1. Chip moves into your menu bar
A tiny Chip sits next to your clock. It’s chill when memory is fine, sweaty when it’s tight, and panicking when your Mac starts swapping.
Free menu bar app for Mac
Your RAM,
roasted.
MemWatch watches your Mac’s memory and calls out whatever is hogging it. The one doing the calling out is Chip, a cartoon RAM stick with zero chill.
Free · macOS 14 Sonoma or later · Apple silicon and Intel
Coming soon. Free · macOS 14 Sonoma or later · Apple silicon and Intel
LinkedIn is eating 2.3 GB. That’s a lot of RAM for “Thrilled to announce…”
How it works
It watches. It roasts. You win.
2. Hogs get called out
When an app crosses your limit, Chip pops up holding a sign, or a jet flies a banner across your screen. It even names the website: LinkedIn, not just “Safari”.
3. Quit the hog, breathe again
Hit Quit right on the sign. When the memory comes back, Chip throws confetti and counts what you freed.
Click Chip for the full story
- RAM and swap at a glance, with the last hour as a graph
- “The usual suspects”: your biggest memory users, helpers grouped under their app
- A Hall of Shame with your all-time biggest hog
- Sleep mode when you need quiet. Chip naps, nothing pops up
- Stays out of the way when your screen is locked or you’re in Zoom, Teams or FaceTime
Share it
Got roasted? Post it.
Roast signs and the panel have a Share button. One click makes a ready-to-post image and copies it, so you can paste it straight into X, Instagram, Threads or the group chat.
Every Sunday evening, Chip hands you RAM Wrapped: your top hog, most-roasted app, time under pressure and how much you freed. Post yours with #RAMWrapped.
Your call
Fun, serious or quiet
Fun
Cartoon signs, jet banners and confetti, right on your screen.
Serious
Plain macOS notifications. Same information, no cartoons.
Quiet
Just the menu bar icon. Check in when you feel like it.
Pick how often Chip may roast (every 5, 15 or 30 minutes), how big an app has to get (1 to 4 GB), and which apps never get roasted.
Privacy
Nothing leaves your Mac
MemWatch has no account, no analytics and no network code at all. It reads the same memory numbers Activity Monitor shows, and keeps its stats in a file on your Mac.
- Naming sites is optional. To say “LinkedIn” instead of “Safari”, MemWatch asks macOS to let it read your open tab addresses. macOS asks you once, and you can switch it off in settings.
- Hidden from screen sharing. Roasts don’t show up in your Zoom screen share or recordings unless you turn that on.
- Never quits anything by itself. Apps only close when you press Quit.
Lightweight
A memory watcher that doesn’t hog memory
< 50 MBof memory for MemWatch itself
10 sbetween checks
~30 msper check, across 300+ processes
0%CPU between roasts
Get MemWatch
Free. macOS 14 Sonoma or later, Apple silicon and Intel.
Download MemWatch.dmg Coming soonChip is in final testing. Check back soon.
Version 1.0 · 4.3 MB · universal (Apple silicon and Intel)
Installing
- Open
MemWatch.dmgand drag MemWatch into Applications. - Open MemWatch from Applications. Chip appears in your menu bar and says hi.
macOS says it “can’t verify” MemWatch?
MemWatch isn’t notarized by Apple yet, so the first time you open it macOS shows a warning. To open it anyway:
- Try to open MemWatch once, then click Done on the warning.
- Open System Settings › Privacy & Security and scroll down.
- Next to “MemWatch was blocked”, click Open Anyway, then confirm with your password.
You only need to do this once.
Questions
Is MemWatch really free?
Yes. No trial, no account, no ads.
Will it slow my Mac down?
No. It checks memory every 10 seconds, which takes a few hundredths of a second, and uses less memory than a single browser tab (under 50 MB). The cartoons only run while they’re on screen.
Why does it ask to control Safari or Chrome?
That’s how it reads your open tab addresses to name the site that’s eating memory. It never changes anything in your browser. Say no, or switch off “Name the site from browser tabs”, and it just names the browser instead.
Does it close my apps?
Only when you press Quit on a sign or in the panel. It never quits anything on its own.
How do I make it stop for a while?
Click Chip in the menu bar and turn on Sleep mode. Or switch to Quiet mode in Roast settings. It also stays quiet during Zoom, Teams and FaceTime calls.
What do “normal”, “elevated” and “critical” mean?
That’s macOS’s own memory pressure, the same signal as the green, yellow and red graph in Activity Monitor. It looks at free memory, compression and swapping, not just a percentage.
How does it name the website?
It matches your open tabs against a list of famously heavy sites, like LinkedIn, YouTube, Figma, Gmail and Notion. If none match, it roasts the browser itself.