Your system has run out of application memory

If you are getting "Your system has run out of application memory" dialog boxes, and a list of most likely innocent apps listed, then here is the explanation.

For the record, there are 2 reasons for the "Your system has run out of application memory" dialog box.

A) Your boot disk has very low free storage, and macOS cannot create page/swap files to offload virtual memory contents to disk. This is generally not the case, but I mention because if you do have very low free storage, it might apply.

B) A process (or set of processes) have asked macOS for excessive amounts of virtual memory address space. Virtual memory address space requires macOS to create Virtual Memory Page Tables in the kernel address space to keep track of the application virtual addresses given out. Generally, if there is a memory leak (process asks for a virtual address range, uses the addresses, forgets to give them back, asks for another virtual address range, uses the addresses, wash, rinse, repeat), eventually there are so many virtual memory page table entries trying to keep track of the virtual addresses, that macOS no longer has memory available for applications, and you get the "Your system has run out of application memory".

If you look at Applications -> Utilties -> Activity Monitor -> View (menu) -> All Processes -> Memory (tab), you can see what processes are using lots of memory.

You can also issue the following command from Applications -> Utilities -> Terminal:

ps ax -o vsz,pid,comm | sort -n

which will display the virtual memory used sorted so the largest virtual memory consuming users are at the end. The virtual memory sizes are in 1024 byte units.

NOTE: I have seen situations where no single process is using all the memory, but rather a host of smaller processes are using up all the virtual memory. That is to say, a 100 instances of the same program all running with a moderate amount of memory eventually adds up to a lot of page table entries being used.

I have also seen users with 100's of web browser tabs open, where each tab is being managed by its own separate process. And just because you are not looking at any give tab, does not mean the Javascript running on that web page, is not taking up memory and virtual addresses.

Daniel_145 wrote:

Thanks to everyone who keeps posting. Just to clarify, the problem hasn't disappeared in the past few months since I posted in the thread. I just started permanently closing all applications throughout the day as soon as I don't need them, generally keeping Safari tabs to 4-5 max, rebooting once or twice a day... it's like being back in the 1990's.

As for what BobHarris posted: from what can I tell most of the times it's Safari that creates 10-15 different processes, each gradually using gigabytes of virtual memory. Doesn't really matter if you don't have anything on your hard drive, it will eventually eat up all the space, I've already cleared my Mac of everything else than text documents but it's never enough. Since Safari is an Apple-created app and I'm dealing with the hard-drive that I bought my Macbook with I really don't see what I could do to fix the problem other than keep rebooting constantly. Usually before the "Your system has run out of application memory" message appears you'll see like 15 processes named like this upon typing the "ps ax" command in Terminal.

136464540 27290 /System/Library/Frameworks/WebKit.framework/Versions/A/XPCServices/com.apple.WebKit.WebContent.xpc/Contents/MacOS/com.apple.WebKit.WebContent

As far as I remember the problem started with the new version of macOS and Safari.

macOS Monterey, Version 12.2.1, Safari Version 15.3 (17612.4.9.1.8)

I'd be so grateful if anyone found a solution. Sorry to keep bugging you all!

NOTE: It could be the web sites. Just about every web site runs Javascript, and the sites you are visiting are leaking memory.

If you are on an older macOS version, then upgrading to a newer version would give you an updated Safari.

You could also try an alternate web browser. Firefox, Chrome, Brave, Edge, etc...

Hi friends! This issue has been driving me BONKERS but I think I may have solved it. I am by no means a techy person at all, so I'm not really sure why or how this worked but I thought I would share it.

I am using a 2018 MacBook Pro with Monterey 12.0.1 installed, and as soon as I started using this new operating system I was constantly getting the alert "your system has run out of application memory" but none of the apps listed in the alert window were using more than a few hundred MB and I barely had anything open so I was super confused as to why this was happening. I have 330 GB available of 1 T memory as well.

I did some digging and googling and realized I needed to be looking at my activity monitor to see all of the processes currently running on my computer. Upon opening Activity Monitor, I saw that "WindowServer" was using 33.78 GB (for reference the next largest process was Chrome at 300 MB), so I double clicked it and even though I had no idea how important this process was and if doing this would erase my whole computer or something crazy, I was so frustrated with this issue that I selected "quit."

The computer went black for a few seconds and then came back with everything else still open and running just fine. "WindowServer" was now only showing around 100 MB. I have waited a few days to see if the problem was indeed solved, and so far I haven't had any issues! "WindowServer" is still below 500 MB (it fluctuates) and I have not had the "your system has run out of application memory" once since then whereas it was literally popping up every 10 minutes before. I still don't know what "WindowServer" is and to be honest I don't care, I am just relieved to finally be able to use my **** computer properly. I hope this helps some of you dealing with this issue too!

dootah wrote:

I'm having the same problem too. Didn't have it in my previous macbook pro running even more applications and it was definitely with a lower configuration. I have 64 Gigs of Memory and over 1TB of storage, so I'm not sure what the system is crying about. I'm guessing it's a bug and Apple hasn't yet thought about fixing it.

