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

Today, I completely wiped my MacBook Pro 16" with M1 Max and 64 GB RAM and restored it from the TM backup. The problem was occurring more and more frequently—in the last sessions every hour. Safe boot, deleting apps, etc. didn't help at all. After the new setup I was able to work normally for a few hours, but now macOS has started pausing apps again and reporting that the application memory is running low. It's really frustrating.

cristiano106 wrote:

just rehappened again today with less than 20GB used over 36GB total

How much FREE space on your SYSTEM DRIVE?

It looks like your issue may be caused by a full drive rather than lack of available RAM.

guardamarco wrote:

Happened here too.

75gb free disk space, google chrome freezed because using 49gb of memory with 5 tabs open.

Clearly a system memory bug.

Chrome using 49GB of memory... suggests a problem with Chrome, which is well known to be a system resources hog. Besides, 75GB free disk space may not be a lot (depending on the disk size). All drives, especially system drives should always have at least 15-20% free.

After upgrading to MacOS 26, I have received the very same "System has run out of application memory" error message twice now after waking my device from sleep. I've never had this issue before, even when I've been a lot more apps at once. My machine is an M3 MacBook Air, but only has 8gb of RAM, so I thought it could be due to my inadequate memory. Seeing that your machine has 48gb and is having the same issue makes me believe it is an OS issue.

Just had this happen when waking from sleep on my MacBook Air M4 that has 16GB of memory. I didn't have any more apps open than I usually have open and I've never had this happen on earlier versions of macOS. I believe there is a bug in macOS Tahoe that needs to be addressed.

Ditto. Twice in the last week, I've come back to an alert that my Mac has run out of memory. Needed to Force Quit everything that was open.

Not doing anything that I didn't do before upgrading to MacOS Tahoe

Mac Studio M4, 64 GB RAM, 4 TB SSD, MacOS 26.0.1

Could be an application issue if changes were needed for Apps under Tahoe, but I suspect an OS memory leak,

Will gladly file a bug report, but not sure how to describe it in the report....

You are welcome to that belief, but it is far more likely that a third-party application or extension is causing the problems. It is the responsibility of those developers to update their software for compatibility, not Apple’s responsibility to make macOS compatible with everything.

I’ve just had this system run out of application memory dialogue for the first time on my 2020 M1 MacBook Air. This thing has 8GB of RAM but I’ve never had this occur, and my usage wasn’t different to before. I’ve run Tahoe since July and not had this issue once until now. I note that I had both Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Outlook open when this occurred, wondering whether a recent update to one or both of these apps is interacting poorly with Tahoe? All other open apps were Apple default apps.

Same issue 2019 Intel Mac Pro 16GB, never ran out of memory in Sequoia but it's now a constant problem in Tahoe 26.0.1. Now in panic mode saving items constantly when working on designs. This has to be a Tahoe bug.

Oh boy wish that was the case. MacOS 26 is the problem. Sometimes I have photoshop open with nothing else, not even a document open and Your system has run out of memory. Running an M2 Pro Mac mini. this is a HUGE problem. It looks like to me it is an issue with Adobe apps and MacOS26. Hours of work time lost on this.

curtisfromnovato wrote:

Okay a little bit of help from ChatGPT went a long way. Ask it for terminal commands to clear out old cached files. Especially Adobe. This freed up 150gigs of space and things, knock on wood, are running fine now. It is very typical of Apple and Adobe not being in sync. Admins stop telling people to restart as if that will solve it. Do more research and support better.

1) This is a user community. "We" are users, like you...albeit typically with more knowledge and experience.

2) Ironic that you post that deleting cache files with help from AI (a questionable approach at best) "freed up 150gigs of space" and posted that as if you think it will be relevant to a thread discussing application memory. Maybe do some research of your own...ask ChatGPT 'what is the difference between computer memory and computer storage,' heck maybe it will even give you the right answer and you're learn something that you clearly don't know.

Yesterday it happened for the first time (System ran out of memory) after I walked away from the machine for a couple hours. Came back and it was locked up with a similar screen as in the OP's post. Never ever have I seen this on ANY previous macOS versions. Ever. Hence reporting in the hope folks at Apple will become aware and will do something about it.

System is an M1 Mac mini with 8Gb of RAM.

I'm also experiencing the "System has run out of application memory" issue on M2 MacBook Air, only since updating to Tahoe, absolutely never experienced that error or had any issues with memory before updating. Tahoe is an absolute mess. Apple needs to stop pushing out annual updates of macOS, no one wants half-baked updates that brick their devices. iOS 26 is even worse. Apple has jumped the shark.

Yep, and as we can see from a number of screenshots and reports in this thread, the culprit is often Safari. And it *is* Apple's responsibility to make sure their OS is compatible with their own browser. Smh.

True, they do share many of the same apps. So it is possible that there's an incompatibility between one of these apps and the latest update. Fortunately, the problem seems to have subsided after several reboots. If you're still curious, I can upload an Ethercheck report but for now, we seem to be OK.