| MEMINFO(1) | General Commands Manual | MEMINFO(1) |
meminfo — display
physical memory usage breakdown
meminfo |
[--wired] [--carveouts]
[--raw] [--all]
[--quiet] [--csv
path] [--perfdata
path] [--interval
seconds] [--count
n] [--duration
seconds] |
meminfo displays a summary of physical
memory usage, broken down by category. By default, a human-readable table is
printed with page counts, megabyte values, percentage bars, and percentages
for each category.
The following options are available:
--wired--wired option requires root privileges or the
com.apple.private.memoryinfo entitlement; without
them, the wired breakdown is omitted and a diagnostic is printed to
standard error.--carveouts--rawanonymous_purgeable)
instead of human-readable display names (e.g.
Purgeable).--all--wired and
--carveouts.--quiet--csv
path--interval, a single data row is
written.--interval
seconds0.5).
In the default formatted mode, the screen is cleared before each sample. In CSV mode, each sample is emitted as an additional data row after a single header.
--count
n--interval to have any effect; without it, only
one sample is taken regardless.--duration
seconds--interval to have any effect.--perfdata
path--wired, individual wired sites are included as
additional metrics with a category=wired variable.
When combined with --carveouts, individual
carveout regions are included with a
category=static_carveouts variable. When combined
with --interval, each sample is written as a
separate group in the same perfdata file.When --interval is active,
meminfo installs signal handlers for
SIGINT and SIGTERM. Both
--count and --duration may
be specified together; sampling stops when either limit is reached.
The following categories are displayed in the formatted output. Together they sum to the Total row.
--wired, individual kernel
allocation sites are listed as indented subcategories, sorted
alphabetically.--carveouts, individual carveout regions from the
device tree are listed as indented subcategories, sorted by base address.
Overlapping regions are shown individually but do not double-count in the
parent total.The Swap category is displayed below Total and is not part of the physical memory total.
Each row shows a label, page count, size in megabytes, a fixed-width visual bar, and a percentage of total physical memory. Detail rows (e.g. Uncompressed data) omit the bar and percentage and are displayed in dim text.
A header row followed by one data row per sample. The first two
columns are datetime (ISO 8601) and
abstime (Unix epoch with millisecond precision). All
memory values are in bytes.
A perfdata file containing one metric per memory category. With
--interval, each sample is written as a separate
group. All values are in bytes.
The meminfo utility exits 0 on
success, and >0 if an error occurs.
Display a one-shot summary:
$ meminfoInclude wired memory breakdown (requires root):
# meminfo --wiredInclude static carveout breakdown:
$ meminfo --carveoutsShow everything (implies --wired and --carveouts):
# meminfo --allSample every 2 seconds, stop after 10 samples, output as CSV:
$ meminfo --csv /tmp/mem.csv
--interval 2 --count 10Stream CSV for 60 seconds at half-second intervals:
$ meminfo --csv /tmp/mem.csv
--interval 0.5 --duration 60| March 13, 2026 | macOS 26 |