MacBook Air – How to Decrease GPU Memory on MacBook Air

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I own MacBook Air (early 2015) where the GPU and its memory reads as following:

Intel HD Graphics 6000 1536 MB

I think that the amount is a bit too high so I would rather decrease it to 1000 MB or something lower so I can benefit from higher RAM for applications.

Is there a possibility to do something like that?

Best Answer

You can't reduce the shared system memory. (See this question/answer on the Apple Support Forums)

Per EveryMac.com, the HD Graphics 6000 can allocate upto 1.5GB of system RAM. This is handled at the hardware level - some PC BIOSes allowed you to modify this value, but it's not common anymore and definitely not so with Apple.

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So, to "free up" this RAM, you have two choices:

  1. Reduce your video resolution and color depth
  2. Add more RAM

Since the first is not desireable and the second is impossible, if you absolutely need more memory, it's time to upgrade your MacBook to one with 16GB or more.

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