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

See if the problem is present when you boot in safe mode, which disables 3rd party extensions and performs some system cleanup.

Start up your Mac in safe mode - Apple Support

FWIW, I have your configuration (16" M4 Pro MBP, 48 GB memory, 2 TB SSD). I'm running 26.0.1 (from this morning) and upgraded to Tahoe when it launched, and I've had no issues.

macOS 26 might have auto-reopen all previously running apps after an update restart, which can instantly eat up a lot of RAM, especially if some apps were already heavy or had background helper processes. Your mac with 48 GB, it usually shouldn’t crash, but memory leaks or aggressive swap usage in Tahoe can make the system hit “out of application memory” fast.

Do a clean restart without reopening apps (uncheck “Reopen windows when logging back in”) and monitor Activity Monitor for any runaway processes before letting apps relaunch automatically

Billybucks wrote:

I just replaced a macMini late 2018 running on intel with 16GB RAM with an M4 MacBook Pro with 16GB. Everything on the mini was migrated to the Pro. My few extensions and all. The macMini never had this problem. The M4 should eat the macMini's lunch, yet it is running out of application memory! It has to be an OS issue with Tahoe.

And that might be part of the problem. Your 2018 Mac may have had old extensions, and daemons, obviously programmed for Intel, and maybe created several OS versions ago to boot (pun intended).

That is why it is recommended to migrate only the user accounts, and install applications fresh, when migrating to a new mac. Leaves all the potentially conflicting old stuff behind (plus lots of things one may have installed that one is not even aware it's there).

I saw the same problem as well today. Mac Studio ('22) with 64 GB RAM. MacOS 26.

I have never seen this problem before.

Activity Monitor showed that the TV app was using 372 GB of memory! I basically force quit all apps and the system has recovered. No need to reboot.

I’ve done the Safe Mode start, and crashed. But in the process, I observed one thing - Mail was always the first thing that “paused” in the Out Of Memory dialog, and “paused” then cascaded through everything else. I could also see the memory usage going up in the Mail app, even as it was paused. Repeated the Safe Mode start, opened Activity Monitor, then opened Mail - and it opened at 16Gb, went to 28 GB, then 48GB and Swapped Memory until it ran me out of Application Memory.

So Mail appears to be the trigger, but I don’t yet know why.

Happened again today. Got home from work and there was a dialog open saying I'd run out of application memory. I opened Activity Monitor and viewed all processes and there were two that were using insane amounts of memory- contextstored and powerd. Both of them using like 35+ GB of memory. I force quit them both and that immediately alleviated the Memory Pressure graph in Activity Monitor but, trying to resume any of the apps listed in the dialog saying that I was out of application memory was fruitless. I had to just go through and force quit them one by one. I haven't rebooted yet but, I'm having a difficult time understanding how this isn't a memory leak in macOS system processes and how it might be a problem with 3rd party software. I hope Apple gets this fixed soon. It's really annoying both times that it has happened.

NotSoTechnical wrote:

Disagree because everyone reporting this has only one thing in common — Tahoe — and that this is consistently being observed after a period of inactivity/sleep.

People say that every year.

Yes, individual app developers need to maintain compatibility, but the OS clearly needs to do a better job identifying when this issue is occurring, and take some proactive steps to avoid the whole system pausing.

That it's happening across a mix of 3rd-party apps, or a common Apple app, is where it gets hard to identify.

Perhaps this is the infamous Electron problem. Apparently, the cross-platform "Electron" framework uses a private Apple API to do something with the shadows on window corners. Developers aren't supposed to use private APIs. Being private, Apple reserves the right to change them without notice. In this case, it causes significant system problems. I don't know if this is the same issue, but it sounds like it.

These "Electron" apps are very popular with developers who want to make sure they exert the least possible effort supporting Apple platforms.

Multi-MacMan wrote:

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.

As I wrote before, if the problem disappears in Safe Mode, it will show that the problem is caused by some third party software. Quite often, old stuff breaks after an OS upgrade.

Okay a little bit of help from ChatGPT went a long way. Ask it for terminal commands to clear out old cached files. Especially Adobe. This freed up 150gigs of space and things, knock on wood, are running fine now. It is very typical of Apple and Adobe not being in sync. Admins stop telling people to restart as if that will solve it. Do more research and support better.

Multi-MacMan wrote:

...I shouldn’t have to run my device that way just because of an upgrade.

If you have extensions that are not fully compatible with the new version of macOS, memory leaks can be one of the problems caused by that. We both have an M4 Pro MBP with 48 GB memory and 2 TB storage, but my memory usage looks like this, with low Pressure and no Swap being used:

If your Mac is running out of memory, it's not because of Tahoe but because of something you're running on your Mac.

Same issue. Almost no other apps open except Mail and Safari and I get the out of application memory error and computer freezes. MacBook Pro 14 16GB. Once it said Apple Mail was taking 96 GB. Just now froze with Safari saying 24 GB. Just upgraded to Tahoe a week ago. Never saw this issue before. Have not installed new software, so no it isn't a third party software issue. It is the two Apple apps.

NotSoTechnical wrote:

not Apple’s responsibility to make macOS compatible with everything.

Disagree because everyone reporting this has only one thing in common — Tahoe — and that this is consistently being observed after a period of inactivity/sleep.

I don't have any Adobe apps installed.

Yes, individual app developers need to maintain compatibility, but the OS clearly needs to do a better job identifying when this issue is occurring, and take some proactive steps to avoid the whole system pausing.

That it's happening across a mix of 3rd-party apps, or a common Apple app, is where it gets hard to identify.

I think that just proves the point. At the end of the day, this seems to affect a relatively small number of users. There are thousands of apps and extensions out there, if it was Apple’s goal to test everything in every possible combination and ensure compatibility, we might see macOS 26 sometime in 2035.

Also worth noting that hardware can be a factor. A few years ago, my 2019 i9 MBP would give spinning beach balls and bog down every time I ran Microsoft Teams. Turned out the actual problem was that I had a failing RAM module. Teams was using a lot of RAM, but the real problem wasn’t the software.

Alex Kim wrote:

Hope they fix this very soon...

This happens every year, and has happened every year for at least a decade. I'm not talking about Apple. I'm talking about end users thinking Apple is going to "fix this very soon". This is not going to happen.

Most likely, this problem is caused by some 3rd party system modification that isn't compatible with Tahoe. Anyone experiencing this problem won't see any improvement until they remove the software that causes it, or the developers of said software notice the problem and fix it. Unfortunately, much such software was already abandoned years ago.

It definitely won't be fixed in Tahoe. Tahoe is already dead. Apple is already hard at work on macOS 27 that will introduce a whole new set of bugs, just like these, that users will be complaining about in early fall 2026.

Yes, it's a temporary glitch, a simple restart would likely fix this.

Like the others, I'm getting the "your system has run out of memory" and a Force Quit dialog. I can't open Activity Monitor because of this. I'm using a 2022 Mac Studio with an M1 chip, running 26.0.1, have 32 GB of RAM and a 2 TB hard drive with 1.3 TB available. When I've checked Activity Monitor, memory used has never been more than 10 GB. This had not been happening on this machine using these same applications before the install of 26.0 or 26.0.1.

Hard not to blame the software . . . .