NEW MacBook Air M1 8gb 256gb: "your system has run out of application memory"

Welcome, Dash_, to Apple Support Communities!

Why would you think that Safari should be a part of this issue?

Have you taken a look at Activity Monitor, on the Memory tab, with the view set to “All Processes”, rather than the default of “My Processes”?

This will help you see what processes are taking up much of your Virtual Memory (VM).

Note: How much Random Access Memory (RAM, AKA “Physical Memory”) processes are taking up is rather irrelevant.

However, whether VM is causing your drive (SSD) to be close to “filled up” is quite relevant!

Note: If the Memory Pressure graph stays Green (or even Yellow), while you receive your "Your system has run out of application memory." error, then we are, likely, seeing an Operating System (OS) issue.

Otherwise, take a look at what processes that are using a large amount of (Virtual) Memory (AKA “Swap”).

(As for the heat issue, that will be, most likely, associated with CPU usage. However, there is a possibility of Wi-Fi or other wireless power use.)

I've found a reliable workaround; two steps:

First, as soon as I get the "out of application memory" notice, I close the notice, and close all my screen sessions inside terminal, close DEVONthink, then reboot. rebooting gets the system back to a good state. it never occurred to me this would be necessary, but it seems to be.

Second, once I've rebooted, my m1 works reliably for between 8 and 10 days, with no "out of application memory" notices, so I'm starting a new habit of rebooting each friday morning.

you can see from my posts in my thread, I keep a ton of applications and websites open all the time, and a week seems a reliable time period to go without errors.

none of this explains why I was able to go the first six months or so of ownership without ever having this problem, but at least I have a reliable workaround now.

oh it's definitely a problem, because the OS will start killing apps. I've learned the hard way: once you get this message, you need to close anything that doesn't handle a reboot gracefully, and reboot. luckily I can go 8 or 9 days before I get the message after a reboot, so I'm starting the habit of rebooting once a week.

I'm convinced this is a bug in the memory manager, but only for apple silicon machines. the first six months or so of my ownership I never once saw this message, now I get it like clockwork after the 8 or 9 days of uptime. I'm thinking a bug came in one of the MacOS updates from over the summer.

who knows, maybe it'll be fixed in the next MacOS major version (which is coming out on monday). I'll update as soon as I can, and will skip my weekly reboot, and see if I get the error again.

Sorry maorfrommiami. I hope you still have your MacBook with you. I also hope that your problem got solved with the macOS updates. I got what you mean especially you were just using Safari. You are a great Apple user for patronizing Apple products and for sharing your issues and insights with other users through this discussion. There are possible reasons why this could happen like a file from a backup got corrupted or is not compatible with the latest software or there was an app running in the background that consume too much memory.

For new users who got a similar issue, I recommend doing these steps to fix it:

1. click the magnifying glass icon at the top right of the screen please.

2. search and open Activity Monitor

3. Check for apps that consume too much memory

4. Delete apps that take too much memory 

5. Reinstall them

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Next

1. System Preferences

2. Users & Groups

3. click your account name below Current User

4. click Login Items (Make a list of the login items—you’ll need to remember them later)

5. select all of the login items

6. click the minus sign

7. click the Apple logo in the top left corner of the screen

8. Restart

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1. click the Apple logo in the top left corner

2. System Preferences

3. Users & Groups

4. Click the lock icon at the bottom left

5. click +

6. create new User account

7. shut down/restart

8. Log in to the new user account

This will test if you will get the same problem on the new user account.

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1. shut down your MacBook please

2. press and hold the power button for about 10 seconds (or until you see the startup options window)

3. select your startup disk and press and hold Shift on the keyboard

4. Continue in Safe Mode

I believe I have written, here, somewhere, concerning Safari plug-ins/extensions, maorfrommiami.

While I cannot hold Safari blameless, I find Safari plug-ins and extensions (and third-party system extensions) far more likely suspects. Really based upon historical precedent!

Hey everyone,

I just found this thread. About a week ago I bought an 8G M1 MBA and just this morning I got the same memory warning.

