How to Fix Finder High Memory Usage in macOS Tahoe 26.2
Is Finder using 10GB+ of RAM and slowing down your Mac?
Follow Fix 1: The Advanced Memory Management — full Terminal commands and step-by-step instructions below. Verified on macOS Tahoe 26.2.
Recommended Troubleshooting Tool
Before proceeding with manual fixes, we recommend using CleanMyMac X. Quickly identify high CPU apps and optimize system memory with one click.
The Symptom
Activity Monitor shows Finder using an astronomical amount of "Memory," and the system warns "Your system has run out of application memory."
The Fix
- Relaunch Finder
Option + Right Click the Finder icon in the dock and select Relaunch.
- Disable Desktop Stacks
Right-click your desktop and uncheck Use Stacks. Sometimes the indexing for stacks causes a memory leak.
- Clear Finder Preferences
Open Terminal and run:
rm ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist
killall Finder
Fix 3: The Advanced Memory Management
When "Memory Pressure" becomes critical due to background indexing.
Finder often leaks memory when it's trying to generate thumbnails for corrupted image or video files in a specific folder.
Recommended Tool: CleanMyMac X
- Free Up RAM: When you get the "Out of Memory" warning, use the CleanMyMac menu bar tool to instantly flush the inactive memory and kill the leaking Finder process.
- System Junk: Delete the "Image Caches" and "Thumbnail Caches" that Finder uses, forcing it to start with a clean slate.