Memory

Activity Monitor is the free system monitor built into macOS. How to open it, and how to read the five tabs, including the numbers that look scary and aren't.

Unified memory changes how a Mac's memory is wired, not how much a gigabyte holds. Here's what Apple changed on Apple silicon, where the claim that 8 GB behaves like 16 GB came from, and how to decide how much to buy on a Mac you can't upgrade later.

"Google Chrome Helper" is Chrome's own process for displaying web pages, and seeing thirty of them in Activity Monitor is normal rather than an infection. Here's what each version of the name means, how to find the tab responsible, and which popular advice about it stopped working years ago.

Is 8 GB RAM enough on a Mac? On Apple silicon, unified memory and fast SSD swap make it fine for light-to-moderate use; here's when to buy 16 GB+.

Mac memory pressure, not free RAM, is the real signal. Here's what green, yellow, and red mean in Activity Monitor, and why RAM cleaner apps don't help.

Chrome using too much memory on Mac is mostly its multi-process design: each tab and extension is a separate process. Here's how to find and fix the real hog.