Free up inactive memory in OS X Mavericks

Over the last few years OS X has got progressively more intuitive memory management, however – it’s still not completely flawless. This is obvious when using Virtual Machine technologies such as VMWare Fusion, OS X is not overly quick ‘mopping’ up memory once fusion is closed down. Which is where the terminal command PURGE comes in.

The purge command cleans out the memory and disk caches, and by doing a purge you are essentially replicating a system reboot.

To perform a purge, follow the instructions below:

1. Open Finder
2. Open the Utilities folder
3. Open a terminal window
4. Copy and paste the following line in:
   
   PHP

   sudo purge

   1	sudo purge

5. Press return
6. Enter your admin password
7. Press return

This one is worth a shot if you’re busy opening/closing applications and you feel performance slipping.