Wednesday, March 16, 2016

Freeing Memory

This is a bit off my normal course of information that I post about but.... I'm just a tiny bit of a tech geek. Actually I know just enough to get by and sometimes get in trouble.
This is all MAC related but if you use a PC there is a version for you. I just haven't included those links.

There is great little app called Free Memory. When I still had my old 17" Macbook Pro that I just wouldn't give up, it was a life saver. (I still miss the screen real estate just not the weight.) Now that my desktop is nearing 4 years old, is very full, and I can't seem to figure out what to trash, I remembered that little gem and opened it to see how everything was going in Memoryland.

It shows in the menubar the current free and available memory your computer is using. Mine was showing 5 GB. Photoshop could probably run much better with more. You just click on the amount showing on the menu bar to get the little window to pop up, then click Free Memory. In a few seconds you'll get a new and larger amount. Mine increased to 8.03! Yippie! How simple can that be? 



And if you go to Usage Details it gives you some extra information.


We'll guess what? When I browsed to get a link for the app I found it not longer existed. But I found a couple others with high ratings. 

Memory Purge looks similar to mine. It was just updated last fall so it doesn't have as many reviews as the next.

Memory Monitor looks very well liked, 
updated last summer.
Go to

I'm anxious to see how Photoshop will run today since I have this at my fingertips.
 I will be getting one of these for the new laptop! And since they are free, what's stopping you?

I just had a strange thought about my computer having memories. I wonder if it dreams at night too?

A little update: As I worked on the computer most of the day I noticed it would go as low a 2 GB while in Photoshop so this was a great fix and it would always boost back up to nearly 8. Am I happy? You bet.



2 comments:

  1. Funny, I was just coming to the computer to put some photos on an external hard drive and the cloud to free up memory and saw this email. I have a PC that's probably four years old at least and think about a new one. Never used a Mac and fear a new learning curve. It seems with photos taking the bulk of my memory and I'm not a serious photographer, I wonder what those who are do? And programs like PhotoShop take so much memory. I only have Elements but mine runs s-l-o-w. Talked to a computer tech and he said to take a lot of the photos off. Sigh. So laborious, because of course I have to go through them and see what I want to save and I tend to want to save everything. (Not that they're all good pictures, but just to remember what the garden was like that year, or our old house, and dearly departed dog, or that the grandkids are cute even with their eyes closed, etc. etc.) And then deciding which picture of multiples to keep. It's like going to the eye doctor - which is better, this or this?

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    1. I feel your pain Carolyn! I have 4 years in my Lightroom catalog that I really don't want to split up. Sometimes I think about splitting up the 'family' stuff from 'my own photos' which future relatives would say, why did she take that photo? Do get one of these apps, you will be amazed!

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