Run out of Application Memory

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My Mac keeps coming up with the same message 'Your system has run out of Application Memory'. Has anyone come up with a solution to this? As in how to get rid of this continuing message? My Mac has plenty of memory!
 

dtravis7


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MacMini M-1 MacOS Monterey, iMac 2010 27"Quad I7 , MBPLate2011, iPad Pro10.5", iPhoneSE
What are your Mac's Specs and what version of OSX is this? I would bet it's 10.9 Mavericks or 10.10 Yosemite.
 
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10.9 but, am able to upgrade to Yosemite. Would you suggest the upgrade? And do you have any suggestion to get rid of the message 'Your system has run out of application memory' then a 'Force Quit' a bunch of applications as: Safari, Mail, Finder - most of the time I am not running any of them!
 

pigoo3

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2017 15" MBP, 16gig ram, 1TB SSD, OS 10.15
Need a lot more in the way of specs. Such as how much ram does your computer have?

- Nick
 

bobtomay

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15" MBP '06 2.33 C2D 4GB 10.7; 13" MBA '14 1.8 i7 8GB 10.11; 21" iMac '13 2.9 i5 8GB 10.11; 6S
How much memory do you have in the machine and what application(s) are you trying to use when you get the message?
And how much free / used space on the hard drive?
 
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Apparently this is an ongoing problem with Macs.....I have read other forums where users are encountering the very same problem! Their comment is that 'Apple NEEDS to fix this problem'.
 

dtravis7


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I will ask again., what Mac is this? How much RAM (Memory) does it have? We need to know to help you.

Click on the Apple in the Top Left corner and let us know all the specs listed there.
 
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According to my MBA information:
Available memory: 90.67 GB free
Capacity: 120.47 GB

is that the info you're requesting?
 

dtravis7


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No that is not Memory but the drive size. Memory is RAM. It will be on the Apple menu under About This Mac.

I would almost bet you have 4GB or less and on the AIR you are stuck with it as the RAM is not upgradeable.
 

dtravis7


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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.
 

dtravis7


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I saw in another thread you posted something about Norton. If you have that thing installed, Uninstall it. It's a MEMORY HOG! :D
 

bobtomay

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Def get rid of Norton - that could solve the issue by itself.

On my MBA under 10.8 & 10.9 with only 4 GB of memory, I did use a memory cleaner to dump unused memory when I needed to vs rebooting all the time. I have been able to get rid of that under 10.10. Yosemite's memory management is greatly improved for those of us that have machines which are hardware limited to 4 GB RAM.
 

dtravis7


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Bob, reason I said what i did is I have a friend with an iMac with 6GB. with 10.9 he started getting that out of memory message. He went to 10.10 and I believe he is still complaining about it. Will ask him. I have never gotten the message here with even 10.9 on the same iMac he has.
 

dtravis7


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What I would do to try what Bob said is make a Time Machine backup of your current setup. Then upgrade and see if the situation running out of RAM improves. If so leave it be. If not, boot to the recover and restore from the Time Machine backup.

Do you have an external hard drive?
 

dtravis7


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On the memory cleaner question, not sure what Bob is using but I was using iMemoryCleaner which is free if I remember right on the App Store. I have never used it with Yosemite.
 

Slydude

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How many programs do you have open at one time? If numerous applications are showing up in the Force Quit box then they are open and haven't bee quit. The red dot in the left side of the window doesn't quit the program it merely closes the open window for that program.
 
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Depends on the model which is still not known. If possible upgrade to at least 8GB of memory before moving anywhere. And in short, if it runs Mavericks it will run Yosemite. And hard drive space is getting very low. Most recommend 20% free space for the drive to work anywhere near efficiently.

And remember, backup to an external drive before upgrading.
 

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