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

UKenGB wrote:

There is no way you are able to categorically and objectively prove that my suggestion is incorrect.

It was just as big a problem before Tahoe existed, ergo, not a Tahoe problem.

in no way did I compose a rant against Apple.

I never said you did. But come to think of it, this is a 9 page thread. The colloquial term we use for such things is "rant thread". Any contribution is just another rant.

As for suggesting that my mention of Tahoe using drive space is off topic, did you actually read what I wrote.

You didn't write anything that other people haven't written hundreds, maybe thousands, of times.

I ran df (drive space check) on this Mini (Tahoe) and also my previous MacPro (Monterey). Basically same stuff, same accounts etc, but the former is using 411Gi while the latter only 233Gi. So numeric confirmation that Tahoe eats drive space and IMO that is linked to the application memory issue that according to some "doesn't exist" even though it clearly does.

You know that there have been 3 major operation system versions between Monterey and Tahoe, right?

People have been dealing with the problems that you've just "discovered" in Tahoe for almost 4 years.

I offered a possible and plausible explanation of the problem that might throw some light on the issue.

Not possible. As I said, this is a 9 page thread. The default ranking system will guarantee that your response will never by seen by anyone other than me.

In principle, I'd agree, but Macs are UNIX-compliant machines, and someone back in the 1970's made a decision that UNIX machines would do self-maintenance at 3am in the morning. Macs adopted that strategy with the switch to OS X in 2001, so for the past 25 years it's been better to leave a Mac running 24-7 so that it can do its nightly maintenance tasks.

Apple mastered Sleep mode in Macs as far back as the 1990's for the very reason to enable Macs to not be turned off frequently. Switching on the Power button sends a surge of energy through the system that can be traumatic for hardware, but that was more true back in the spinning hard drive days than it is today.

Same logic applies to electric vehicles compared to gas-powered vehicles. Starting up a gas-powered vehicle is hard on the system, but starting an electric vehicle has very little impact. That's why they last longer and require no regular maintenance.

Yeah...the memory leak, for me, occurs with Messages, which suddenly consumes over 150 GB of memory. But, sure. It's a third-party problem...

This. If you've run into this issue go submit feedback. Apple needs to be made aware of this as I don't think this is an issue where they automatically receive feedback right now.

I have the same problem that they mention here, but I switched to iOS 26.1. For the moment, the issue 'System runs out of application' has not appeared for me. I don't know if others can confirm

Can you take a look at Activity Monitor and in the box at the bottom, see what it says for Swap Used.

After cleaning cache, history, etc, it went back up to 70GB, but keeps dropping while doing absolutely nothing.

Happened here too.

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

Clearly a system memory bug.

Anyway, rebooting seems to increase the delay between one freeze to another, rebooting 1 time every 2 weeks “””works for me”””

[Edited by Moderator]

I'm having this same issue and it's causing me a lot of grief trying to work with my emails open while using Safari and other applications at the same time. Has anyone else found any solutions or do we all just have to sit and wait for Apple to come up with a fix? I'm using a 14-inch MacBook Pro M3 Max, 36GB, and running Tahoe 26.0.1 and honestly should've gone with my gut and not done the update because every time I do when it first releases something always seem to go sideways.

Sorry, but there should be no way a 48GB MacBook Pro has this issue. A system with that horsepower should be able to handle pretty much anything and it is marketed as a power user machine. There is something wrong with Tahoe.

Um - my device is shut down after every use, so it’s been restarted multiple times since this issue appears. Restarting has not been a solution.

I’ll TRY the Safe Boot, but I shouldn’t have to run my device that way just because of an upgrade.

Is Apple even becoming aware of these issues? It's not like a Crash Reporter report is being sent in these cases. They must be aware, and this would definitely qualify as a priority issue.

I'll submit something through Feedback Assistant just in case.

It is 100% an Apple OS issue. I thought how could this go wrong with full apple hardware. NIGHTMARE constantly running out of memory before the update it was extremely rare. Same work flow. This is an Apple cluster F. Stop telling people to restart or that this is some minor issue resolved with booting into safe mode please.

curtisfromnovato wrote:

It is 100% an Apple OS issue.

Yes, I'm sure that's it. Totally explains why I'm not having any problems with memory even with three image editing apps running concurrently. Must be macOS Tahoe that's the problem. Couldn't be an extension or 3rd party something else that you installed and I didn't.