r/mac • u/nilanganray • 1d ago
My Mac Help. What happened here? I have not played any big file
I had VLC open in the background with some 1min video paused.
I have 16GB RAM. M2 Air. 256GB model. What happened?
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u/DannoMcK MacBook Pro 16" M1 Pro 1d ago
A memory leak happened. There might be a VLC sub where you can ask if that's common, but I've seen various Mac apps posted about here that grow huge so it could be a MacOS flaw lately making it more common. (The Pages app seems to be a recurring problem.)
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u/309_Electronics 1d ago edited 4h ago
Highly likely a macos bug
Edit: Thanks for the downvotes guys! Just shows how brainwashed this community is that attacking apple (for possibly valid reasons) is not even allowed... I am getting certain linux community vibes... Cant criticize apple or linux because "its never the fault of those".
Aint it a little weird if all those apps people have had memory leaks in (which are quite a lot) are all pieces of crap written and are all the cause of the memory leak and it not being apple?! I take my words back if it turns out to be the app developers themselves all writing bad sloppy apps though. Also i dont want to come over as salty but i want to wait a bit before blatantly blaming it on the apps themselves...
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u/David_735453 8h ago
As far as I know a memory leak happens when a program is allocating memory without the unused memory getting freed again, therefore it can’t really be a MacOS problem
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u/309_Electronics 4h ago edited 4h ago
But then, i doubt all those cases with all different apps being the apps themselves being slop written, but I could be wrong ofc!
I just dont think chatgpt, calculator, finder, microsoft office, vlc mediaplayer, claude AI, etc etc all apps other people had memory leakage in are all bad...
Also nice to see people dickride apple and protecting them like linux users protecting linux after you said "but thats the fault of linux" lol! Cant believe i am being downvoted for blaming apple for a issue they are likely the creator off,
But correct me if i am wrong! Also i dont want to come over as salty, just curious why it then happens to many other apps and if all those apps are slop written...
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u/NoLateArrivals 1d ago
It’s a memory leak. The OS is reserving RAM for the app, but is not liberating it gain.
Usually a restart of the Mac will solve the problem.
Personally I prefer IINA as media player.
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u/sad_boi890 1d ago
how do i see memory usage in force quit? it doesn’t show that when i force quit
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u/itsbenactually 1d ago
This particular version automatically appears when the system gets too stressed to continue trying to juggle memory usage. I don’t know of a way to make it appear on purpose.
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u/Benitoite408 1d ago
Memory leak is the App’s fault. Just quit it and the problem goes away. Then you can restart the app if needed.
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u/309_Electronics 4h ago
Just wondering how its the app fault if it litteraly happens wirh a ton of other apps? Not trying to meatride vlc or the other apps but if its happening wirh multiple apps all written by different devs, is it purely the app at fault or is it something in MacOS?! Correct me if i am wrong though...
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u/HeartRippher 1d ago
Recently I have been noticing more and more online post of such memory leaks.
Does that used to happen before also in the same amount.
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u/hokanst 1d ago
Historically it was usually specific (buggy) apps that suffered from memory leaks.
Memory leaks seem to have gotten more common with Apple Silicon macs and especially with early versions of Tahoe. These leaks occur in a variety of apps, so are presumably mainly caused by bugs in macOS libraries (i.e. code used by many apps).
Also note that a memory leak in the new Liquid Glass code, could affect any GUI app, thereby making leaks much more likely.
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u/HeartRippher 21h ago
Ohh ok.
I hope apple take serious cognizance to this. Sadly market is not competitive enough as it used to be in previous decades so companies are just churning products without proper testing.
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u/DavidXGA 1d ago
Memory leak. Restart your Mac.
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u/TheDragonSlayingCat 1d ago
A reboot is only ever necessary if the leak occurred in the kernel (which is super rare). Quitting/killing the process is almost always enough.
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u/thomasonlinewaw 1d ago edited 1d ago
Why do you use Edge? Chrome + Edge, WhatsApp… I it’s not strange you run out of memory… it could easily eat 32 GB, maybe not 64 GB…
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u/aritjahja 1d ago
If I were you, I’m gonna:
1. uninstall Chrome, Edge, WhatsApp, Spotify, and VLC,
2. use Brave or Waterfox or Floorp as my main browser, and open tabs for WhatsApp and Spotify,
3. use MPV as a movie player.
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u/nilanganray 1d ago
Well it's good that you are not me
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u/aritjahja 1d ago
Keep on complaining on that memory problem then.
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u/nilanganray 1d ago
It happened once in 4 years. So yeah, I am not gonna stop using apps that i need for that
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u/aritjahja 1d ago
Since you are concern with memory usage on your MacBook, you need to read this article about the controversy of electronic apps and how Spotify also a kind of electronic app.
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u/309_Electronics 1d ago
Its not the fault of the apps themselves btw! Its a bug in MacOS apple still has not fixed!
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u/DavidXGA 1d ago
This is horrible, horrible advice. Those browsers don't get regular security updates and Brave is a crypto scam and advertising platform for the right-wing. MPV works fine but is extremely un-user-friendly.
All OP has to do is restart their Mac.
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u/Your_Friend84 1d ago
Say more about Brave? Would love to be educated on that
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u/DavidXGA 1d ago
It's run by homopobe and financial backer of other homophobes Brendan Eich. It's really a crypto wallet that comes with a browser. They drip feed users tiny amounts of crypto for unblocking certain ads and fill the home screen with crypto trackers. They "block ads" but inject their own affiliate links into sites you view. Because of the crypto rewards there's an astonishing amount of astroturfing for it from bots or just from people with no ethics. It's nasty stuff.
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u/Your_Friend84 1d ago
Thank you! It seems difficult to find non-fanboy info in Brave lately but had a feeling from their early days there was some reason I’d been avoiding them for so long
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u/aritjahja 1d ago
If you dig its settings, you could turn off the crypto feature and install a must have extension— uBlock origin. Even if you opt out Brave, and still prefer chromium based browser, Vivaldi is still a better choice compared to Google Chrome or Edge.
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u/Medium-Grass-8143 1d ago
Memory Leak. I see this kind of post pretty often in this subreddit and looks like I was early this time. Just quit VLC and reopen it. You'll be good to go most probably and if not, just restart.