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

After cleaning cache, history, etc, it went back up to 70GB, but keeps dropping while doing absolutely nothing.

I'm having this same issue and it's causing me a lot of grief trying to work with my emails open while using Safari and other applications at the same time. Has anyone else found any solutions or do we all just have to sit and wait for Apple to come up with a fix? I'm using a 14-inch MacBook Pro M3 Max, 36GB, and running Tahoe 26.0.1 and honestly should've gone with my gut and not done the update because every time I do when it first releases something always seem to go sideways.

Sorry, but there should be no way a 48GB MacBook Pro has this issue. A system with that horsepower should be able to handle pretty much anything and it is marketed as a power user machine. There is something wrong with Tahoe.

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.

Is Apple even becoming aware of these issues? It's not like a Crash Reporter report is being sent in these cases. They must be aware, and this would definitely qualify as a priority issue.

I'll submit something through Feedback Assistant just in case.

It is 100% an Apple OS issue. I thought how could this go wrong with full apple hardware. NIGHTMARE constantly running out of memory before the update it was extremely rare. Same work flow. This is an Apple cluster F. Stop telling people to restart or that this is some minor issue resolved with booting into safe mode please.

curtisfromnovato wrote:

It is 100% an Apple OS issue.

Yes, I'm sure that's it. Totally explains why I'm not having any problems with memory even with three image editing apps running concurrently. Must be macOS Tahoe that's the problem. Couldn't be an extension or 3rd party something else that you installed and I didn't.

I've had this happen three times now. Twice this morning, with the second one happening only about 20m after I restarted the computer to clear the previous one.

This never happened on the previous OS, and I've had this Mac for for over a year (M3 MacBook Pro with 36GB memory)

Hope they fix this very soon...

Having the same problem for the last couple of weeks. Macbook Pro M3 Pro 18gb RAM runs out of memory 10 times a day and I have to kill nearly every process. Never had an issue with Sequoia. Cant find a fix... This is a massive problem for me.

Same out of memory issue on my MacBook Air, M1 2020 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD Tahoe 26.0.1. Upgraded last week. Safari, Mail, Calendar, Zoom, Print Center all paused. Only other 3rd party apps are Chrome and Microsoft 365 but were not open. Very annoying as it took 5 minutes to force quit and restart/shut down. Fairly frozen unless Finder window open.

Out of an abundance of caution, I'm opting to shutdown my M1 Air between work sessions. It's too worrying coming back to it piping hot and all apps paused.

Has only happened for me during an overnight Sleep Mode.

Severe Storage Issue After macOS Tahoe Upgrade

Since upgrading to macOS Tahoe, I’ve been experiencing major storage issues. Initially, I assumed it was user error, so I wiped and reformatted my drive, but the problem persists.

Today alone, without installing or doing anything significant, my available space dropped from 140GB to 77GB, nearly half my drive vanished simply by waking the laptop. I’m still seeing heavy system data growth and limited app installation capacity.

Please investigate and provide a fix. This issue is extremely disruptive and concerning.

I have continuously dropped in Hard Drive space since my last comment. Originally, after reformat, having installed everything I currently have, I was at 140GB, after a few hours, doing absolutely nothing but entering wake mode, I was down to 77 GB, and having installed nothing new since, I am down to 23 GB? I have no idea what is going on, it is definitely a problem on Apple's end, not mine. I have not had any issues like this until updating to the newest version of Tahoe.

How much FREE space on your SYSTEM DRIVE?

It looks like your issue may be caused by a full drive rather than lack of available RAM.

No, obviously no.

Please stop sending this messages out of the blue.

I think everyone in this thread hope that this issue will be handle as soon as possible by Apple engineers. Receiving responses like that just make me lose more time and it makes me questioning about the future of this OS, the more time pass the more it get unstable.

cristiano106 wrote:

I think everyone in this thread hope that this issue will be handle as soon as possible by Apple engineers.

You stated that Android Studio soaks up >50% of your memory then pauses. Why would Apple engineers fix what appears to be a memory usage problem with Android Studio? What did the AS devs say when you brought this issue to their attention?