After upgrading to Sonoma I keep getting "Your system has run out of application memory" messages

This usually means one of two things:

a) an application with a "memory leak", that requests more and more memory and fails to properly release it.

When you get this alert, does any of the applications show a large amount of RAM used, like - say - 60GB? Or do they should something more normal?

b) your system drive is very low on space.

Select your drive in the Finder, press Command-I and post a screenshot. How much is available, and how much is "purgeable"?

Well, I had a Touch bar M1 till yesterday that had this problem during Sonoma Beta and also final release. Changed to a M3 with 36 GB RAM and after moving my files over to the new Mac the problem reappeared.

But from my experience with the M1, the problem had nothing to do with apps but with Spotlight/Indexing. Turning off indexing using some command line commands completely fixed the issue. You have to google for those commands and yes, this is not a final solution as without indexing, using a Mac is only half the fun.

Back then I found at some point a system log that specifically mentioned a pdf-related indexing process. So there might be a problem with indexing pdf files. But I’m guessing here. I’m a web developer and therefore have a lot of small files in my project folders (that also include git folders or tons of npm packages) As my problems with the M3 started after copying those projects it could also just be a general indexing issue with loads of files.

Before issuing the commands on my new MacBook I'll let it struggle for the night. Maybe given enough time indexing will fix itself. If not I’ll turn indexing off and hope there will be a fix at some point.

Of course you should be able to have many more sites open. I routinely have twenty or more. Not all sites are programmed equally, though. By seeing some sites using about 6 GB each, I assumed they would be the problem, but since you say that the same sites did not cause this previously: we need to know more. It is not just Sonoma, maybe a combination of Sonoma and something else in your system.

Please run Etrecheck and post its full report here.

Use the “additional text” button and paste the report into the text box.

Hopefully the report may give us some idea of possible issues. Do you have any antivirus or cleaners?

The issue on my end (MBP 2023 16" M2 Pro 32GB) is entirely Safari based. Only Safari leaks memory. Started using other browsers for now.

Safari was so bad, if I didn't force quit quickly when prompted, the whole machine would hang and require force reboot....

You have some websites or web apps using an inordinate amount of RAM. All that adds up, and in one Activity Monitor the Swap Space used reaches above 40 GB.Swap Space is used on disk when the total memory used exceeds the physical RAM.

40 GB of swap is high and might affect performance; but if your drive free space runs too low because of the space used by swap, you will get the “run out of application memory “.

I don’t think Sonoma has anything to do with it. It’s poorly programmed web sites and low disk space.

kyrnois wrote:

They're not. The Photos app is taking up the most amount of memory by far: 14.5 GBs. Seems to be an OS issue since I have no control over the Photos app other than deleting it.

You have control. Put most of the images you have in an external drive, so they won't keep on syncing with iCloud. You can even keep all those images in the internal drive, but away from the Photos app and the syncing process, which is taking/blocking the memory. I only want to sync the photos I take with a iPhone, at a given moment. Rest of the important photos are kept in another place, in a folder in the Pictures directory. Also an old habit.

In my experience this is NOT a memory issue. I always keep Activity Monitor open and it has always been reliable in the way it reports memory availability. This "error" will appear in the absence of any memory pressure at all.

This is an issue with Safari in 14.0.

Safari will check memory before certain operations like opening new tabs, opening another site and the like. Either it is getting the wrong answer to this check or it is interpreting it incorrectly. This, in my ever so humble opinion is the problem.

I am unable to offer a solution but Apple engineers should.

Well, you can check for yourself upgrading to Sonoma 14.1. Its out already and running in my Intel 2018 MBP

System Settings > Login Items > disable and delete everything there.

It is definitely Sonoma bug, my MBA M1 is unusable since clean install without Time Machine restore. It was ok after update from Ventura, but for example after Sonoma clean install native Mail app "eats" 64 GB of RAM.

https://www.reddit.com/r/MacOS/comments/16zf8jm/memory_leak_on_sonoma/

https://www.reddit.com/r/MacOS/comments/17572ps/16gb_macbook_air_m1_regularly_running_out_of/

I also installed Sonoma on MacBook Pro M1 and I keep getting the “running out of application memory.” I closed everything except Chrome and as I was using Chrome, even after shutting down some open Chrome windows the GBs used kept rising. Could it be an incompatibility between Sonoma and Chrome?

Chrome is a very bad citizen of the macOS ecosystem, and one that I do not allow on any of my macs, but this seems to be something else, as a lot of people are seeing this happening with different applications.

Nevertheless, try Safari or Firefox, they are both much better browsers than Chrome and not syphoning all your data.

kyrnois wrote:

Is this the permanent solution? The 3 applications I have are necessary to launch at login.

Check if these 3 applications are taking lot memory, and if so better they don't run in background. Also, when you update to newer OS, you should also check if you have 3rd party apps, and whether they are also updated to match the newer OS.

Personally, I don't have any 3rd party apps starting at login, or running in the background -- an old habit.

Please run Etrecheck and post its full report here. Use the "additional text" button and paste the report into the text box.