# JVM very greedy with memory. How do I get it to shrink when possible?
**URL:** https://discuss.elastic.co/t/jvm-very-greedy-with-memory-how-do-i-get-it-to-shrink-when-possible/348657
**Category:** Elasticsearch
**Created:** [December 5, 2023, 3:26pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/jvm-very-greedy-with-memory-how-do-i-get-it-to-shrink-when-possible/348657 "2023-12-05T15:26:14Z")
**Posts on this page:** 4
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Vulume](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Vulume)
#### Post date: [December 5, 2023, 3:26pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/jvm-very-greedy-with-memory-how-do-i-get-it-to-shrink-when-possible/348657/1 "2023-12-05T15:26:14Z")
I want my JVM to give back memory to the OS if it's not using it. I don't care about performance.
When I set -Xms128m -Xmx4g, I see the JVM's memory usage grow while indexing and searching, but it never shrinks again afterwards. For most of my projects it will grow to about 2GB.
I am positive that it doesn't need all that memory, because most of my projects run fine with -Xmx256m and JVM memory will remain at around 0.5GB.
It will predictably crash with the largest projects. I would like to set a large enough heap size to be safe, without unnecessarily paying \>1GB for this.
Which ES settings or JVM flags can I use for this?
Using ES 7.17 on a Windows Server 2022 with the JVM included with ES.
---
### Author:  [@Wolfram\_Haussig](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Wolfram_Haussig)
#### Post date: [December 6, 2023, 7:32am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/jvm-very-greedy-with-memory-how-do-i-get-it-to-shrink-when-possible/348657/2 "2023-12-06T07:32:18Z")
Hi,
I have not tried it as it is generally not recommended, but you can try the guide provided here: [https://www.baeldung.com/gc-release-memory](https://www.baeldung.com/gc-release-memory)
Basically, you would need to set `-XX:MaxHeapFreeRatio` to make the JVM free memory when the maximum is reached and `-XX:-ShrinkHeapInSteps` to `false` so the process of freeing RAM takes place immediately.
This _should_ work as the included Java version is Java12+ and the `jvm.options` make use of the G1 garbage collector.
Best regards
Wolfram
---
### Author:  [@Vulume](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Vulume)
#### Post date: [December 6, 2023, 1:57pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/jvm-very-greedy-with-memory-how-do-i-get-it-to-shrink-when-possible/348657/3 "2023-12-06T13:57:37Z")
Thanks heaps!
It seems I only need `-XX:-ShrinkHeapInSteps` for reasonable results.
---
### Author:  [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)
#### Post date: [January 3, 2024, 1:58pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/jvm-very-greedy-with-memory-how-do-i-get-it-to-shrink-when-possible/348657/4 "2024-01-03T13:58:30Z")
This topic was automatically closed 28 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.