RAMKeeper
When Activity Monitor is not helping
The usual complaint is not that it is missing features. It is that it answers a question you did not ask.
A question that turns up on r/macos in almost exactly these words: "Activity monitor not helping me diagnose issues, any solutions or alternatives?" It is worth taking literally, because the problem is rarely that Activity Monitor lacks a column. It is that four specific things you want to know are not in it at all.
The four gaps
| What you want to know | Activity Monitor | Where to get it |
|---|---|---|
| What did this app peak at? | Not shown anywhere | /usr/bin/footprint -p <pid> |
| What does this app cost in total, helpers included? | One row per process, ungrouped | Group by parent bundle yourself, or a tool that does |
| Is this growing, or has it always been this size? | A live figure with no history | Sample it over an hour |
| What happens next time it does this? | Nothing. You force quit, by hand | A rule, or your own attention |
Gap 1: the peak
macOS keeps a high-water mark per process and Activity Monitor does not surface it. It costs one command:
/usr/bin/footprint -p <pid>
which prints phys_footprint and phys_footprint_peak, needs no
sudo for your own processes, and changes conclusions. In a measurement taken on
11 September 2026, Docker was sitting at 0.48 GB with a 2.75 GB peak, and a
video decode helper was at 0.08 GB having peaked at 1.40 GB. Neither is visible
as a problem in a live snapshot.
Gap 2: the grouping
A browser or an Electron app spreads itself across processes, and Activity Monitor lists them individually. Measured on the same machine and the same minute:
- Chromium: 52 processes, 5.18 GB
- Vivaldi: 15 processes, 3.48 GB
- Lark: 14 processes, 2.29 GB
Fifty-two rows called some variation of "Helper (Renderer)" is not a diagnosis. The total under the parent is. Here is the grouping script, which is eighteen lines and reads the same data Activity Monitor does.
Gap 3: the trend
Activity Monitor is a live view, so "is this growing" is a question you cannot ask it. Sampling the same process over an hour answers it, and distinguishes a leak from an app that is simply large: the test and the script.
Gap 4: doing something about it
The genuinely missing piece. Activity Monitor's only action is force quit, which is you, doing it, every time. If the same app is at the top of the list every afternoon, what you want is not a better view of it.
So which tool
- For a permanent readout: Stats, free and open source, in the menu bar. iStat Menus if you want more depth and do not mind paying.
- For peaks, grouping and trends: the commands above. They are exact, they are free, and they are the source of every figure on this page.
- For gap 4: RAMKeeper, which is our own app, so read that with the appropriate scepticism: it groups helpers under the parent, shows current against peak, and lets you set a per-app ceiling with a decided action. The free build does the first two.
What no alternative fixes: if your Mac is genuinely short of memory, a better monitor tells you so more clearly and changes nothing else. That is a different question.
Disclosure: published by RAMKeeper, which sells a Mac memory tool. All figures were measured
with top and /usr/bin/footprint on 11 September 2026.