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Your System has Run out of Application memory

I upgraded to Mavericks from Mountain Lion, and I have been getting the error message "Your System has Run out of Application memory", and I am forced to restart the computer to be able to keep working.


I have been monitoring the Activity Monitor and I have not found a process that is increasing the amount of memory used. I have seen a proliferation of processes.


I have an iMac 27-inch, Late 2012 with a 3.4 GHz Intel Core i7 and 24 GB 1600 MHz DDR3.

iMac, OS X Mavericks (10.9), 27-inch Late 2012; 3.4 GHz i7; 24GB

Posted on Oct 23, 2013 7:33 PM

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371 replies

Feb 4, 2017 9:44 AM in response to DonnaM-T

DonnaM-T wrote:


I have 2013 MacBook Air with Sierra. Apple was in my computer remotely yesterday. We found a lot of apps eating away at space. I took off Google Chrome (which I loved so now I need to adapt to Safari). I also went through all of my files and deleted zip files, dmg files, etc. The tech told me I needed to upgrade my RAM which I will do. Geeksquad told me my hard drive was about to crash. My computer has been very sluggish. I just began using Safari and will monitor now that I've gotten rid of other apps and files. Fingers crossed, this will help. Thank you for your answer and help.

Perhaps you should start your own New thread in the "Sierra" forum

<https://discussions.apple.com/community/mac_os/sierra>

and explain your situation. What errors you are getting. What you have done already.


Along with that information, please post the EtreCheck output. But do all of this in the Sierra forum.

<https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-6174> or <https://etrecheck.com>

User uploaded file

Jan 1, 2017 4:37 PM in response to doodle22

Generally speaking, you have either run out of disk space on your boot disk so more /var/vm/swapfile(s) cannot be created (this does not happen to too many people)


Or you have a process (or a set of processes) that are using too much virtual memory, using up all the virtual address paging tables the kernel is managing. If the kernel starts taking more RAM for more page tables, it will eventually use ALL the RAM for page tables and nothing will be left for your processes to use. The kernel sets a limit on the number of page tables it will create based on the total amount of RAM in your Mac.


You need to find the process or processes that are using too much virtual memory.

Feb 4, 2017 7:10 AM in response to doodle22

i have this problem and it seems to be when iTunes is open, it's not just movies. At work i use Apple Music/iTunes on the MacBook for music between bands (I'm a sound engineer) sometimes I'll come home and forget iTunes is still open, then I'll play a game the next day or open safari and after about an hour, maybe less. I get the error 'Out of Application Memory'.

Feb 4, 2017 7:25 AM in response to Phillz600

Phillz600 wrote:


i have this problem and it seems to be when iTunes is open, it's not just movies. At work i use Apple Music/iTunes on the MacBook for music between bands (I'm a sound engineer) sometimes I'll come home and forget iTunes is still open, then I'll play a game the next day or open safari and after about an hour, maybe less. I get the error 'Out of Application Memory'.

Do you have enough free disk space on the boot device so the operating system can create /var/vm/swapfile(s) for the virtual memory overflow?


If you have enough free disks space, then you have a process or collection of processes that are using more virtual memory than the operating system can manage (OS runs out of page table entries it can keep in RAM, and not take all of RAM just for page tables).


Generally this comes from either very memory hungry apps, especially if several are running concurrently, or from a process that has a memory leak.


Since this is the Mavericks forum, I can only assume you are running Mavericks, and there was a bug for a short time in Mail with attachments that experienced a memory leak. It was fixed, so if you are up-to-date with your Mavericks updates, that should not be the problem.


Applications -> Utilities -> Terminal

ps -ax -ovsz,comm | sort -k2n

will display the virual memory used in kilobytes by each process sorted least to most. That might help you find the worse virtual memory offenders.

Feb 4, 2017 9:21 AM in response to BobHarris

I have 2013 MacBook Air with Sierra. Apple was in my computer remotely yesterday. We found a lot of apps eating away at space. I took off Google Chrome (which I loved so now I need to adapt to Safari). I also went through all of my files and deleted zip files, dmg files, etc. The tech told me I needed to upgrade my RAM which I will do. Geeksquad told me my hard drive was about to crash. My computer has been very sluggish. I just began using Safari and will monitor now that I've gotten rid of other apps and files. Fingers crossed, this will help. Thank you for your answer and help.

Oct 25, 2013 8:51 PM in response to REPG

I Started having this problem right after upgrading to 10.9

I have years using a mac mini server just to run one asterisk pbx vmware fusion session.


This has nothing to do with hardware requirements.

I thought this had to do with the App Nap feature, but I disabled it for VMware Fusion and I still get this.

I also have the latest version of Fusion.



(This is not my image, I just got it from someone on another forum)

User uploaded file

Oct 26, 2013 5:06 AM in response to REPG

I also started to have this problem that I never ever had in my life since Rhapsody and Mac OS X 1.0!


Quite amazing.... the machine just collapse and ALL apps get into this "(paused)" mode.....


Running a Mac Book Pro 17", 16Gb Ram, last model Apple did before dropping it.


Only solution is to reboot. Happened twice already...


Not a good sign on a previously very stable system being now worst than Windows 7 and 8


Hope someone finds out a solution, specially Apple.


Leonardo

Oct 26, 2013 5:56 AM in response to REPG

I just uninstalled Server.app hoping for updates so I can re-install it again.

In my case the problem is that "devicemgrd" (Profile Manager) is draining my CPU and Memory and that is causing what is described in this post.


I tried killing "devicemgrd" first and realized all went back to normal.

In the end, I decided to completely remove Server.app until this is resolved by Apple.


Issue resolved for me, but I believe not many people will be able to remove Server.app and/or disable Profile Manager to do this temporary fix.

User uploaded file

Oct 27, 2013 3:30 PM in response to REPG

I have same problem on a 2010 MacBook Pro with 8GB RAM and 250GB free on a 512GB Samsung SSD. I installed Mavericks (was happily running Mountain Lion) and now the system starts reporting that it's run out of Application Memory. I'm still trying to track down where it's getting used up, but it's a definite problem with Mavericks...

Your System has Run out of Application memory

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