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Abstract

but it does need to be said: VS Code is not the fully-fledged IDE you think it is. Hence, there are no excuses for its memory-hogging tendencies. Some people might argue that, for an IDE, VS Code (or Atom) taking up 1 GB of RAM to just edit several scripts is not much. Nevertheless, I come from a programming background where a proper IDE looks something like Eclipse, RStudio, or PyCharm. Personally, I use RStudio for programming. I regularly have more than one project open, and I never pass the 1 GB mark. But, I digress. The point is that VS Code and Atom are text editors, and we shall treat them as such.The closest match to VS Code would be a lightweight code editor with lots of features and plug-ins available for download, such as TextMate. I’ve recommended this app in the past and gotten some grief from people arguing VS Code is better when in reality, the equivalence between the two is striking. TextMate is the perfect tool to use if you’re not too fond of command line editors such as Vim and looking for a lightweight app to write your code.Runner-up: None, really. Unless willing to pick up one of Emacs, Vim or Nano at the command line, my ultimate text editor recommendation is TextMate (IDEs notwithstanding).<h1 id="c6a5">3. Bye Spotify — Hello Apple Music</h1>I’m officially done defending the Spotify desktop app. Spotify is my music streaming service of choice, but it’s been tough on my RAM. It often quits unexpectedly and compounds with other of my work-related memory-intensive processes. So much for listening to music while coding. Apple Music, a service equivalent in everything from price to music quality, seems more appealing because it is optimised for Mac. What is more, Apple Music boasts 70 million songs, just like Spotify, in line with their other competitors TIDAL (another Electron app) and Amazon Music.It might be surprising to see the Spotify desktop app on this list, and kind of annoying. Some of us don’t want to become Apple zombies, thank you very much. It might be <a href="https://readmedium.com/this-is-your-last-chance-to-escape-from-apple-8ebe51bafad2">a little late for that</a>, but still, a break from the ecosystem is always welcome to me.Runner-up: Actually, some good old silence. I think I might prefer the runner-up in this case; that’s how committed I am to Spotify and their success over the likes of tech giants Apple and Amazon.<h1 id="12a4">4. Bye Skype, Bye MS Teams — Hello Zoom</h1>Thank goodness we’ve adopted Zoom over this past year. I was terrified my desk would become a mini-helipad for my Mac-turned-helicopter if we kept using Skype or MS Teams with any regularity. It’s pretty much impossible to get anything done on the computer during a Skype or MS Teams call. I would know: I had oral examinations over MS Teams, and I couldn’t sleep the nights before knowing my Mac would thermal throttle and die in the middle of the call if pushed too hard. It’s happened to me on Skype, too. Using either of these platforms is not a pleasant experience, generally speaking — unless your central heating is broken and you are looking for a makeshift radiator.To save my Mac from stress (thermal and otherwise), I use Zoom at every opportunity. The audio and video call is also drastically better compared to Teams, Skype and Slack.Speaking of messaging services, both Slack and Di

Options

scord are Electron-based apps, too. If you use any of these services regularly, you might have suspected it. However, Slack performs a lot better in terms of resource allocation ever since the developers <a href="https://slack.engineering/growing-pains-migrating-slacks-desktop-app-to-browserview/">switched up their Electron back-end</a> from Chromium’s webView to the more stable browserView in 2017. In my experience, Slack and its various helpers take up just under 300 MB in total at idle. Not the worst, especially compared to Skype’s 500 MB at idle.Runner-up: FaceTime. Not for professional use, granted, but great for informal use. There is a screen sharing and screen control option available through iMessage, so you’re good to go with native Mac apps if you need to connect with another Mac user and get some work done.<h1 id="0a34">5. Bye Notion — Hello (again) OneNote</h1>Notion is a productivity app that <a href="https://debugger.medium.com/the-productivity-app-that-won-the-pandemic-c18524b90342">has taken the world by storm</a> ever since the pandemic hit. Perhaps surprisingly, it does run on the Electron framework. If you need to use it heavily every day, it can get slow and buggy, particularly when dealing with long documents with lots of embedded content.[EDIT: As kindly pointed out by <a href="undefined">Robert Polding, PhD</a>, my initial substituent for Notion, Obsidian, also runs on Electron. My bad! Notion is a tough one to substitute, as it turns out.]I personally use both Notion and Joplin, another note-taking and organisation app that runs on Electron, to stay organised. Thus, it might be a good idea to migrate towards better alternatives for these apps. Evernote, a classic, timeless, feature-packed productivity app available in the App Store, is also Electron-based. So is Obsidian.The best option remains the trusted Microsoft OneNote app. It enables organisation, collaboration and embedded content, and the learning curve is relatively modest. Many of us have dabbled with OneNote at some point or another; considering it is highly customisable, versatile and you probably already have it installed, it will be a painless transition.<h1 id="fbcb">Main Takeaway</h1>Electron apps are not bad or evil by any means, despite what the memes will have you think. Nonetheless, they can be resource-intensive for no justified reason, which comes at a performance cost. Furthermore, resource-intensive apps that take up a lot of RAM/CPU power at idle can put prolonged thermal pressure on the computer’s internals. To extend my Mac’s life, I choose to substitute Electron apps for lightweight equivalents whenever possible.My advice is to screen the apps you use every day (likely mentioned in the list above) for RAM usage and/or check whether they run on the Electron framework on <a href="https://www.electronjs.org/apps">the official website</a>. Consider replacing them whenever possible with less taxing apps to extend your Mac’s life and improve day to day performance.If you enjoy reading stories like these and want to support my writing, consider signing up to become a Medium member. It’s $5 a month, giving you unlimited access to stories on Medium. <a href="https://medium.com/@denblackwood/membership">If you sign up using my page</a>, I’ll earn a small commission. Cheers!</article></body>

