It's unlikely to be website memory leaks. If it was, on "memory flush" it wouldn't drop to about the same amount every time that fits comfortably in RAM, with

It's unlikely to be website memory leaks. If it was, on "memory flush" it wouldn't drop to about the same amount every time that fits comfortably in RAM, with no visible effect except the pause. This event does not unload tabs. With the numbers I'm seeing, think it's too risky to commit to 16GB non-upgradeable RAM for a laptop that must last many years to justify the cost. The ask HN author wants their sub-$2000 laptop to last for a long time, and I'd worry that even if browsing is smooth in 2022 brand new, what about 2025 and 2028, with more dev and comms apps running as well? Usually it climbs to 20-30GB or so then triggers the flushing, with many annoying freezes on the way, but yes I've wondered if there's really an upper limit. Given any amount of RAM, will it use all of it and then try to swap even more? Could more RAM even be worse due to some accounting-ratio bug? (67GB is rare, only seen with Telegram which does have a severe leak.) Like you I'm auto-suspending inactive tabs, and their size certainly isn't a problem after restarting. Yet I see large RAM fluctuation even on text-only HN tabs. Just now, a new HN tab used 2.5GB more RAM in a few seconds before settling down to 1.2GB. Later the flush event happened and dropped 9GB. The new tab is still open. It wouldn't be a problem if it was just vm stats, but it does cause too many annoying freezes. So what I think I'm seeing is that bloat has accrued over time, and optimising memory, or perhaps doing it right on MacOS, is not a priority for FF devs (or Safari in my experience with many tabs or windows), and won't be any time soon. If someone has usage similar to me, they should at least look whether RAM usage is borderline now before assuming 16GB (non-upgradable) will be enough over the years they want to keep using the laptop.