Applications Have Run Out of Memory Message After 26.7 Installed

Runaway processes and low free storage space are common reasons for Macs to run slow / beachball and/or show Out of Memory errors. 

It is possible there are processes running in the background that are using significant resources. Check Activity Monitor, CPU tab (sort by % CPU) and Memory tab (sort by Memory) to see what's running hard.

Activity Monitor User Guide for Mac - Apple Support

Confirm that you have sufficient free space on your internal storage. The absolute minimum is ~20-25 GB free space, and as a rule of thumb you should aim to have 15-20% of your total internal storage as free space. Terminology is important here – free space is not the same thing as available space. The one that matters is Free space, but what macOS shows in most places is Available space. Available space includes both free space and ‘purgeable’ space, the latter comprises system caches, snapshots and other data that macOS can delete if it decides more free space is needed. However, there is no way the user can force those data to be purged.

The place to check how much Free space you have is in Disk Utility (in Applications > Utilities), by selecting the main container disk below the drive itself (you may need to select View menu > Show all devices to see it). For example, on my M4 MacBook Pro, the Storage settings pane and Get Info on the internal drive show 1.24 TB of Available space, whereas Disk Utility shows there is 1.15 TB of actual Free space, 90 GB less than ‘available’. Although 90 GB is a small fraction of my 2 TB internal storage, that would not be the case with 256 GB or 512 GB of internal storage.

Note that you can also see the Free space in the System Report (System Settings > General > About > System Report button, at the bottom > Storage). 

Some steps to take to safely free up space:

Free up storage space on Mac - Apple Support

Optimize storage space on your Mac - Apple Support

How to free up ‘System Data’ and other st… - Apple Community

If nothing in the above reveals an obvious culprit, then appropriate troubleshooting steps are Safe Mode and creating a new user account to test. 

See if the problem is present when you boot in safe mode. That process performs some system cleanup and clears caches, and also disables 3rd party extensions that may cause problems.

Start up your Mac in safe mode - Apple Support

If that does not correct the issue, test in a new user account. A newly-created user account will have all settings at default, and if the issue does not occur in that new account then it provides guidance on what may need to be changed to correct the issue.

Add a user or group on Mac - Apple Support

Once the testing is complete, the new account can easily be deleted.

Delete a user or group on Mac – Apple Support

If you have 3rd party ‘protection’ software installed, that may be the problem. That includes:

• Cleaners (software claiming to automatically free up space)
• Optimizers (software claiming to make your Mac run faster)
• Antivirus software
• VPN software (unless provided by a school/employer to enable access to internal resources from a remote location)

Such 3rd party system ‘helpers’, ‘cleaners’ and ‘protectors’ do more harm than good. In fact, such products are completely unnecessary for macOS and the only ‘good’ (if you want to call it that) they do is to put money in the developers’ pockets. Cleaners and protectors cause compatibility issues, often after macOS updates. Commercial VPNs claim to hide your browsing activity from websites, and while that may be true those VPN providers just sell your browsing data to others. For the user, all of these types of software offer only harm…and if that is limited to harm to your bank account, then count yourself lucky. If you have installed such software, follow the developer’s instructions to completely uninstall it (note that some developers fail to provide instructions and their software installs can be pervasive, meaning the only way to truly remove it is to erase your Mac, reinstall macOS then restore your user files from a backup).

It might help to download and run EtreCheck, written by a long-time forum member. The free version is fine. Post the full report using the Additional Text button. No personal information is revealed. 

When you get the Force Quit pop-up window alerting you to the issue where it shows the apps which macOS has paused.....note the app(s) using the most memory. That is the main app where your issue is occurring. Note a few other apps next in line for high memory utilization as well as they can be contributing to the problem.

To resume using the computer, you must Force Quit all of those paused apps. Then reboot the computer. If you try to resume the paused apps even after Force Quitting the app using the most memory.....your system may be unstable (personal experience...the instability is usually subtle so most people would unlikely notice it).

After Force Quitting the app utilizing the most memory, launch Disk Utility to view how much Free storage space you have (see @neuroanatomist's post for details). Ignore the very misleading "Available" storage space since it is not synonymous with Free.

Since you are receiving the "Application out of memory" error, it means your workload is greatly exceeding your computer's physical memory. This means to continue using the computer without this error, you will need to adjust your usage & workflows to minimize the number of open apps & documents. Web browsers are notorious for eating up system resources. I've seen people report issues with Adobe software and I've even seen the issue reported for Apple's own Preview app. Every open document & app consumes valuable & limited memory resources.

You can use Activity Monitor to help you monitor your memory utilization. Ideally you want the Memory Pressure graph (shown at the bottom of the window in the "Memory" tab screen) to be green or some occasionally yellow spikes. Anything else means your workflow & usage pattern is consuming more memory than your system has.

