I want to make sure I’m understanding you correctly. First, your analogy of the secretary’s desk was excellent —that clarified things for me. You also mentioned that you reboot periodically as needed. That’s essentially the same reason I reboot—not so much to manage RAM, but to prevent issues and keeps everything humming along smoothly. I like to keep the cobwebs cleaned out.
I have, on occasion, run into syncing issues, but those have always been tied to iCloud—not hardware. In fact, I can’t recall the last time I had any kind of hardware hiccup.
So, with that in mind, it sounds like you’re saying rebooting is completely reasonable. I may be doing it more frequently than necessary, but it seems consistent with your overall approach. Do I have that right?
@webwalrus has already answered the question better than I would have, but I don’t want to think that I’m ignoring you So with less metaphor:
RAM can, at the very least, be used to cache data that’s been read from disk/SSD. Any “free” RAM should be used, at the very least, as read-cache to make subsequent access to that data much faster.
Memory pressure is something invented by Apple to give you a sense of how much you’re pushing your system’s RAM. It (likely) takes into account other factors like how much swap you’re using and how much RAM is being used for things that are not cache. I don’t know exactly how it works but it’s almost certainly a better measure of whether or not your system’s RAM is sufficient than simply how much is being used.
(Does that make sense? I’m answering this after a Saturday afternoon beer )
Editing to add: Rebooting is not a problem; do it as much as you like. Using all of your RAM is likely also not a problem.
In the late aughts our help desk started getting reports that folks in one of our buildings a couple blocks away from our campus were unable to get online. We tracked it down to the fact that the network card had died in a forgotten GNU/Linux DHCP server that had been setup by a student employee about 12 years earlier. I was able to get the root password from the (by that time) alumni who had set the system up, logged in at the console and discovered the uptime was more than 10 years.
I had seen 2-3 year uptimes on *nix systems back in the 90’s & early 2000’s, when it was still possible to get away with ignoring security updates, but 10+ years of flawless operation & no power outages kind of blew me away.
These days I’m only rebooting my servers at work after kernel updates or OS upgrades.
I don’t like to reboot, mainly due to psychological reason - coming from years of using a Windows machine (starting from Win3.1 and Win95) where a Windows machine is booted almost daily to fix problems - I like to see, that my Mac’s uptime is in days, weeks and months, even though it’s an irrational thing to do. iStats Menu has a nice widget that show my uptime, ha ha…
If I needed to “reboot” to fix certain unexpected Mac behavior, I’d logoff from my account instead (Apple menu-Log Out Topre). That would quit all the apps and log off all services and bring me back to the main login screen AND YET, retained the uptime counter. That is a more efficient way of “rebooting” than actually Restart the machine.
The wrench to my behavior is that I live in the tropics where we get thunderstorm quite often. When there’s loud thunder and bright lightning, I would shutdown my machine and unplug from the wall socket. That always annoy me when my uptime counter is back to 0. Sigh!
Makes perfect sense, thanks! I have 32GB of RAM, and given the apps I use, I doubt I ever reach a point where the system is swapping memory. I still think I’ll routinely reboot just to keep cobwebs cleared out (no doubt a hangover from my Windows days ), but based on your comments and those of others, I may change to once a month instead of weekly.
Correct. There’s no harm from rebooting, other than the time and hassle involved. But the “time and hassle” is also the reason I generally don’t sweep for cobwebs until I spot at least one cobweb.
As a “just happened yesterday” example, I just had my external drive fill up on my Mac Mini. This caused a bunch of processes to throw fits, crash, etc. I figured out the reasons the drive filled up, addressed those, cleaned things up, and then rebooted. I figure with all the processes throwing fits about the full drive, a reboot would reset everything to “normal” more efficiently than me combing through everything.
Otherwise, that particular computer (which runs my file server, Plex server, etc.) will frequently go months without a reboot. And it’s typically just fine.
