macos memory usage incorrect

[k2662]

the reported memory usage is lower than shown in activity monitor.

[Gobidev]

How much do they differ? Can you provide examples?

[k2662]

How much do they differ? Can you provide examples?

by up to 3GB. like: if actual was 12GB then it would show 9.3GB

[k2662]

Any update?

[Gobidev]

@k2662 Can you provide a screenshot of the memory usage reported by the activity monitor along with running vm_stat in a terminal? There are multiple options of what to count as used memory so it would be interesting to see what the activity monitor uses.

I don't own any device running macOS so testing is somewhat difficult. What I tried is running the libmacchina readouts and vm_stat on a macOS GitHub runner here, where the free memory reported by libmacchina approximately matches the free and inactive pages of vm_stat combined:

libmacchina:
reported free: 3330848 [kB] = 3410788352 Bytes

vm_stat:
reported free: 26076 [Pages] = 427229184 Bytes (1 Page = 16384 Bytes)
reported inactive: 183623 [Pages] = 3008479232 Bytes
free + inactive = 3435708416 Bytes

[k2662]

@k2662 Can you provide a screenshot of the memory usage reported by the activity monitor along with running vm_stat in a terminal? There are multiple options of what to count as used memory so it would be interesting to see what the activity monitor uses.

I don't own any device running macOS so testing is somewhat difficult. What I tried is running the libmacchina readouts and vm_stat on a macOS GitHub runner here, where the free memory reported by libmacchina approximately matches the free and inactive pages of vm_stat combined:

libmacchina:
reported free: 3330848 [kB] = 3410788352 Bytes

vm_stat:
reported free: 26076 [Pages] = 427229184 Bytes (1 Page = 16384 Bytes)
reported inactive: 183623 [Pages] = 3008479232 Bytes
free + inactive = 3435708416 Bytes