macOS Tahoe 26.0 – Apps Pausing & Huge Memory Usage

[in my opinion] 8GB of real RAM is not enough to run Ventura or later in an appropriately responsive way. Apple no longer sells ANY Apple-silicon Mac with only 8GB or real RAM, because that is simply not enough.

if you read that report carefully, you will see that not all those Apps are on the same scale. WhatsApp is using about 5.5 times the total RAM in the entire machine, and Chrome is using about a quarter of the total RAM in the entire machine. That is far too much for either one alone to provide appropriate responsiveness.

If you want to keep using those Apps, you will have to change the way you work, and rather dramatically. You will need to QUIT each App before you open the next, and plan on restarting often, multiple times throughout the day.

Or obtain a computer that better meets your needs.

kushina1 wrote:

(WhatsApp went over 40 GB!).

I think the issue starts with WhatsApp — when I quit it, the problem disappears and I can use the other apps normally.

[Edited by Moderator]

Seems pretty clear. This is not a macOS issue.

For your third party app—if in doubt search the developers website or contact their: Support/Help/FAQ/Known issues/compatibility/updates…

Contact a third-party vendor - Apple Support

Contact a third-party vendor - Apple Support

I have no issue with WhatsApp on my iPhone—that seems a viable alternative, until WhatsApp sort the issue Desktop version or whatever.

Are you running the latest version of the WhatsApp app?

I've been having this problem all day today after installing Tahoe last night. Never seen it before. In my case it seems to be Zoom that's causing the problem, which is inconvenient when I have to keep dropping out during meetings to reboot.

I just lost 6 hours of work in Davinci Resolve as it was building a voice model due to this feature and the problems only started after upgrading my Macbook 16GB M2 Pro to macOS Tahoe 26.0 a week ago. It's one of many problems I'm seeing with the upgrade. Finder is now buggy and decoupling from iCloud is full of challenges. I'm not seeing any benefits.

That I can't get out of the Force Quit Applications dialog and it won't resume applications after closing others as well as locking up the system is more than costly. I don't especially want this Macbook to become the spare backup machine as I move to explore Linux but that's where it's heading.