Mem Reduct for Linux

Lightweight real-time memory management application to monitor
and clean system memory on your computer.

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Install - just copy & paste

One command, works from bash, zsh and fish:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/flessan/memreduct-linux/master/install.sh | bash

It opens a tiny menu - pick what you want with the arrow keys (or press a number):

  Mem Reduct for Linux - installer
  memory: 1.2 GB used of 3.8 GB (31%)

  up/down + Enter, or press a number

  > Install                    (recommended)
    Install + enable auto-clean daemon
    Build portable static binary only (no install)
    Uninstall
    Quit

Is it safe? Yes - but don't take our word for it, take 30 seconds and read the script before running it. It's ~250 lines of plain shell that only does three things: installs gcc/make with your distro's package manager if missing, builds the program from this repository's source, and runs make install. Nothing else is downloaded or executed. If you prefer, inspect first and run after:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/flessan/memreduct-linux/master/install.sh -o install.sh
less install.sh        # check it - it's short and readable
bash install.sh

Skip the menu with flags: ... | bash -s -- --install / --daemon / --static / --uninstall. No curl? Use wget -qO- <same url> | bash. Uninstall any time with:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/flessan/memreduct-linux/master/install.sh | bash -s -- --uninstall

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Linux port of Mem Reduct by Henry++. Where the Windows version uses undocumented Native API calls to clear the working sets and standby page lists, this port uses the official Linux kernel interfaces to achieve the same result:

Windows original	Linux port
Standby page lists	Page cache (/proc/sys/vm/drop_caches = 1)
System working set	Dentry/inode slab caches (drop_caches = 2)
Combined memory lists	Memory compaction (compact_memory)
Modified page lists	sync() + swap reload (swapoff/swapon)

Features

• Status - colored overview of physical memory, reclaimable cache, swap and PSI memory pressure, with --json output for scripting
• Clean - one-shot memory cleaning with selectable areas
• Top - processes using the most memory (memreduct top)
• Monitor - interactive full-screen live monitor with usage history graph, memory pressure and top consumers (c = clean, q = quit)
• Daemon - automatic cleaning at a usage threshold and/or on a timer, high-usage alerts, systemd integration, config reload on SIGHUP, syslog/journal logging and optional desktop notifications
• Shell completions for bash and fish, man page, systemd unit
• Zero dependencies: plain C99 + libc + /proc - no GUI toolkit, no libraries

Supported distributions

All of them. The program only needs a C library and a Linux kernel (≥ 2.6.16 for drop_caches); it builds and runs identically on glibc and musl:

Debian, Ubuntu, Mint, Pop!_OS, Fedora, RHEL, CentOS, AlmaLinux, Rocky, openSUSE, Arch, Manjaro, EndeavourOS, CachyOS, Alpine, Void, Gentoo, Slackware, NixOS, postmarketOS, Raspberry Pi OS - x86_64, i686, ARM, RISC-V, anything the kernel runs on. A make static build produces a single portable binary that runs on any distro without installing anything.

Build & install (manual way)

make                 # build (any C99 compiler: gcc, clang, tcc)
sudo make install    # install binary, config, man page, systemd unit

Optional:

make static                        # fully static, distro-independent binary
./packaging/debian/build-deb.sh    # build a .deb  (Debian/Ubuntu/Mint/...)
rpmbuild -ba packaging/rpm/memreduct.spec   # build an .rpm (Fedora/RHEL/openSUSE)
cd packaging/arch && makepkg -si            # Arch Linux package

Usage

memreduct                      # show memory usage
memreduct status --json        # ...as JSON, for scripts
memreduct top                  # biggest memory consumers
sudo memreduct clean           # clean memory now
sudo memreduct clean --all     # ...including swap reload
sudo memreduct monitor         # live monitor; press 'c' to clean
sudo memreduct daemon -t 85    # auto-clean at 85% usage (foreground)

Run it automatically at boot:

sudo systemctl enable --now memreduct

Configuration

System-wide /etc/memreduct.conf, per-user ~/.config/memreduct/memreduct.conf; command-line options override both. The daemon reloads its configuration on systemctl reload memreduct.

clean_threshold = 90    # auto-clean when memory usage reaches 90% (0 = off)
clean_interval = 0      # additionally clean every N minutes (0 = off)
cooldown = 60           # min seconds between threshold-triggered cleans
clean_pagecache = yes   # drop clean page cache
clean_dentries = yes    # drop dentry/inode slab caches
clean_compact = yes     # compact physical memory
clean_swap = no         # flush swap back to RAM
notifications = yes     # desktop notifications via notify-send

See man memreduct for the full reference.

Landing page

A static Vite + React landing page (with live GitHub API stats) lives in site/ and can auto-deploy to GitHub Pages - copy site/deploy/deploy-pages.yml to .github/workflows/ (enable it once: Settings → Pages → Source: GitHub Actions).

Notes

• Cleaning requires root; monitoring does not.
• Dropping caches is non-destructive - sync() is called first and the kernel only discards clean, reclaimable pages. Expect a short period of slower disk access while hot caches repopulate.
• Swap reload is skipped automatically when the swapped data would not fit into available RAM.

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• Original Windows version: github.com/henrypp/memreduct

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(c) 2011-2026 Henry++ - GPL v3