Minecraft: How to Allocate Additional RAM

Plus a guide to how much to allocate

Jan 25, 2021 3 min read News, Guides

Minecraft and RAM: Like a kid in a Candy Shop

But the kid is Minecraft and the candy is RAM

Minecraft is written in Java, which is an extremely powerful and versatile programming language, but it loves to hoard and use RAM. By default Minecraft only uses up to 2GB of RAM, which can hinder performance. One of the easiest ways to increase performance is to allocate more RAM to Minecraft. This will be a short guide to tell you how. First you will need to know how much RAM you currently have in your system, if you already know this skip ahead to the Allocating Memory section.

Checking in Windows

Open the Task Manager with Ctrl + Shift + Esc and look in the Performance tab under Memory.

The number on the right of the `/` is your total system memory.

Checking in MacOS

Open the Activity Monitor and click Memory. From there find Physical Memory, that should give you your total system memory.

Allocating Memory

How much should I allocate?

The answer to that question varies system to system based on the amount of RAM installed and how much is free for Java to use. The table below is a pretty good place to start though. Find your System RAM and then determine what performance level you would like. You can always go back and adjust after.

System RAM	Performance Level	Allocated RAM
8GB	Alright	4GB
8GB	Good	6GB

12GB	Good	6GB
12GB	Better	8GB

16GB	Good	6GB
16GB	Better	8GB
16GB	Best	10GB

16GB+	Good	8GB
16GB+	Better	10GB
16GB+	Best	12GB-20GB

How do I do it?

1. Open the Minecraft Launcher

Open the launcher as normal and don’t click anything just yet.

2. Click on Installations

3. Locate your installation

This will likely be called Latest Release

4. Edit the Installation

Expand the options and find JVM Arguments

I have mine set to 12GB already, but it will likely say 2GB

Replace the 2G after -Xmx with whatever amount of RAM you decided to allocate. For example if I were to allocate 12GB of RAM like I have already done I would simply type 12G and that would be all.

5. Checking that it worked

To verify that the RAM has been allocated launch the game and join a world or server and press F3 to open the debug menu.

Multiply the GB value you entered earlier by 1024 and it should be the same as the number after the `/`. If it is, your allocation change has worked!

Congratulations, you have successfully allocated more RAM to Minecraft, hopefully netting you more frames in the process. Now go mine those crafts.

Minecraft Game RAM Java Guide Tutorial Allocation