Whats weird is for the last 7 days I have been using it full out. As a developer I use many different memory intensive programs and all week I have been using them like normal. (I bought this in a pinch because my 2019 15-MBP was unusable with Big Sur update, for what I do, and I needed something quick to keep working while I reinstalled Catalina)

Anyways this is what I find interesting. The only thing that changed this morning (other than the year... haha) was my screen resolution. As I am use to working on a 15" I decided to up the res on my MBA from the default 1440 x 900 to the higher one, 1680 x 1050. Almost immediately I received the memory warning. All the same programs were open from yesterday.

So my question to all of you. What resolution are you using? Is that the issue? Does a higher res use more memory and kill the MBA?

Welcome, mory.w, to Apple Support Communities!

Since the display memory, in M1 based Macs, is “shared” (Apple uses a different term, that is more technically correct, for the architecture, but I don’t recall it off the top of my head) with the rest of your Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM) use, increasing your display resolution will tend to put your DRAM under greater “pressure”, all else being equal.

However, there is some other evidence that Big Sur (even on Intel Macs) seems to have a few “glitches” in its Memory, including Virtual Memory (VM), handling: it seems like it brings up the "your system has run out of application memory" even when “App Memory” is not running all that low, to say nothing of running out of space for VM.

Other than fairly normal mitigation procedures, there doesn’t seem to be much that users can do.

So. The best advice for a more comprehensive fix is to provide Feedback to Apple, for macOS and/or your hardware.

Basically, unless your drive is running out of space, for VM, obtaining such an error is a bug, and should be reported.

One question, do you have google drive file stream installed? The shop wiped my computer and I haven’t installed it again and have been using Firefox and it’s been working ok since. Pita though as I have everything in google

Welcome, Wallace_Ugulino, to Apple Support Communities!

The issue with Safari is a bit different from the issue overall:

In the case of Safari, we have websites that are abusing your browser’s memory.

Wesites are not supposed to use large amounts of browser memory! If websites need large amounts of memory, they are supposed to use Server-side Memory! Not Browser Memory.

This has been a progressive abuse on users’ web-browsers, at least since the demise of Adobe Flash, where many websites replaced their old Flash code with poorly formulated JavaScript!

(I have seen some evidence that Internet Standards are being worked on to provide better feedback to websites concerning what Browsers will or will not accept, in such regards. Unfortunately, such will take time to work out, and, then, for sites to respect.

In the meantime, we have conflicts.)

The best recourse is to complain to websites that abuse your browsers’ resources.

You can, of course, also provide Feedback to Apple, via their designated Feedback Mechanisms: Product Feedback - Apple.

krisa wrote:

This is happening continually with my brand new MacbookAir with 16GB of memory and a Terabyte of storage. I have never had this issue on any of my previous macs and I still have macbook pros from 2010 and 2012. What can I do?

Kris.

As with the others suffering such issues, this is (almost certainly) due to some third-party (probably background) software added to your system. (The software is incompatible with Big Sur, and/or the M1 architecture.)

I can only reproduce the issues found, in this Discussion, by working very hard to obtain the “your system has run out of application memory” error. (Otherwise I never have the issue, whether on my M1 Mac mini, or my Intel Mac mini, running Big Sur.)

So. You, like all others, need to seek out the actual software culprit. (Then, you can decide what to do about it.)

Unfortunately, unlike cases of high CPU usage, I’m not sure how one will track down the culprit.

Welcome, mcmillan_89, to Apple Support Communities!

The “application memory” dialogue box you show is not consistent with a system that is actually “run[ning] out of application memory”. (Except back in the pre MacOS X days.)

This is quite odd.

I recommend contacting Apple Support directly, or taking your system into an Apple Store.

Upgrading doesn’t help. I have a maxed out M1 Mac with 2tb ssd and I’m running out of memory as well. Or at least “100mb of ram available” on a 16gb ram computer. Kinda odd tbh.

I had same issue. Solved when I delete all Safari browser history.

I'm from Europe and over here we have a 15 day return policy if we regret our purshace.

It you are still in that time period, and you have that over there.... just go over your Mac store and give them that faulty unit!