It seems that many apps take less memory under heavy load. I’m told that some Mac apps use as much RAM as available. When less is available they use less.
this post was submitted on 17 Mar 2025
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It turns out that the mouse and keyboard were freezing, not the Mac itself. (The Logitech Mx Master 3 has this known issue.)
This is how I use my MacBook Pro. I have two external monitors, a USB hub connected to another USB hub, and that USB hub is connected to various devices.
Open activity monitor and take a look at both the CPU and Memory tab and see what program is actually the problem. You can limit how much CPU usage a program uses at any given second, but that just means it's going to take more time to finish its task which will ruin your battery life if that task takes too long.
For my Mac Mini at home it's biggest problem is time machine. It creates local snapshots, then it does the bigger backups to my local NAS and when that happens CPU usage goes insane and the machine slows down to a halt. I switched from hourly backups to daily backups for that reason.
Also I wouldn't worry about 50% memory usage. That's nothing. Look at your memory pressure in activity monitor. If it's green then don't even think about it. It's not until it's yellow that you should maybe consider closing out of things, and when it's red you're probably going to start noticing the machine actually slowing down.
I have noticed it goes crazy when doing Time Machine backups. Other than that, memory rarely leaves the green. Another issue I have is that the mouse and keyboard become unresponsive. I have to press the buttons multiple times for it to register. The same issue occurs even without running any apps. It doesn’t happen more frequently, but when it happens, it’s hard to use my MacBook Pro.
When The keyboard/mouse becomes unresponsive do they eventually disconnect then reconnect or do they just freeze for a second then come back?
Once in a blue moon they’ll disconnect from my machine then reconnect 10 seconds later. But it’s so infrequent that I kinda don’t care. I’m talking like once a month at most.
They freeze for a second; for instance, if I’m writing a paragraph, the keyboard won’t register some keys unless I press them twice.
Close any and all electron apps.
Problem solved.
There’s one called App Tamer but it’s more for CPU. Free trial though. Also core services like Siri, indexing, photos, etc. burn a ton of resources generally speaking.
Thanks for the heads up, I will check it out.