Run out of Application Memory

sailor#1 · Aug 13, 2016

It sounds as though Yahoo is saving a humongous amount of past or deleted emails. I don't deal with Yahoo but can you check it's settings for saving past mail messages? Or, can you access the deleted and/or spam string to delete all those long past? If you look in your library to find Yahoo and check the size of your mail files this may give you a clue. Just a thought.

Good luck and cheers...

8 macs mom · Aug 26, 2017

not enough application memory

dtravis7 said:
How many things do you have running when you get that out of Application Memory message? That message started with Mavericks. Before that OSX never gave that message.

Installing Yosemite would not help in this case as you are running out of memory thus the message.

I also am getting this message. I am running El Capitan and have 16 gb of memory. I have no applications running except Finder. And I am still getting this warning. I am also getting one that says my startup drive is full though I still have 25gb still free.

pm-r · Aug 26, 2017

I am also getting one that says my startup drive is full though I still have 25gb still free.

That amount of free space is starting to get into the minimum area and you may want to do yourself and you Mac a favor and do something about it.

Lots of suggestions out there like:
http://osxdaily.com/2016/02/06/mac-startup-disk-almost-full-message-fix/
and
https://macpaw.com/how-to/startup-disk-full-on-mac-os-x
etc.

As for your "getting that out of Application Memory message", have a look at some of the hits for some suggestions as it may relate to you and your Mac and how it's being used:
https://www.google.ca/search?client...&oe=UTF-8&gfe_rd=cr&ei=ufGhWbf3Jeve8AfMrrzYCA

- Patrick
======

Rod · Aug 26, 2017

In a nutshell, it it advisable to have about 20% of your storage free for system activity. So if you have a 512gb HD you need around 100gb free. 25gb is 20% of 125 so if you only have a 128gb HD this should be enough. If however you have 250gb it is not.
If you need to free up storage the first things to look at are media, in particular visual media like movies which can easily take up 4gb or more each.

Randy B. Singer · Aug 28, 2017

Rod Sprague said:
In a nutshell, it it advisable to have about 20% of your storage free for system activity.

I cover this in quite a bit of depth here:

Macintosh OS X Routine Maintenance
http://www.macattorney.com/ts.html
Item #5 and Note #1

I should note that the "Running Out Of Application Memory" warning can have nothing at all to do with RAM. I've seen it many times where the user's hard drive was too full, or too fragmented, or both. Applications often need a good amount of contiguous hard drive space to work with for caches, databases, scratch space, etc.

8 macs mom · Aug 28, 2017

Rod Sprague said:
In a nutshell, it it advisable to have about 20% of your storage free for system activity. So if you have a 512gb HD you need around 100gb free. 25gb is 20% of 125 so if you only have a 128gb HD this should be enough. If however you have 250gb it is not.
If you need to free up storage the first things to look at are media, in particular visual media like movies which can easily take up 4gb or more each.

Thank you for your response. Here's a bit more:
My mac has 2 hard drives - a 256gb flash drive (I'll call it HD) and a 2T hard drive (I'll call it HD2) with 16gb memory. Originally it was set up to put all music/photos/movies on HD2. But over time, those have sometimes gotten stored on the HD. About 70-75 gb of HD says it is movies/photos/audio. Save going through every file one-by-one, how can I tell which ones are stored where? Finder shows the HD2 so I can see what is on it. But where is place that displays the HD's content? When I go through photos, one is on HD and another is on HD2. Same with music. I'd love to just move them in bulk! And how can I set it up going forward to store them in their correct places?

pm-r · Aug 28, 2017

When I go through photos, one is on HD and another is on HD2. Same with music.
…
And how can I set it up going forward to store them in their correct places?

To save a lot of typing and also reinventing the wheel, I'd suggest reading some of the hit from a google search such as these:
COMBINE mac itunes library
https://www.google.ca/search?client...&oe=UTF-8&gfe_rd=cr&ei=r3CkWYSJNOXe8AeVyLP4AQ
and
COMBINE mac photo library
https://www.google.ca/search?client...&oe=UTF-8&gfe_rd=cr&ei=gHCkWbnRHuXe8AeVyLP4AQ

PS: Make a backup or your existing data first and then keep them disconnected while you get things sorted out.

PPS: You may want to turn off Time Machine and any associated iCloud sharing stuff until you get things sorted out properly.

- Patrick
======