free.1

   1 .Dd May 2026
   2 .Dt FREE 1
   3 .Os
   4 .Sh NAME
   5 .Nm free
   6 .Nd display amount of free and used memory in the system
   7 .Sh SYNOPSIS
   8 .Nm
   9 .Op Fl bghkmpt
  10 .Sh DESCRIPTION
  11 .Nm
  12 displays the total amount of free and used physical and swap memory in the system, as
  13 well as the buffers, caches (including ZFS ARC) and wired memory used by the kernel.
  14 The displayed columns are:
  15 .Bl -tag -width -indent
  16 .It total
  17 Total usable memory.
  18 .It used
  19 Unavailable memory.
  20 .It free
  21 Truly unallocated memory.
  22 .It wired
  23 Memory that can't be swapped to disk.
  24 .It buff/cache
  25 Memory used by kernel buffers, traditional FS cache and ARC.
  26 .It available
  27 Available memory.
  28 .Sh OPTIONS
  29 .Bl -tag -width ".Fl b "
  30 .It Fl b
  31 Display in bytes.
  32 .It Fl k
  33 Display in kibibytes.
  34 .It Fl m
  35 Display in mebibytes.
  36 .It Fl g
  37 Display in gibibytes.
  38 .It Fl t
  39 Display in tebibytes.
  40 .It Fl p
  41 Display in pebytes.
  42 .It Fl h
  43 Display in human-readable units.
  44 .Sh SEE ALSO
  45 .Xr top 1 ,
  46 .Xr sysctl 1