macOS 26 Tahoe: System runs out of application memory (M4 Pro, 48 GB RAM, 2 TB SSD)

Did you test in Safe Mode? Does the same problem occur in Safe Mode?

The problem stopped for me when I turned off Apple Intelligence. Unfortunately.

Have you tried turning off Apple Intelligence? That did the trick for me.

Anyway, disabling Apple Intelligence seems to be working for now.

[Edited by Moderator]

Multi-MacMan wrote:

...I shouldn’t have to run my device that way just because of an upgrade.

If you have extensions that are not fully compatible with the new version of macOS, memory leaks can be one of the problems caused by that. We both have an M4 Pro MBP with 48 GB memory and 2 TB storage, but my memory usage looks like this, with low Pressure and no Swap being used:

If your Mac is running out of memory, it's not because of Tahoe but because of something you're running on your Mac.

Same issue. Almost no other apps open except Mail and Safari and I get the out of application memory error and computer freezes. MacBook Pro 14 16GB. Once it said Apple Mail was taking 96 GB. Just now froze with Safari saying 24 GB. Just upgraded to Tahoe a week ago. Never saw this issue before. Have not installed new software, so no it isn't a third party software issue. It is the two Apple apps.

NotSoTechnical wrote:

not Apple’s responsibility to make macOS compatible with everything.

Disagree because everyone reporting this has only one thing in common — Tahoe — and that this is consistently being observed after a period of inactivity/sleep.

I don't have any Adobe apps installed.

Yes, individual app developers need to maintain compatibility, but the OS clearly needs to do a better job identifying when this issue is occurring, and take some proactive steps to avoid the whole system pausing.

That it's happening across a mix of 3rd-party apps, or a common Apple app, is where it gets hard to identify.

I think that just proves the point. At the end of the day, this seems to affect a relatively small number of users. There are thousands of apps and extensions out there, if it was Apple’s goal to test everything in every possible combination and ensure compatibility, we might see macOS 26 sometime in 2035.

Also worth noting that hardware can be a factor. A few years ago, my 2019 i9 MBP would give spinning beach balls and bog down every time I ran Microsoft Teams. Turned out the actual problem was that I had a failing RAM module. Teams was using a lot of RAM, but the real problem wasn’t the software.

Alex Kim wrote:

Hope they fix this very soon...

This happens every year, and has happened every year for at least a decade. I'm not talking about Apple. I'm talking about end users thinking Apple is going to "fix this very soon". This is not going to happen.

Most likely, this problem is caused by some 3rd party system modification that isn't compatible with Tahoe. Anyone experiencing this problem won't see any improvement until they remove the software that causes it, or the developers of said software notice the problem and fix it. Unfortunately, much such software was already abandoned years ago.

It definitely won't be fixed in Tahoe. Tahoe is already dead. Apple is already hard at work on macOS 27 that will introduce a whole new set of bugs, just like these, that users will be complaining about in early fall 2026.

Note that this forum is for Users helping Users. Apple engineers may see these comments, but there's no guarantee.

At this point, I haven't seen any fixes across the internet for this issue, but it's easy to avoid by quitting running apps before putting the machine to Sleep. At least that's worked for me.

Use the Feedback Assistant app on your Mac to submit your feedback to Apple directly.

I've upgraded to 26.1 with high hopes, but no joy. Launching Mail still runs wild through memory. I've opened Activity Monitor after a restart, and Mail is using 11 GB of memory to start. It goes up to 103GB of memory including swapping before "pausing" Mail, and requiring a force quit. Then, I have to force quit Activity Monitor as well.

Meanwhile, on my 2024 Apple MacBook Air with an M3 chip and 24 GB of aphyciacl memory running 15.1, opening Mail shows that it takes a total of 89.2 MB - not gigabytes, but megabytes - of memory to run the Mail app.

I have not seen or heard a solution other than "gosh, you must have some old extensions out there". Sorry, but I think this is a Tahoe 26 issue.

Since I was seeing the same bad behaviour triggered by safari and photos, it seems unlikely that all 3 programs have the same bug, and an application bug shouldn’t be able to prevent other applications being resumed.

yes, google’s inefficient memory usage may well make chrome disproportionately likely to trigger the problem, but it appears the issue is in how macOS recovers from the OOM state

Yes, it's a temporary glitch, a simple restart would likely fix this.

Problem seems to have gone away in OS 26.1

Like the others, I'm getting the "your system has run out of memory" and a Force Quit dialog. I can't open Activity Monitor because of this. I'm using a 2022 Mac Studio with an M1 chip, running 26.0.1, have 32 GB of RAM and a 2 TB hard drive with 1.3 TB available. When I've checked Activity Monitor, memory used has never been more than 10 GB. This had not been happening on this machine using these same applications before the install of 26.0 or 26.0.1.

Hard not to blame the software . . . .

I just replaced a macMini late 2018 running on intel with 16GB RAM with an M4 MacBook Pro with 16GB. Everything on the mini was migrated to the Pro. My few extensions and all. The macMini never had this problem. The M4 should eat the macMini's lunch, yet it is running out of application memory! It has to be an OS issue with Tahoe.