iPad Air 13 crashes after update 26.2 due to low RAM

Welcome!

Our knowing:

— what app and what company's support told you you have a RAM problem

— what symptoms causes you to contact that support group

will help us better help you. iPads seldom have a RAM problem.

However, storage, or rather a lack thereof, can be an iPad issue. RAM and storage are two different things. How much free storage do you have? This Apple article shows how to help:

How to check the storage on your iPhone and iPad - Apple Support

How long has it been since you restarted your iPad?

If your iPad is not operating as expected, try a forced-restart - as this will often clear an isolated or post-update software issue:

Force restart iPad (models with Face ID or with Touch ID in the top button)

If your iPad doesn’t have the Home button, do the following:

1. Press and quickly release the volume button nearest to the top button.
2. Press and quickly release the volume button farthest from the top button.
3. Press and hold the top button.
4. When the Apple logo appears, release the top button.

If the problem persists after performing the restart, it may be necessary to reset your iPad settings. While this reset will not cause any loss of data, as a precaution, it is always wise to ensure that you have a current iCloud or iTunes backup before performing the reset:

How to back up your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch - Apple Support

When you are happy to proceed, you can perform the reset from iPad settings:

Settings > General > Transfer or Reset iPad > Reset > Reset All Settings

If the problem still doesn’t clear, the next step is to reset the iPad to factory settings:

Restore your iPhone, iPad, or iPod to factory settings - Apple Support

Otherwise, you would be best advised to seek assistance directly from Apple Support. You can contact the Support Team using the Support link at top-right or bottom-left of this page. Alternatively you can initiate and manage your support cases using the excellent Apple Support App. If not already installed on your iPad, the App can be downloaded from the App Store:

https://apps.apple.com/app/apple-support/id1130498044

You might also visit the Genius Bar at your local Apple Store or Apple Authorised Service Provider (AASP) - where the technicians will be able to test and assess your iPad. If a fault is identified, you'll be in the best possible place to explore your available options:

Genius Bar Reservation and Apple Support Options - Apple

dawnaha wrote:

I've done all of the reboots, cleared cache, tried different browser (chrome), AND i downloaded 3rd party app to clean up RAM. it still won't run. :(

I would question the value of any "3rd party app to clean up RAM." Managing the division of RAM among system and application processes is one of the main jobs of the OS, and it is not the place of a "3rd party app" to tell the OS how it should be done. Such an app likely would not have privileges to do what its developer claims.

While a process is running, it is possible for bugs to cause it to "leak" memory, in which case memory use might grow and grow until you quit the application or something else kills it. The cure for that is for the offending app's developer to fix the memory leak bugs - no "3rd party app" will take care of those, in real time, for you.

Do i need to do something to turn on virtual memory swap? i will read your article.

I would assume that the feature is always enabled (on compatible iPads). The total amount of flash storage that iPadOS is willing to use to simulate more RAM might vary depending on how much real RAM you have.

From an archived Apple Development Documentation article:

About the Virtual Memory System

“Although OS X supports a backing store, iOS does not. In iPhone applications, read-only data that is already on the disk (such as code pages) is simply removed from memory and reloaded from disk as needed. Writable data is never removed from memory by the operating system. Instead, if the amount of free memory drops below a certain threshold, the system asks the running applications to free up memory voluntarily to make room for new data. Applications that fail to free up enough memory are terminated.”

Servant of Cats wrote:

According to MacTracker, MV2C3LL/A is the model number for a iPad Air 13-inch (M2) (Wi-Fi). That iPad has 8 GB of RAM. Since it has a M-series processor, and would be running iPadOS 17.4 or later, I believe that it supports the Virtual Memory Swap feature that allows the use of some flash storage to (slowly) simulate more RAM.

Actually, virtual memory swapping is a supported feature on UNIX going back to 1974 or so, and all Apple operating systems use Unix as their kernel. So the statement in the link you posted is misleading; all versions of iOS have had virtual memory management since the first iPhone, and likewise for iPads and MacOS.

dawnaha wrote:

i downloaded 3rd party app to clean up RAM. it still won't run. :(

Big mistake! Get rid of it before it does damage.

iOS/iPadOS is a direct descendent of Unix, developed by Bell Labs in the mid-1970s. Over the years it has been improved and for all practical purposes perfected in just about every way: Storage management, RAM management, application isolation, virus, trojan and other malware protection, firewall, storage encryption, user security management.

There are no apps that can improve on the RAM management or anything else on a system whose core goes back 50 years, and has been tweaked and improved continually.

According to MacTracker, MV2C3LL/A is the model number for a iPad Air 13-inch (M2) (Wi-Fi). That iPad has 8 GB of RAM. Since it has a M-series processor, and would be running iPadOS 17.4 or later, I believe that it supports the Virtual Memory Swap feature that allows the use of some flash storage to (slowly) simulate more RAM.

iPadOS 16 takes the versatility of iPad even further - Apple

So, as Allan Jones was getting at, is the problem running out of RAM? Or running out of storage?

Re: “So the statement in the link you posted is misleading; all versions of iOS have had virtual memory management since the first iPhone, and likewise for iPads and MacOS.”

Most iPhones and iPads will not swap to flash. They may ask apps to “voluntarily” return RAM, and deliberately crash some apps if the apps do not cough up enough. They may also swap to “compressed RAM.” Swapping to main storage on an iPad is a new thing for M-series processors and iPadOS 16 or later. This may be related to early iPhones and iPads not having much flash storage, or to concerns about too much swapping wearing it out.

By contrast, Unix-based versions of Mac OS X / macOS have always supported swapping to main storage, and have never employed the “Nice RAM you have there; it would be a shame if something happened to it” school of memory management.

Note carefully the part of the Apple developer documentation that says “Writable data is never removed from memory by the operating system.”

Removing and reloading was limited to read-only data that originally came from flash. This was a key difference from the way that Mac OS X worked, as the developer documentation points out.

I must respectfully disagree. I see examples of virtual memory management all the time using iPhones.

Removing from memory and reloading is exactly what virtual memory does.