Possible Memory Leakage of Affinity Publisher on MacOS

[Xingyu]

Recently I was using Affinity Publisher for some design. And no matter how many times I restart my AP, after couple minutes, the memory utilization goes up over 40GB out of 64GB of total memory. This happens many times from version 2.4.1 to 2.4.2. And are there any way to solve this? Or the only way is to wait for new version updates? 

[walt.farrell]

Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums.

We'll probably need more information. What kind of work are you doing in the application when this happens? For example, how many files do you have open, and how big are they? Or, is this happening spontaneously even before you have opened or created any files?

What version of macOS are you using?

[Xingyu]

6 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums.

We'll probably need more information. What kind of work are you doing in the application when this happens? For example, how many files do you have open, and how big are they? Or, is this happening spontaneously even before you have opened or created any files?

What version of macOS are you using?

Thank you so much! I'm using affinity publisher to design materials for my slides, and the AP file contains multiple pages (~40 pages). I only opened one file and the size of this file I opened was ~110MB on the disk. This seems to happen somehow after I open the file for a while, or after I open another similar file and close it. 

Usually when I first open the file the RAM consumption is ~2-4GB, and in about 5-10 minutes it goes up to 8-10 GB. After around 2-3 hours of work the RAM occupation gradually goes up to 30-40GB. And sometimes when it obviously slows down, I have to close the app and reopen it again. 

[walt.farrell]

Thanks.

For the initial storage increase (in about 5-10 minutes), if your document contains Linked documents, then it contains low-resolution images of those documents when it is saved, and initially when it is opened. Then, as part of the work that happens, the application will be reading the actual documents to prepare the high-resolution images that it will need to display as you scroll through the document.

That will certainly require the use of more memory, but how much will depend on the number and size of Linked files you're using, and this might account for part of what you're seeing.

[Xingyu]

4 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

Thanks.

For the initial storage increase (in about 5-10 minutes), if your document contains Linked documents, then it contains low-resolution images of those documents when it is saved, and initially when it is opened. Then, as part of the work that happens, the application will be reading the actual documents to prepare the high-resolution images that it will need to display as you scroll through the document.

That will certainly require the use of more memory, but how much will depend on the number and size of Linked files you're using, and this might account for part of what you're seeing.

Sorry for the confusion. When I described the size, it is not the storage, but rather the memory (RAM). The RAM to run the AP start from 2-4GB, and gradually the memory occupation becomes extremely large up to 20-40GB out of 64GB of my total RAM. The storage doesn't change. 

[walt.farrell]

12 minutes ago, Xingyu said:

Sorry for the confusion. When I described the size, it is not the storage, but rather the memory (RAM). The RAM to run the AP start from 2-4GB, and gradually the memory occupation becomes extremely large up to 20-40GB out of 64GB of my total RAM. The storage doesn't change. 

That's what I was meaning, too. Initial loading will require a certain amount of memory/RAM. Shortly after, if you have Linked files in the document, the memory usage will increase as the full Linked files are loaded, I believe.

[Xingyu]

2 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

That's what I was meaning, too. Initial loading will require a certain amount of memory/RAM. Shortly after, if you have Linked files in the document, the memory usage will increase as the full Linked files are loaded, I believe.

Ah I see. I really appreciate it! This is very helpful! If that's the case, will it be helpful if I change linked file into embedding? And why the affinity designer doesn't have this issue on my computer? Is that because of different ways of data format? 

[walt.farrell]

If you Embed then the file would be immediately larger, rather than growing, so I didn't see that that would help. 

As for why Designer doesn't have the problem, this is all speculation at this point since you haven't told us anything about what your files contain and how big they are. But as far as I know the memory management for both applications would be the same.

[Oufti]

MacOS tends to (let applications) use a large part of the available RAM. So if you have much RAM, it will use more of it than if you had not.

Look in the Activity Monitor, as long as the Memory Pressure graph is green, it should be OK. If it's orange, you're running short of memory and if it's red, better close some apps or restart. 

[Xingyu]

6 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

If you Embed then the file would be immediately larger, rather than growing, so I didn't see that that would help. 

As for why Designer doesn't have the problem, this is all speculation at this point since you haven't told us anything about what your files contain and how big they are. But as far as I know the memory management for both applications would be the same.

I see. Thank you so much for the explanation! Are there any other information about the file that can help to determine the problem? 

[Xingyu]

6 hours ago, Oufti said:

MacOS tends to (let applications) use a large part of the available RAM. So if you have much RAM, it will use more of it than if you had not.

Look in the Activity Monitor, as long as the Memory Pressure graph is green, it should be OK. If it's orange, you're running short of memory and if it's red, better close some apps or restart. 

Yeah, I just checked the activity monitor, even though the memory occupation of AP is high, but it is still green. So I'd assume the memory is not under pressure. Thank you for explaining!