I let my Macbook Air “file server” run weeks at a time. But I started powering off my iPhone and iPad every week after reading that the NSA now recommends doing that.
It should be obvious that one size does not fit all in computer management.
A forgotten server in a closet with a stable physical and electrical environment can run unattended for a surprisingly long period of time.
But the environment my Macs live in is hardly stable. I run a lot of apps and utilities, from a variety of sources, some coded well and some not so much. Weather extremes and tree trimmers cause power failures and surges. Operating system upgrades and fixes keep my system in a state of flux. Constant app upgrades, while often beneficial, open the door to odd interactions and less than optimal interface behaviors.
Most of us are not privy to how a Mac works “under the covers.” When something seems to go wrong, a shutdown and clean startup is the simplest and most powerful thing we can do to set things right again.
Like others, I have participated in the “I haven’t rebooted in x years”
Now 30 years later, Macs, iPads, Phones, all get shut down when
I’m done with them for the day. It gives some psychological support
that it’s time for bed
I loved the Novell Servers. Windows Servers were not an improvement, but they were easier for people to use on an ad-hoc basis.
Moving from 3.22 (I think) to 4 was a retrograde step though. the biggest reason was that a lot of the manage apps were built in Java and were i n c r e d i b l y s l o o o o w
No need unless you run a lot of sketchy software. Checking just now, my MacBook uptime is 8 days because of an update and Mac mini is 51 days. My Debian web server is 610 days.
I usually reboot all of my devices on the weekend while I clean their screens. After a week of touchscreens being touched, I find a good cleaning to be necessary. I also include my MacBook in this routine, because even though it isn’t a touchscreen, it still gets dirty.
As someone who began using Windows primarily, the need for restarts is one that was ingrained within me for many years. When I switched to an all Apple ecosystem, I was still doing it out of habit for some time. I soon realized it gave me zero benefit to do so, other than when I’m installing OS updates, of course. But as some have already said, keep doing it if you feel it’s beneficial to you. I’ve just never noticed the slightest marginal difference then when I was doing it.
I don’t reboot my Macs. They just sit there until there is a OS update.
To be fair, there are compelling reasons for frequent reboots:
I may sound like an old hand here, but apps are more prone to memory leaks these days. I recently had an OOM situation with my 32GB Mac mini, full memory usage (some MS tool to blame, probably it was Teams or Outlook). In other occasions, it has been Logic that has gone slightly mad. But these are the obvious occasions: rebooting avoids these conditions to creep undetected until you are in the middle of a conference call.
Rebooting is fast these days. I think I could shutdown the computer at the end of the day and begin from scratch the morning after whithout any significant impact in my work.
Also, the ceremony itself can be useful as a daily routine to disconnect from the digital life.
I think the opposite, It’s many years since I had a Memory leak which caused any form of instability or increased and unchecked use of memory. Granted, my personal use is light, on an M1 Mac Mini with 16GB of storage, but on older Mac Minis (The original G4, the Core2Due Intel, and the 2012 Mini), I regularly had issues.
I had a severe one just two weeks ago. QSpace - that finder alternative that David was talking about - ballooned to (according to Activity Monitor) 73 gigabytes of memory usage. No, you’re not reading that incorrectly. I was running Gemini to find duplicates, and any time that and QSpace were active QSpace went absolutely bonkers.
If that’s Internet facing, that’s a reeeeealy long time to go without updates that require a reboot (In security we look at uptime as an indicator of risk accumulation rather than stability. I’ll go have a drink now )
Agreed but it’s only kernel updates that requires a reboot (even then not necessarily). I haven’t seen any vulnerabilities disclosed that would be an issue. There’s no sensitive data on it and backups are automatic.
So with less metaphor:
)
), but based on your comments and those of others, I may change to once a month instead of weekly.
(In security we look at uptime as an indicator of risk accumulation rather than stability. I’ll go have a drink now 
)