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User profile for user: Tom H.
Tom H. Author
User level: Level 2
181 points

New iMac M1 keeps running out of application memory

Hi, I have one of the new M1 iMacs running Big Sur 11.5.2 and every day when I wake my iMac up I see this...



Even if I quit most of the applications, the warning doesn't go away unless I restart my iMac, which is now something I have to do every morning and sometimes later in the day, too.


My iMac has 16 GB of memory and 8 cores. I have 440 GB of free space on the system drive + 1.4 TB of free space on the data drive used by Final Cut Pro, which seems to be the app using the most memory.


I never had this problem with my older 27" iMac that had less power, so, I'm not sure if this is a problem with my M1 iMac or Big Sur. I never seem to get this notice on my older MacBook Air which has only 8GB of RAM and a lot less free space on the hard drive and is running the same version of Big Sur.


How do I fix this? It seems this iMac isn't very good and memory management which keeps causing this problem.

iMac 24″, macOS 11.5

Posted on Sep 1, 2021 9:44 AM

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User profile for user: Old Toad
Old Toad
User level: Level 10
210,925 points

Sep 1, 2021 10:25 AM in response to Tom H.

How long has it been since you've rebooted. If more than a day or two boot into boot into Safe Mode by booting with the Shift key held down and reboot normally.


One should reboot frequently, 2-3 times per week to clear out temporary system and application cache and swap files.


Also, have you installed or run any "cleaning", "optimizing", "speed-up" or anti-virus apps on your Mac?


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User profile for user: Tom H.
Tom H. Author
User level: Level 2
181 points

Sep 1, 2021 11:50 AM in response to Old Toad

Hi! I have to reboot every day, so, just did it this morning after waking the Mac up to that error screen.


I don't have any anti-virus, optimizing or speed-up apps running. I ran Etrecheck and this are the results:


Etrecheck Report


I notice that Code42 (Crashplan) is using a lot of memory currently and I'm wondering if that's causing any of these out of memory issues overnight when it runs the backup process.


I'm not sure why I should boot into Safe Mode, though. Do you mean to see if the issue still appears? I guess I could do that at night before I go to sleep, because this error window is always there first thing in the morning when I wake my Mac up.

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User profile for user: Old Toad
Old Toad
User level: Level 10
210,925 points

Sep 1, 2021 12:24 PM in response to Tom H.

It does look like Code42 may be the biggest contributor to the problem. Have you made sure you have the latest version and it's compatible with M1s and Big Sur? Can you fully uninstalled it for a period of time to see if the problem improves?


Do you get that message if you shut down overnight and then boot up in the morning?

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New iMac M1 keeps running out of application memory

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