and as you know you cannot upgrade the RAM on current Macs. So you need to learn to manage what you have or get rid of the current iMac and buy one with much more RAM.

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Answer 2

den.thed

Level 10

88,714 points

Feb 17, 2025 04:37 PM in response to TheDins

TheDins wrote:

What I’ve found, on a few occasions is that if I have a couple browser windows open AND a Pages document, sometimes I’ll get the spinning beach ball when simple tasks are being performed.

Any and all suggestions would be most appreciated !

EtreCheckPro is an excellent tool for finding and sorting out beach ball issues.

Download and run the free version of EtreCheckPro, from > https://etrecheck.com/en/index.html

Then post back here with your Report, as per > How to use the Add Text Feature When Post… - Apple Community

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Answer 3

TheDins Author

Level 1

4 points

Feb 17, 2025 03:36 PM in response to rkaufmann87

Thanks… that’s kind of what I was thinking too. I’ve sent an email to Apple telling them about it, and telling them that with minor usage like this, the memory should never get stressed and perhaps they need to set the minimum configuration to 24 Gb RAM.

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M4 iMac spinning beach ball

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