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

Sadly, I have a souped up MacBook Pro (16GB of memory and 2TB of storage w/ only 0.2TB being used). I'm getting this error too.

I never had this issue with my 3 year old MacBook.

Love the speed, but concerned about this error.

For what it’s worth, maorfrommiami and @All, but even Intel based Macs running Big Sur are seeing something similar, though their systems react to the issue differently: instead of complaining about running out of “application memory”, their systems simply close the Safari tab that is taking a lot of memory!

My advice:

Find what tab/website is taking up so much memory, and run that tab/website within its own Safari window—without any other tabs—or within a different browser.

This workaround helped the Intel based Big Sur Safari users.

The root of the problem is that some websites are improperly coded, so they use browser memory space, when they should be using server-side memory.

Some browsers will keep using more local memory, until they “break” (as Safari on M1 seems to be doing), or they “hold fast” and disallow the website to keep using browser memory (as Safari on Intel seems to be doing). Neither is an entire solution.

The websites need to respect their users, and not abuse their users’ computer resources.

(I had a JavaScript program which wasn’t running from a server, so I had no choice. So I saw what can happen with using local browser resources.)

Thanks for this info! Sounds then like this is not a M1 early adopter issue, but an issue of how Safari and/or Big Sur handle websites that use browser memory? Something maybe that could be addressed in an update?

FWIW, opening many tabs can have an impact on memory regardless

of how much RAM you have depending on the sites themselves.

Simple example, I was browsing the tech site C-NET the other day.

Scrolling down the news page to the point where posts were a

day old, I checked Activity Monitor->Memory and saw that this site

alone dumped 1.5 GB to my new MacBook Air.

Even this community, having the MacBook Air page open and this page

I am responding on is hogging nearly 400 MB!

Websites these days are worse memory hogs than some graphics apps.

So, if you are going to work on any system today with tons of tabs and

sites opened, get as much RAM as you can afford because websites

are only going to get worse!

Updates are certainly coming, ewl930, as they always do.

However, there’s only so much that can be done on your computer to deal with abuse of your computer resources by websites!

Placing those abusive websites within their own browser window helps, because it segregates the resources being used, thereby.

However, so long as they abuse your computer resources, something is bound to “break”, at one point or another.

So, in any case, y’all need to determine what websites/webpages are abusing your computer resources and decide whether that is acceptable behavior, to you.

Also, be aware of what browser extensions and “plugins” y’all are using! These are third party software that can lead to various misbehaviors, especially on a brand-new Operating System (OS).

Are they fully compatible?

Apple does not mark anyone’s comment “Solved”, or even “Helpful”, maorfrommiami.

The only designation that Apple Moderators use is “Recommended by Apple”.

Only the user that asked the Original Question can designate a comment as “Solving” their issue or question.

(Unfortunately, some users don’t seem to understand what that designation is supposed to mean.)

(The only other designation a comment can receive is “Helpful”. If the user that asked the Original Question marks a comment as “Helpful”, it will receive the Red Helpful tag. Otherwise, it takes at least five of us to click on the Helpful button before it will receive the Red Helpful tag.)

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!

What «memory reports», maorfrommiami?

Certainly, there are issues with webpages that abuse the user’s computer resources, as I’m sure I have mentioned, here, I believe.

Did you see no affect when you disabled the «extensions/plug-ins»? (I know what LastPass is, but I haven’t heard of the other two. [I see they are coupon related.] All three will be taking up memory and looking for website clues for their application.)

Are all three M1 native, or are they having to be emulated (Rosetta 2)? The latter will take up additional resources.

That is all reasonable, maorfrommiami.

One of the trends I have been noticing with many ‘blogs (first with LinkedIn), is with incremental loading of content, all within a single page, seemingly without any fixed end!

I don’t see how this can lend itself to using server-side memory (unless one may see “reloading” activity as one scrolls back up such an unlimited page).

On the browser side, one might have to use some special coding, in order to properly swap such data out and back in.

I’ve never had any browser issues with LinkedIn, but I have not had experience with other sites that might use “unlimited” page sizes.

While I have cause to suspect that LinkedIn’s coding practices are “sub-par”, at best; if one were to have no problems with such “unlimited” pages, there, but were to have problems elsewhere; I think that would suggest even worse coding methods were being used.

If there is one available that works on an M1 Mac, perhaps an

Ad blocker may be the ticket on many sites. It seems that many

Ads have needless animation and special effects (read memory hog)

to try and coerce you into visiting their sites.

Even before I got my new MBA, I had seen Safari spewing warnings

about excessive memory or CPU use all of which appeared to be

ad related.