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

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.

Seems to be unreasonable growth and scattered page used of MALLOC_MEDIUM. Here's vmmap -summary<pid>

52M This is the app I'm setting at at startup. 52mb. It's allocated 2/5 x 128mb pages of VM, but only 3M resident.

MALLOC_MEDIUM          256.0M  1236K  1236K    0K    0K    0K    0K    2     see MALLOC ZONE table below
MALLOC_MEDIUM (empty)  640.0M  2328K  2328K    0K    0K    0K    0K    5     see MALLOC ZONE table below

333M - And here it is after loading the first file. Note this is the biggest memory allocation and growth reported. Now it's 3/9 x 128mb pages, and app is at 333mb. Will hit 1.5gb. It's unclear why (empty) VM is resident, but perhaps allocations were malloc/free to these.

MALLOC_MEDIUM          384.0M  100.8M  100.8M    0K    0K    0K    0K    3     see MALLOC ZONE table below
MALLOC_MEDIUM (empty)    1.1G  176.0M  176.0M    0K    0K    0K    0K    9     see MALLOC ZONE table below

1600M - And here it is after loading several files. There are no leaks, it just seems to scatter allocations through the Medium heap until all pages are fully resident. Here it's a 4/12 pages, with all pages resident. App reports 1.6gb.

MALLOC_MEDIUM          512.0M  509.6M  509.6M    0K    0K    0K    0K    4     see MALLOC ZONE table below
MALLOC_MEDIUM (empty)    1.5G    1.1G    1.1G    0K    0K    0K    0K   12     see MALLOC ZONE table below

I don't have any proof that it's resolved in 26.1, since I no longer leave apps running in Sleep mode, and I turned off Apple Intelligence, since it was being a resource hog.

Sure wish we'd see a Release Note acknowledging the problem, and saying it's been fixed.

This started to happens to me after the last update, even without exceeding the total ram amount (36GB ram macbook pro 16 inch 2023).

Closing a couple of program with the most impact on RAM, the others can't be resumed.

Usual case: Android Studio 20/6GB, Edge 3GB, Sublime Text < 1GB

When AS is paused, after few seconds also the others get paused, if I kill AS, the others still can't be resumed.

> Or, there's a problem with your specific configuration. If you're using Chrome, and it's acting the way it did for the person to whom I was replying, that would have repercussions. Try deleting Chrome and seeing what happens.

As I said before, it is not caused by chrome (or any chromium derivative, including electron), and I do not use any of Google’s software.

the problematic aspect is the inability to resume processes even when the memory usage is way below the amount of available RAM: the simplest explanations are that either activity monitor is unhelpful reporting that memory is free when it is actually reserved for security purposes (ensuring that data is actually cleared), or the Force Quit Applications dialog is somehow buggy and “Resume” isn’t being handled correctly.

indeed, if that effect were the result of particular applications it would indicate a much more serious issue than a bad UI decision or a bug in a GUI.

with the edits to OP’s post, this may be a separate issue to what he was asking about (earlier versions of the OP were more applicable to my experience), and if that’s the case I’m happy to move to a new thread.

For a fix try reading the previous 8 pages of suggestions. As for downgrading back to macOS 15 Sequoia that’s not for the average Joe. It involves completely erasing your system SSD along with ALL of your data. This means you absolutely MUST have a recent and verified backup of everything you hold dear or it will be lost forever.

Not really a helpful contribution to this conversation.

Apple products are designed to *not* be turned off on a regular basis. Power-efficient Sleep mode has been a core feature for 30 years. If you're turning off your Mac when not using it, you're using it wrong.

As a UNIX-based machine, it is programmed to run system maintenance tasks at 3am. That has been built into UNIX design for 50 years.

As for this topic, has anyone noticed an improvement in recent software updates? I haven't had a problem since turning off Apple Intelligence entirely. Seems that 8GB isn't enough to run Apple Intelligence on macOS?

I just had the same issue, first time ever.

MBP w/ M4 Pro chip, 24 GB memory, 609 GB available on SSD, updated from 26.2 to 26.3 yesterday (but it looks like you've all been having this issue from the start). No issues at all yesterday evening, woke up this morning to the same warning as OP, but with higher numbers. Force quit all apps then shut down (forgot to check Activity Monitor before shutting down). Started up fine.

Hopefully I won't be back tomorrow reporting the same thing. I absolutely hate this OS, can't wait until they move on to the next one.