today, I wrote about Memory Diag, a Mac app that helps you optimize system memory to help you through periods of sluggish behavior. Memory Clean
is another such free app that takes a slightly different approach to
monitoring memory resources. If you could combine the two, you might
have the perfect memory optimizer for OS X. But because the technology
does not exist to combine these two apps, let's take a look at how
Memory Clean goes about its business and how it differs from Memory
Diag.
Memory Clean
Like
Memory Diag, Memory Clean installs an icon in the menu bar. By default,
the icon features a small dial graphic showing the amount of free
memory your Mac currently has at its disposal. In preferences, you can
hide the dial graphic while keeping the dynamic free memory figure. You
can also change the number to display as a percentage, and you can add
Memory Clean to the Dock and have it start when you log in.
Advanced
preferences let you set a threshold level for when your free memory
goes into the red. That is, at what point you'd like Memory Clean's
number in the menu bar to turn red to alert you that you are running low
on memory resources. There is also a box to check to have the app
autoclean your Mac's memory when it falls below that threshold.
Memory Clean
I
don't have any scientific or anecdotal evidence to support the
following advice, but I would counsel you against enabling Auto Clean.
Like Memory Diag, Memory Clean is most effective after you close an
intensive app because it cleans up the caches that the application left
littered across your Mac that can fragment your memory and slow down
performance. I would get in the habit of running Memory Clean in such
instances rather than having it automatically kick in when memory
resources are running low and your system is feeling sluggish. When
Memory Clean cleans your memory, your already slow system will proceed
to get even slower. Better to quit any demanding apps to bring your
system back up to something resembling full speed before running Memory
Clean to optimize performance further.
To run Memory Clean, click
its icon in the menu bar. A window will appear to show dynamic figures
of your Mac's current active, wired, inactive, and free memory. Click
the Clean Memory button to initiate a scan to free up more memory. The
scan takes between 15 and 30 seconds to run, in my experience.
Alternatively, you can right-click the menu bar icon to access via a
small pull-down menu the same stats and clean-memory command, along with
the app's preferences. Memory Clean While
both Memory Clean and Memory Diag perform the same service, each boasts
a useful feature the other lacks. Memory Clean keeps me better
informed. It shows me the exact number of MBs of memory I have free at
any given time, turning red to give me a clear warning when memory
resources are scarce. Whereas Memory Diag does a superior job of
diagnosing which apps are memory hogs. It lists the offending app(s) so I
can easily eradicate any problems.
