ghostty weird memory thing
1⏺ Bash(sudo footprint 680 2>/dev/null || footprint -p 680 2>/dev/null || echo "footprint not available, trying vmmap" && vmmap -summary 680 2>/dev/null | head -30)
2 ⎿ ======================================================================
3 ghostty [680]: 64-bit Footprint: 20 GB (16384 bytes per page)
4 ======================================================================
5
6 Dirty Clean Reclaimable Regions Category
7 --- --- --- --- ---
8 20 GB 0 B 0 B 34277 untagged (VM_ALLOCATE)
9 247 MB 0 B 0 B 23 IOSurface
10 169 MB 0 B 2288 KB 174 IOAccelerator (graphics)
11 51 MB 0 B 0 B 1 page table
12 16 MB 0 B 320 KB 11 MALLOC_MEDIUM
13 14 MB 0 B 16 KB 15 MALLOC_SMALL
14 11 MB 0 B 0 B 1 MALLOC_NANO
15 8256 KB 0 B 0 B 3 IOAccelerator
16 7856 KB 0 B 0 B 208 Owned physical footprint (unmapped)
17 7504 KB 0 B 16 KB 34 MALLOC_TINY
18 4296 KB 16 KB 0 B 934 __DATA
19 2736 KB 0 B 0 B 93 CoreAnimation
20 1392 KB 0 B 0 B 45 stack
21 1344 KB 0 B 0 B 16 CG image
22 1216 KB 0 B 0 B 9 CoreUI image data
23 1194 KB 0 B 0 B 710 __AUTH
24 1088 KB 0 B 0 B 6 CoreImage
25 821 KB 0 B 0 B 341 __DATA_DIRTY
26 592 KB 0 B 0 B 49 MALLOC metadata
27 592 KB 0 B 0 B 31 ColorSync
28 537 KB 0 B 0 B 2068 unused dyld shared cache area
29 128 KB 0 B 0 B 1 Accelerate image backing stores
30 112 KB 144 KB 0 B 965 __DATA_CONST
31 112 KB 0 B 0 B 8 IOKit
32 96 KB 0 B 0 B 954 __AUTH_CONST
33 64 KB 0 B 0 B 2 __TPRO_CONST
34 48 KB 0 B 0 B 3 CoreGraphics
35 32 KB 0 B 0 B 1 Activity Tracing
36 32 KB 0 B 0 B 3 MALLOC_LARGE
37 16 KB 0 B 0 B 1 os_alloc_once
38 16 KB 0 B 0 B 2 Foundation
39 0 B 0 B 22 MB 1 MALLOC_LARGE_REUSABLE
40 0 B 0 B 16 KB 2 ImageIO
41 0 B 9456 KB 0 B 76 mapped file
42 0 B 4704 KB 0 B 987 __TEXT
43 0 B 16 KB 0 B 6 __LINKEDIT
44 0 B 0 B 0 B 1 __FONT_DATA
45 0 B 0 B 0 B 1 __INFO_FILTER
46 0 B 0 B 0 B 1 __CTF
47 --- --- --- --- ---
48 20 GB 14 MB 25 MB 42066 TOTAL
49
50 Auxiliary data:
51 phys_footprint: 20 GB
52 phys_footprint_peak: 20 GB
53
54 Process: ghostty [680]
55 Path: /Applications/Ghostty.app/Contents/MacOS/ghostty
56 Load Address: 0x100714000
57 Identifier: ghostty
58 Version: ???
59 Code Type: ARM64
60 Platform: macOS
61 Parent Process: launchd [1]
62 Target Type: corpse
63
64 Date/Time: 2026-01-01 21:06:18.650 -0600
65 Launch Time: 2026-01-01 20:28:30.669 -0600
66 OS Version: macOS 15.7.3 (24G419)
67 Report Version: 7
68 Analysis Tool: /usr/bin/vmmap
69
70 Physical footprint: 20.2G
71 Physical footprint (peak): 20.3G
72 Idle exit: untracked
73 ----
74
75 ReadOnly portion of Libraries: Total=1.7G resident=329.6M(19%) swapped_out_or_unallocated=1.3G(81%)
76 Writable regions: Total=22.1G written=58.2M(0%) resident=114.4M(1%) swapped_out=19.7G(89%) unallocated=2.3G(10%)
77
78 VIRTUAL RESIDENT DIRTY SWAPPED VOLATILE NONVOL EMPTY REGION
79 REGION TYPE SIZE SIZE SIZE SIZE SIZE SIZE SIZE COUNT (non-coalesced)
80 =========== ======= ======== ===== ======= ======== ====== ===== =======
81 Accelerate framework 128K 128K 0K 128K 0K 128K 0K 1
82 Activity Tracing 256K 32K 32K 0K 0K 32K 0K 1
83 AttributeGraph Data 1024K 336K 336K 16K 0K 0K 0K 1
84
85∴ Thinking…
86
87 Found it! Look at this line:
88
89 20 GB 0 B 0 B 34277 untagged (VM_ALLOCATE)
90
91 And then at the bottom:
92 Writable regions: Total=22.1G written=58.2M(0%) resident=114.4M(1%) swapped_out=19.7G(89%) unallocated=2.3G(10%)
93
94 So 19.7 GB is swapped out - it's not actually in RAM. There's some memory that Ghostty allocated (via VM_ALLOCATE) that's mostly swapped to disk. This is likely a memory leak or large
95 buffer allocation in Ghostty that's not actually being used (hence swapped out).
96
97 This could be:
98 1. A memory leak in Ghostty itself (34,277 regions of untagged VM_ALLOCATE = 20GB)
99 2. Terminal scrollback buffers that have grown very large
100 3. Some GPU-related memory allocation
101
102 The key insight is: this isn't actually consuming 20GB of physical RAM - it's 89% swapped out. But it IS a potential problem in Ghostty.
103
104 The user has been running 3 Claude sessions with lots of output, which could create massive scrollback buffers. Let me check if there's a scrollback setting or if this is a known Ghostty
105 issue.
106
107⏺ Found it! Look at this:
108
109 20 GB 0 B 0 B 34277 untagged (VM_ALLOCATE)
110
111 And:
112 Writable regions: swapped_out=19.7G(89%)
113
114 20 GB of untagged (VM_ALLOCATE) memory - and 89% of it is swapped to disk, not actually in RAM. This is likely scrollback buffer accumulation in Ghostty from your 3 Claude sessions running for ~35 minutes with lots of output.
115
116 This is a Ghostty issue, not Claude. Options:
117
118 1. Restart Ghostty - quickest fix
119 2. Reduce scrollback - in your Ghostty config, add:
120 scrollback-limit = 10000
121 3. Clear scrollback in each tab: Cmd+K or clear && printf '\e[3J'
122
123 The good news: it's not actually using 20GB of physical RAM (it's 89% swapped), but Ghostty is leaking/accumulating memory in scrollback that should probably be limited.