I’ve been having an issue where if I don’t close and reopen Sketchup or Layout every other day or so the ram usage gets out of control. In the above image it shows Sketchup using 166 GB & Layout 57 GB. This was probably after about a week of leaving the program open? The file that I had open is a 500 MB file and when it is freshly opened only uses 10 GB of ram.
Is there some kind of memory leak issue that needs to be addressed? It’s not that much of a bother to close and reopen the program every now and then, but it is annoying when my computer randomly slows down since it’s memory swapping for no reason.
I’m using Sketchup 26.1.257 on macOS Tahoe 26.4.1 on a M5 Pro Macbook Pro with 64 GB of ram.
500mb is big for a sketchup file. I’m not surprised sketchup uses 16% of your ram on start. 10gb looks massive but when you look at the percentage, it’s not.
I just opened a 400mb file and sketchup uses 20% total RAM.
yeah, don’t do that. it’s a machine. granted, you don’t need to turn it off everyday, but still, you can’t expect a program to run a 500mb file for a week without any memory leak or other trouble coming out of the woods.
especially if you’re doing the same with all the other apps, indesign, brave, layout…
So yeah, every night, just save, quit, and let it rest.
You could even add a shutdown every now and then, machines love that.
(I know, modern computers make it so simple to use without really quitting an app, that way it always “restarts” quickly. great. but sometimes, not)
Yeah, it’s a big file for a big project. But if this is happening it probably means that something in the program is wrong, right? Only sketchup & layout continue to eat memory, none of my other programs do that if left open. The other programs (aside from brave) do get restarted often, it’s really just sketchup that I sometimes leave open since I use it every day. Layout was in the mix here & both were left open for a few days since I was in the middle of preparing a big construction document package.
There have been instances of my computer memory swapping because of Sketchup ram bloat during the same work day as a fresh restart too. The above screenshot was to show it when it goes completely off the rails.
Is sketchup and layout getting work done while you sleep? Why do you need to keep it all open 24/7?
Saving your files and closing the apps will help a lot regardless if there is an issue.
I’m on M2 Mac but haven’t updated to Tahoe and I do not see such behavior on my large files, even if I get distracted and leave things open over night. It could be IS related or M5 related or plugin or whatever related… or maybe it’s your file(s) and how your have modeled / how much detail / etc.
clean restart of your machine helps, clean restart of sketchup too, apparently successive mac os updates are supposed to fix this (I’m still on sonoma and have no leak, go figure)
have you also posted it on apple comunity forums? they might tell you to post here too, but you never know
I kept track of it today and I when I opened sketchup it was using about 10 GB of ram & after 5 hours of work it was using 40 GB. This is all working in just the one 500 MB file.
It could totally also be mac os, but I’ve not noticed any other programs doing this, only sketchup and layout.
Hey, I built a SketchUp diagnostic extension called nEVEn that was designed specifically to identify heavy textures, memory pressure, viewport lag, and other model bottlenecks before they become workflow problems.
I’m not sure if it will solve the issue you’re seeing, but your case looks exactly like the kind of session behavior I built it to help diagnose.
If you’d like to test it, there’s a free 14-day trial available. If it helps uncover anything useful in your model, I’d genuinely appreciate hearing your findings or a short review.
Thanks, and good luck tracking down the memory issue.
Hi, I tried installing and using your extension but the window that opens is too small to use, can’t be resized, and when I close it it freezes sketchup and requires a force quit
thanks so much for trying nEVEn and for taking the time to report this.
I should mention that I don’t currently have access to a Mac for testing, so this may be a macOS-specific issue that I haven’t been able to reproduce yet.
could you share your SketchUp version and macOS version?
also, does SketchUp freeze every time you close nEVEn, or only after running a scan?
I appreciate the feedback. It helps me improve compatibility and stability across different systems.
also, if you are comfortable sharing the model file where this happens, that would help me test the issue better.
thank you so much for taking the time to test it. I’m going to pull this test build for now and pause the macOS release until I can get it properly tested on a physical macOS.Really appreciate the help, thanks again
