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Why does iTunes use upwards of 70 megs of ram when it is minimized to my system tray playing music?

Update

I understand that iTunes is a resource hog :). What I'm trying to find out, is what part of iTunes is using all that RAM. Is it the music library? If I have a smaller music library, will it use less memory? Is it loading all the Album Artwork into RAM for some dumb reason?

Additionally, is there any recommendations on what someone could do to reduce the amount of RAM it is using?

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I understand that iTunes is a resource hog :) What I'm trying to find out, is what part of iTunes is using all that ram. Is it the music library? If I have a smaller music library, will it use less ram? Is it loading all the Album Artwork into ram for some dumb reason?

It's just the program. There isn't much you can do to lower the RAM usage. I imagine making your playlists and library smaller would help somewhat, but only by a few KBs, maybe a meg or two at most. Honestly though, 70MB isn't that much at all; Firefox can take up over 100 for me.

Is it visibly slowing down your computer? If not, I wouldn't stress about the numbers.

Edit: If you're using iTunes 7, you can install a program called Multi-Plugin to lower the memory usage, but if you use iTunes 8, you're out of luck.

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  • No, it isn't slowing it down. I am really just in awe by it's resource usage from time to time, and I wanted to get some insight from the community. Thanks. Jul 17, 2009 at 6:28
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    Well, that's Apple for ya. :) Like I said, I wouldn't worry about it. If you're using iTunes 7, you can install Multi-Plugin to lower the memory usage, but if you use iTunes 8, you're out of luck. aqua-soft.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=41188 Jul 17, 2009 at 6:57
  • Wow, that's a fantastic link. I had no idea something like that existed. Jul 17, 2009 at 20:14
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Because it is kind of a resource hog. The whole program is still running, even if you're only playing music it still keeps a bunch of stuff in memory.

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