How to fix 'System has run out of application memory' error after macOS Golden Gate update?

Runaway processes and low free storage space are common reasons for Macs to run slow / beachball 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. 

The only way to fix this issue is by making sure your workloads don't exceed your Mac's memory & storage capacity. Many people tend to purchase computers with insufficient memory and/or internal storage (aka SSD). Prior to the release of macOS 26.x Tahoe last year.....when people started to exceed the computer's capacity, they would start seeing the spinning wheel of death. With macOS 26+ Apple changed the behavior of the memory & storage management so that the spinning wheel of death no longer occurs. Instead the system may run smoothly until users encounter the "Application out of memory" error with the pop-up Force Quit box showing all running apps.

When people encounter this error, then they should note the apps using the most memory. The user then needs to better manage those apps to reduce their memory usage, or to close all other apps when using the app that used the most memory.

Also, when a user encounters this error & the Force Quit pop-up window......the user will need to Force Quit all of the paused apps, then reboot the computer. If this is not done, then the user may encounter system instability (personal experience).

One way to minimize memory usage is by closing documents when not actively viewing them. Keep in mind web browsers are notorious for using lots of memory & storage.

You can monitor your memory usage by using Activity Monitor's "memory" tab. If the memory graph shows any red, then your computer does not have enough memory for its current workload. If the memory graph shows yellow, then your computer is borderline able to handle the current workload. If the memory graph is green, then you need to check whether the "Swap" and "Compress" values are in the GB range. Values of less than 5GB is probably fine, but if both of them are over 5GB each, then the computer configuration is likely insufficient for the current workload. In my experience if Swap is over 10GB, you are more likely to get the "Application out of memory" error.

And you need to make sure your computer has sufficient internal Free storage space as well. @neuroanatomist has explained the storage issues. Ignore the very misleading "Available" storage value since it is not synonymous with Free.

If closing apps & documents does not help, then you will need to purchase a new computer with sufficient memory & storage for your workloads.

I would recommend posting the free EtreCheck report using the Additional Text option when posting. The report contains no personal information and will provide a wealth of information useful for diagnosis.

• The processes running on your computer.
• The amount of Free RAM
• The processes using the most amount of RAM
• The number of Login Items using your RAM on startup
• Lists processes that are hanging

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

zchopper62 wrote:

attached is the etre report. i noticed "nsattributedstringagent" had 21 crashes and not sure what the cause could be. not sure what the rest provide from the crash list?

That's normal. Just another OS-level bug.

this is daily usage of my computer on a 99% regular basis. any help is appreciated...

Is it? Your EtreCheck report clearly says, "About an hour" start restart. So unless you're restarting your computer every couple of hours, this report is not indicative of your daily usage.

It's always better to run an EtreCheck report during or shortly after experiencing a problem. Restarting erases most of the most useful information that an EtreCheck report might display.

i know this is going to be subjective, i did not have issues until after Golden Gate update. not trying to be difficult or cause any angst, but it functioned flawlessly pre iOS 27...

Well, yes and no. I've been reading virtually identical posts on this forum for well over a decade. I mean identical. The only difference is the OS version being blamed.

That being said, you're not wrong. This is a common occurrence. And when these OS updates are being published every two weeks, they are a constant occurrence. When the operating system changes, all of the other software on the system, including the operating system itself, may need to be updated for the new behaviour. That never happens. Not even once has it happened. It will continue to happen in the future, forever, until you make a change in behaviour.

Once you have a system configuration that works "flawlessly", then you need to camp out on that configuration. You'll need to re-train your mind to see that Big Red "Update" badge as a sign of continued flawless operation, rather than an urgent plea to change said configuration.

But it's tricky. While you did say "flawless", I'm sure that's not true. You have to learn to balance all of your software. If you keep updating the OS every two weeks, then your 3rd party software will exhibit bugs and cause problems like this. And at every two weeks, the OS developers themselves can't keep up. It doesn't mean anything that Logic Pro uses the same trademark as the OS. It's absolutely 3rd party software. And it uses all those audio drivers, which are effectively 4th party software.

But then the opposite can happen. If you don't update your software, after a while, your 3rd party apps are going to be designed and tested against newer versions. They aren't going to care about unprofitable customers who aren't buying updates. You'll have to camp out on all of your software. And if you do this for a living, you'll probably even need a "test rig" to play around with updates until you can serendipitously happen upon a newer stable configuration you can use.

