Running out of memory very quickly even though apps are not using that much have to keep restarting

andrewcalo32 wrote:

It is a five year old macbook air, Catalina, has about 10GB free RAM, but it is running out of free space several times a day, and I have to restart the whole thing, reopen my tabs on two different browsers etc (Chrome and Firefox)...the odd thing is that when it shows me the apps taking up the free RAM, the total being used is about 3 GB. So where is the other 7GB being used?

Is there any way to make it reset/recognise that there is actually another 7GB available?

RAM is Random Access Memory

Disk Capacity of the Internal Drive is what appears to be issue, not RAM

What does Disk Utilities report, regarding Free Space versus Used Space ?

Thank you for the screen shot

Wish the news was better but alas it is not

As was suspected the Internal Drive of the computer has almost run Out of Empty Space

The only reason it is still functioning is because you have shutdown the computer and restarted the computer

A drive with 121.02 GB Capacity has 1.25 GB Free Space

You have some serious housecleaning that needs to be performed ASAP

As a start, get a good external drive with at least 500 GB Capacity

Start by moving Pictures, videos, music, podcasts, iOS backups Off the internal Drive and onto the External Drive

You are welcome

FYI - an Apple Computer with the smallest of small 128 GB Drive Capacity should have never been available for sale, IMHO

Iymay have seemed a good idea at time of purchase but . . . Not some much good for Storage Space

On you next purchase

Suggest spending the extra $$ upfront for a larger Drive and more RAM

This would possible Future-Proof things - no ?

It’s good computer practice to keep at least 15% to 20% of the total drive capacity empty - full stop .

15% of 121 GB = 18.15 GB Free Space

20% of 121 GB = 24.2 GB Free Space