Even if the memory graph is green, you will want to keep an eye on the "Swap" and "Compressed" values next to the memory pressure graph. Values here of 5GB or less are usually fine. If the "Swap" value starts going above 5GB.....especially nearing 10GB, then your system is becoming overloaded. The "Swap" may still be fine over 10GB for a while, but you are now stressing your internal SSD at this point & causing the SSD to wear more quickly (that is a problem because SSDs have a limited number of lifetime writes).

If you cannot lower your memory utilization to remain in the green with occasional spikes into the yellow, then you really need a new computer with lots more physical memory (and possibly even a larger internal SSD if your internal SSD is running less than 100GB of Free space during your workloads). FYI, when "Swap" is used, that data is transferred from the memory to the internal SSD which will decrease the Free storage space of the internal boot SSD. People can create more Free space by moving the larger items to external media. Apple has instructions for relocating the Photos library, Music, Video, and perhaps other libraries to external media since these libraries can become quite large for some users.

The "Application out of memory" error can only be alleviated by the user as I have outlined here either with better open app/document handling, or by purchasing a new computer with more memory (possibly more storage as well). What has changed with macOS is how macOS is handling memory & storage these days. Years ago people would have started seeing spinning wheels to indicate an overloaded system, but now with the recent changes beginning with Tahoe (and backported to Ventura) the system now runs smoothly even when overloaded until it reaches the cliff & suddenly the user is presented with this error along with a list of running apps with some showing as Paused.

From what I've personally observed, macOS is not good about releasing memory & storage which is also contributing to this problem. The only time I saw an improvement in macOS Tahoe was the 26.2 update, then with the 26.3+ updates the issue seemed to have returned. I would much prefer a warning prior to apps being paused or running low on memory/storage....or at least have the spinning wheel again. People can certainly also provide Apple with product feedback here:

Feedback - macOS - Apple

This is more like macOS exhausting its virtual-memory resources. That dialog can appear when the kernel can no longer efficiently back the virtual address space requested by processes, even when Activity Monitor doesn’t show one obvious app consuming all the RAM.

Since this started immediately after 26.7, I’d specifically look for a runaway background daemon, login item, system extension, or browser/WebKit process rather than assuming the foreground apps are responsible. In Activity Monitor, switch to View → All Processes, then watch not just the Memory column but Memory Pressure, Swap Used, Compressed Memory and the cumulative memory footprint of related processes... if one process steadily grows after login, that’s your smoking gun.

Also check /var/vm indirectly through vm_stat in Terminal and look at unified logs around the time the alert appears (log show --last 1h --predicate 'eventMessage CONTAINS[c] "memory"') because the process that triggers the pressure condition isn't necessarily the one that ends up looking largest when the UI freezes. If the problem reliably appears after a clean boot and worsens with time, I'd suspect a 26.7 regression or third-party agent leaking virtual address space... if it only appears in your normal user session, focus on per-user LaunchAgents/login items.

The timing with 26.7 is the important clue here, so I’d capture the process name and memory/VM statistics before force-quitting anything rather than treating the warning itself as proof that you simply need more RAM.

There are 2 reasons for the “Your system has run out of application memory” dialog box.

A. Your boot disk has very low free storage, and macOS cannot create page/swap files to offload virtual memory contents to disk. Depending on how much virtual memory is being called for, anything under 50-100GB of free storage may trigger the message.

Apple menu (upper left corner) -> About This Mac -> More Info... -> Storage (scroll down a bit) -> Storage Settings...

B. A process (or set of processes) has asked macOS for excessive amounts of virtual memory address space. In order to keep track of the virtual memory address space, the kernel creates virtual memory page tables. If there is a memory leak (process asks for a virtual address range, forgets to give it back, asks for another range, forgets again, wash, rinse, repeat), eventually there are so many page tables created there is no memory left for applications, and you get the “Your system has run out of applications memory”.

Look at

Applications -> Utilities -> Activity Monitor -> View (menu) -> All Processes -> Memory (tab)

you can see what processes are using lots of memory. Many of these processes will be background agents and daemons used to provide many of the macOS services, as well as your applications.

Also keep in mind that each web browser tab will be a separate process running its own Javascript. If you have lots of browser tabs open, or if one of the browser tabs running Javascript with a bug in it, it is possible these browser tabs will add up to a lot of virtual memory demands, but no individual tab will look all that big.

Start your mac in Safe Mode. Test. Does the same problem occur? If not, then something that you are running is causing trouble. Maybe a login item or some launch agent that has gone rogue.

Please run Etrecheck and post its full report here. Use the "additional text" button and paste the report into the text box.

The steps to take to post the free EtreCheck report that was previously suggested is here:

How to use the Add Text Feature When Post… - Apple Community