---
title: "Slack, Teams, or Discord slowing your Mac? · MacMelon"
description: "Chat apps left open for days can grow and push a Mac into swap. Sentinely shows how much they hold and restarts them the normal way, never during a call."
url: "https://macmelon.com/use-cases/slack-teams-and-discord-slowing-your-mac"
---

# When Slack, Teams, or Discord slows your Mac

Chat and work apps such as Slack, Teams, Discord, and Notion can grow the longer they stay open. A normal restart gives the memory back and keeps your conversations.

Slack, Microsoft Teams, Discord, and Notion are built from many processes, and they can grow the longer they stay open. Left running for days in the background, they can hold enough memory to push the rest of the Mac into [swap](https://macmelon.com/glossary/swap-memory).

[Sentinely](https://macmelon.com/apps/sentinely) notices when one of these apps is in the background and holding a lot of memory, and says whether it is still growing. The fix is a normal restart: the app quits the usual way and reopens, and your conversations are still there.

## Steps

1.  ### Open the check

    If a chat app is holding a lot of memory, Sentinely lists it with an estimate. Because these apps run as several processes, the estimate is "up to".

2.  ### Review the restart

    The fix quits the app normally and opens it again. Sentinely re-checks the processes just before it acts.

3.  ### Read the receipt

    The receipt shows what the old processes gave back and what changed in memory pressure and swap. A freshly started app uses some memory again, so the receipt reports what was measured, not the estimate.

## Before you start

-   Sentinely does not suggest restarting Slack, Teams, Discord, Zoom, FaceTime, or WhatsApp while your microphone or camera is in use.
-   An app that is restarted grows again over time. If the same app keeps coming back to the top of the list, it is worth knowing, and the menu bar monitor will tell you.

## Questions

Will I lose messages?

No. The app quits the normal way and reopens. Your conversations live in the app's account, not in the memory it was holding.

Can Autopilot restart chat apps for me?

No. Autopilot never quits apps. Restarting one is always a fix you review and run yourself.

## Apps

[No more Force Quit in the middle of a build. ### Sentinely](https://macmelon.com/apps/sentinely)

## Related guides

[### How to find what's slowing down your Mac](https://macmelon.com/guides/how-to-find-what-is-slowing-down-your-mac)

## Related use cases

[### Find out why your Mac is slow](https://macmelon.com/use-cases/find-out-why-your-mac-is-slow)

## Related terms

[The memory macOS charges to a process, including memory it has compressed. Sentinely's unit for estimates and receipts. ### Memory footprint](https://macmelon.com/glossary/memory-footprint)[Memory macOS has moved from RAM to the startup disk because RAM ran short. ### Swap](https://macmelon.com/glossary/swap-memory)[Sentinely's record of a fix: what was freed and what changed for you, measured after the fix rather than promised before it. ### Measured receipt](https://macmelon.com/glossary/measured-receipt)[The system strip at the top of a Mac screen, where status items live. ### Menu bar](https://macmelon.com/glossary/menu-bar)