5 Apps That Eat Your RAM and How to Replace Them

Keep your Mac running fast and cool by substituting these Electron-based desktop apps with lighter options.

We’ve all been there: whether you like to use Windows, Linux or Mac, something doesn’t feel quite right when certain apps run at the same time. Be it the fans inexplicably kicking in at idle, or noticeable sluggishness in an otherwise fast machine, RAM hogging apps can cause some inconveniences. The most obvious offender is Google Chrome: it’s long been reported by users that Chrome (and its several helpers) consumes upwards of 500 MB of RAM.

Chrome is not the only app guilty of hogging RAM. This is because it operates on a framework called Electron, a popular cross-platform system that is appealing to developers for its versatility and robustness. However, the downside of Electron-based software is that it does not run natively like other platform-specific software. Therefore, resource allocation is not optimal, to put it mildly. I mean, don’t take it for me. Electron.js is the source of many a feud in the software developer community, and also the source of this viral meme. I’m no expert, though, from experience, I do like to run less resource-intensive apps wherever possible.

Here is my list of frequent Electron substitutions. That is not to say I never use these apps; I do! I just would not leave them open 24/7, as I do with my usual Mac essentials. Enjoy!

1. Bye Google Chrome — Hello Safari

Yes. Seriously. Historically, Safari has been an unpopular choice with Mac users, and for some good reasons: resource allocation used to be no better than Chrome that we shun today, and some websites were just not optimised for Safari (and probably never will be).

However, Safari recently received a serious makeover. Performance reports are showcasing excellent performance vs Chrome, with 10 times less RAM used when 2 tabs are open, and 24 times less RAM when 54 tabs are open. Coupled with a fresh new look, Safari looks like the native, viable web browser that Mac users need.

Runner-up: Not Opera, that much is certain: it’s another Electron-based application. Not Brave, either, sadly. Despite the attractive reward program and the focus on user privacy, Brave is quite literally Chrome’s sister (based on the Chromium framework). We have to hand the runner-up title to Firefox, even though claims about RAM-hogging vary. On my machine, Firefox takes up more RAM with fewer tabs than Safari (about 300 MB for three tabs), but other people swear by it.

2. Bye VS Code, Bye Atom — Hello TextMate

This is bound to get a lot of people angry, but it does need to be said: VS Code is not the fully-fledged IDE you think it is. Hence, there are no excuses for its memory-hogging tendencies. Some people might argue that, for an IDE, VS Code (or Atom) taking up 1 GB of RAM to just edit several scripts is not much. Nevertheless, I come from a programming background where a proper IDE looks something like Eclipse, RStudio, or PyCharm. Personally, I use RStudio for programming. I regularly have more than one project open, and I never pass the 1 GB mark. But, I digress. The point is that VS Code and Atom are text editors, and we shall treat them as such.

The closest match to VS Code would be a lightweight code editor with lots of features and plug-ins available for download, such as TextMate. I’ve recommended this app in the past and gotten some grief from people arguing VS Code is better when in reality, the equivalence between the two is striking. TextMate is the perfect tool to use if you’re not too fond of command line editors such as Vim and looking for a lightweight app to write your code.

