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TECH SUPPORT & TECHSPLANATIONS
Finder doesn’t leak after all
KEEP A WATCH on how much memory the Finder uses while you’re browsing images and other files with custom thumbnails or icons, and you’ll see that increases steadily. Browse or select hundreds of files, and it can rise to GB. Many had assumed that’s a memory leak, and the only way to get that memory back is to restart the Finder.
We were wrong! That memory hasn’t leaked away, it has just been borrowed. If your Mac’s memory comes under pressure, or after a couple of days, the Finder should return its loan.
Although this may not be the way you’d want the Finder to behave, its purpose is to keep thumbnails handy in case it needs to display them again. This makes scrolling through them smooth, as long as you don’t get jittery over where all that memory has gone.