So it's more of an artistic balancing act rather than a mathematical equation. Don't believe what the internet says. The internet is not your friend or partner. It was always conceived and designed to exploit you. Your system isn't vulnerable. If you don't do risky things like download pirate software from torrents, or download other shady apps to access content that you would otherwise be blocked from reaching, then you don't have anything to worry about.

I'm also getting this constantly (usually when waking up after sleep mode). Everything was fine on 26, and only started getting this after upgrading to 27 on my Mac Pro M2 Ultra.

I have around 100GB left out of 128, only about 12GB of application memory allocated, and zero swap disk usage. I also have at least 3TB free on my 4TB boot drive. No applications are using excess memory and there's no shortage of disk space. Every suggestion to fix this is not the problem.

I'm also getting hangs on iOS 27 and have to exit and restart the app and then it runs fine for a while. It's too much of a coincidence that both MacOS and iOS 27 are having issues that 26 didn't have on either using the same apps.

I'm suspecting it might be the AI enhancements added to 27, which I hardly use and am thinking of turning off (if I can) to see if that's what is causing these bogus error warnings. If this warning is real then that would mean that while my machine was asleep it requested some enormous amount of memory and kicked the error and then cleaned itself up before I woke up the machine with the error window still displaying. It's definitely not anything I'm doing while the machine is awake and I'm obviously not running anything other than minimal background processing while it's asleep.

Anyway, I just close and ignore this error on MacOS and everything is fine until some other time when I wake it up. The hangs on iOS are really annoying. Other than a swipe up, the screen doesn't react to any taps at all. If the next dot releases to 27 don't fix these issues across all my devices, I'll be looking at downgrading to Tahoe since it ran just fine on all of them.

I installed 27.2 for both MacOS and iOS yesterday and it's still too early to definitively say, but that seems to have fixed all of the issues I was having with both. The machine and phone both feel faster and things seem to load or at least render faster.

I have my fingers crossed, but I really think the Apple developers did do something that fixed the problems I was having and likely related issues others may have been having. So, at this point I'm encouraged and happy to have devices that are working to their full potential again.

It may be premature, but thank you to Apple for fixing these small bugs. With so much emphasis on Siri AI and other new features, still paying attention to the small, but aggravating things really does matter.

greatly appreciate all of the responses. i have initiated activity monitor (open at login) to determine what a normal day routine looks like. my setup meets all of the minimum requirements and will more than likely dump some of my stuff from logic pro. i have downloaded the etrecheck app and will further diagnose my situation. if necessary will follow safe mode protocol. THANK YOU!!!

attached is the etre report. i noticed "nsattributedstringagent" had 21 crashes and not sure what the cause could be. not sure what the rest provide from the crash list? this is daily usage of my computer on a 99% regular basis. any help is appreciated...

in all honesty, and i know this is going to be subjective, i did not have issues until after Golden Gate update. not trying to be difficult or cause any angst, but it functioned flawlessly pre iOS 27...

etresoft wrote:

this is daily usage of my computer on a 99% regular basis. any help is appreciated...

Is it? Your EtreCheck report clearly says, "About an hour" start restart. So unless you're restarting your computer every couple of hours, this report is not indicative of your daily usage.

It's always better to run an EtreCheck report during or shortly after experiencing a problem. Restarting erases most of the most useful information that an EtreCheck report might display.

thanks for the candid input it is actually helpful from the users end, at least for me. what i was trying to convey concerning the 99% was that i typically run only 1-2 processes (logic pro & notes) and at times additional 2/3 like firefox browser, guitar pro 8 or numbers/pages. 99% was not meant to misrepresent the error i am receiving.

i assumed etre did kind of a historical dump analysis? regardless i will run etre the next go around when i run into the issue. i am usually on the machine 6-8 hours of the day and shut it down for the rest of the time.

is it worth the effort to let it run/sleep for say a week and then run etre?

i also saw the update come through. but not as eager to install, rather will wait. read that it deals mostly with AI enhancements along with bug fixes, not sure which ones yet. will see what i can find on this update through the support pages. i will also report back...

No it isn’t fixed, but at least for me the frequency seems to be a lot less. If your numbers don’t support this being real, then close the window and carry on. But, you still need to verify that it isn’t an actual problem with an app hogging too many resources. It might be a hybrid situation where an app does legitimately trigger that message, but then resolves the issue. Apps that crash provide full logs, but trying to find something like this in the normal logs is not worth your time if you can even find anything helpful at all.

i'm in the same camp as you! but, as you can read the thread we seem to be on the wrong side. i also ignore and deal with the error. i sure as .... will not be so eager upgrading in the future.

updated but same issue. oh well...