Runner-up: None, really. Unless willing to pick up one of Emacs, Vim or Nano at the command line, my ultimate text editor recommendation is TextMate (IDEs notwithstanding).

3. Bye Spotify — Hello Apple Music

I’m officially done defending the Spotify desktop app. Spotify is my music streaming service of choice, but it’s been tough on my RAM. It often quits unexpectedly and compounds with other of my work-related memory-intensive processes. So much for listening to music while coding. Apple Music, a service equivalent in everything from price to music quality, seems more appealing because it is optimised for Mac. What is more, Apple Music boasts 70 million songs, just like Spotify, in line with their other competitors TIDAL (another Electron app) and Amazon Music.

It might be surprising to see the Spotify desktop app on this list, and kind of annoying. Some of us don’t want to become Apple zombies, thank you very much. It might be a little late for that, but still, a break from the ecosystem is always welcome to me.

Runner-up: Actually, some good old silence. I think I might prefer the runner-up in this case; that’s how committed I am to Spotify and their success over the likes of tech giants Apple and Amazon.

4. Bye Skype, Bye MS Teams — Hello Zoom

Thank goodness we’ve adopted Zoom over this past year. I was terrified my desk would become a mini-helipad for my Mac-turned-helicopter if we kept using Skype or MS Teams with any regularity. It’s pretty much impossible to get anything done on the computer during a Skype or MS Teams call. I would know: I had oral examinations over MS Teams, and I couldn’t sleep the nights before knowing my Mac would thermal throttle and die in the middle of the call if pushed too hard. It’s happened to me on Skype, too. Using either of these platforms is not a pleasant experience, generally speaking — unless your central heating is broken and you are looking for a makeshift radiator.

To save my Mac from stress (thermal and otherwise), I use Zoom at every opportunity. The audio and video call is also drastically better compared to Teams, Skype and Slack.

Speaking of messaging services, both Slack and Discord are Electron-based apps, too. If you use any of these services regularly, you might have suspected it. However, Slack performs a lot better in terms of resource allocation ever since the developers switched up their Electron back-end from Chromium’s webView to the more stable browserView in 2017. In my experience, Slack and its various helpers take up just under 300 MB in total at idle. Not the worst, especially compared to Skype’s 500 MB at idle.

Runner-up: FaceTime. Not for professional use, granted, but great for informal use. There is a screen sharing and screen control option available through iMessage, so you’re good to go with native Mac apps if you need to connect with another Mac user and get some work done.

5. Bye Notion — Hello (again) OneNote

Notion is a productivity app that has taken the world by storm ever since the pandemic hit. Perhaps surprisingly, it does run on the Electron framework. If you need to use it heavily every day, it can get slow and buggy, particularly when dealing with long documents with lots of embedded content.

[EDIT: As kindly pointed out by Robert Polding, PhD, my initial substituent for Notion, Obsidian, also runs on Electron. My bad! Notion is a tough one to substitute, as it turns out.]

I personally use both Notion and Joplin, another note-taking and organisation app that runs on Electron, to stay organised. Thus, it might be a good idea to migrate towards better alternatives for these apps. Evernote, a classic, timeless, feature-packed productivity app available in the App Store, is also Electron-based. So is Obsidian.

The best option remains the trusted Microsoft OneNote app. It enables organisation, collaboration and embedded content, and the learning curve is relatively modest. Many of us have dabbled with OneNote at some point or another; considering it is highly customisable, versatile and you probably already have it installed, it will be a painless transition.

Main Takeaway

Electron apps are not bad or evil by any means, despite what the memes will have you think. Nonetheless, they can be resource-intensive for no justified reason, which comes at a performance cost. Furthermore, resource-intensive apps that take up a lot of RAM/CPU power at idle can put prolonged thermal pressure on the computer’s internals. To extend my Mac’s life, I choose to substitute Electron apps for lightweight equivalents whenever possible.

My advice is to screen the apps you use every day (likely mentioned in the list above) for RAM usage and/or check whether they run on the Electron framework on the official website. Consider replacing them whenever possible with less taxing apps to extend your Mac’s life and improve day to day performance.

If you enjoy reading stories like these and want to support my writing, consider signing up to become a Medium member. It’s $5 a month, giving you unlimited access to stories on Medium. If you sign up using my page, I’ll earn a small commission. Cheers!