Read and follow the information here

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/253310137?answerId=256190283022#256190283022

This will help you to identify the app, or more likely the background daemon or agent that is causing your problems. While it could be an Apple bug, it could also be a bug in an 3rd party program that has not been updated for your new macOS release, but is tripping over something that changed. It is difficult to tell unless the cause is identified.

Thanks to everyone who keeps posting. Just to clarify, the problem hasn't disappeared in the past few months since I posted in the thread. I just started permanently closing all applications throughout the day as soon as I don't need them, generally keeping Safari tabs to 4-5 max, rebooting once or twice a day... it's like being back in the 1990's.

As for what BobHarris posted: from what can I tell most of the times it's Safari that creates 10-15 different processes, each gradually using gigabytes of virtual memory. Doesn't really matter if you don't have anything on your hard drive, it will eventually eat up all the space, I've already cleared my Mac of everything else than text documents but it's never enough. Since Safari is an Apple-created app and I'm dealing with the hard-drive that I bought my Macbook with I really don't see what I could do to fix the problem other than keep rebooting constantly. Usually before the "Your system has run out of application memory" message appears you'll see like 15 processes named like this upon typing the "ps ax" command in Terminal.

136464540 27290 /System/Library/Frameworks/WebKit.framework/Versions/A/XPCServices/com.apple.WebKit.WebContent.xpc/Contents/MacOS/com.apple.WebKit.WebContent

As far as I remember the problem started with the new version of macOS and Safari.

macOS Monterey, Version 12.2.1, Safari Version 15.3 (17612.4.9.1.8)

I'd be so grateful if anyone found a solution. Sorry to keep bugging you all!

I ran today in the same problem. Got the notification screen about running out of memory. Firefox was using some 18 Gb RAM out of 16 Gb (?).

But I am unsure is Firefox the real problem.

There seems to be apparently Accessibility related background process ’universalaccessd’. The process in question has tendency to grow its memory usage every time the computer wakes up from sleep (+200-500~Mb) to ridiculous proportions (10-12Gb) until the computer is restarted.

I tested it today couple of times. First time with 30 sleep-wake up cycles and the end result was some 8 Gb memory used. After restarting the computer it again started from around 230 Mb memory usage. After uncountable number of S-WU cycles the memory usage had grown up to 12 Gb.

I did some research and tried to find some solutions (restarting, force quiting the process, unselecting accessibility options, uninstalling previously installed apps and stuff) but every time ’universalaccessd’ appears back and starts growing its memory usage.

AlexandraTav wrote:

I am getting this message constantly after updating to monterey, along with other issues with this new os. it shows certain applications using GB of memory even when those applications don't have any files open in them. I haven't changed a single thing in my workflow other than upgrading to monterey. none of the explanations have helped so far as I can clearly see which applications in the list are using the high GB but there's no explanation on how to reduce their footprint. clearly an issue with monterey that needs a fix asap as I can't get any work done with my whole system repeatedly crashing!

Quit the offending apps, and restart them. That is my suggestion as a short term fix. If you are not currently running Monterey 12.1, then you should update your macOS version.

tkgb606 wrote:

Has anybody had any luck with support helping on this? I'm on 12.1 and get this frequently

Have you followed the procedure and identified the offending processes?

Have you verified that you have sufficient free storage on your boot device?

The "Google Chrome.app" ships with the executable compiled with BOTH intel and ARM binaries in the same file (a Universal app).

So there is no separate intel ONLY Chrome app.

In Big Sur there used to be a way in the Finder -> file -> Get Info... dialog to force the app to run under Rosetta 2, but Monterey does not have that option any longer.

You might be able to use this article to strip the ARM code from the Google Chrome Universal binary

https://eclecticlight.co/2020/07/30/instant-weight-loss-how-to-strip-universal-apps/

Make a copy of the Google Chrome.app and experiment on that.

I apologize I wasn’t aware you are not working for apple. It’s hard to believe there is not an official apple response on a mission critical problem that clearly effect many people? Thank you for volunteering and trying to help. For what it’s worth I updated the Os to 12.2 and so far no pop up. Hope it helps.

Ironically, I switched to edge and my memory usage I saw on chrome went down quite a bit, so far screw chrome. Edge is based on chromium anyhow

I'm also seeing it repeatedly in the days after upgrading to 11.6.1.

16GB RAM, 1TB SSD with 222GB free, MBP Pro 15-inch.

I have not changed my usage pattern or installed new apps, and Activity Monitor is not showing memory hogs or large numbers of browser processes .

I'm guessing it is related to 11.6.1, and hoping 11.6.2 will bring relief.

One of our employees received her brand new iMac M1 with 16mb of memory. She got the same error yesterday. I've attached it. Chrome appeared to be the culprit. There were no extensions other than google's. She onIy had five tabs open and they were all related to work. I had them restart the browser and clean the cache. So we will see.

We purchased quite a number of these machines in order to upgrade the employees' aging ones. So, I wonder how long before this shows up on the other ones?

Monterey memory leaks: https://eclecticlight.co/2021/11/15/montereys-memory-leak-and-how-to-avoid-it/

I have a iMac M1 running macOS 11.6.1 with 16GB of memory and a 1TB SSD of storage on the system board. Today is the first time I've seen Your system has run out of application memory while using Big Sur on the M1.

If it occurs again I'll try to see what applications are using VM. Thanks for the tip.