Users report "memory leak" issues after upgrading to macOS Monterey

Some users who recently upgraded their computers to macOS Monterey have encountered a bug known as a "memory leak," a scenario in which a particular macOS process or app runs erratically and remains running in the background for long periods of time, consuming an abnormally large amount of RAM. Google Chrome users on Windows have been familiar with this phenomenon for years.

It's hard to pinpoint exactly which Mac models are affected; however, the range is quite wide, including the recently released 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro. Reports on Twitter, Reddit, the MacRumors forums, and the Apple support communities consist of users reporting that their Mac is warning that the system is "running out of application memory" or that certain applications are consuming a ridiculously large amount of RAM in Activity Monitor. 

Some reports cite the macOS Control Center as the main culprit, using up to 20GB of RAM on the 64GB 16-inch MacBook Pro M1 Max. Another cluster of related reports mainly focuses on Mozilla Firefox. For some users, this browser takes up an incredibly large amount of memory, as much as 80GB.

No response from Apple yet. If you've encountered similar system behavior, let me know in the comments.

Source: 9to5mac

Illustration: macrumors