“your system has run out of application memory” on macOS Tahoe

November 10, 2025

I’ve been getting occasional “your system has run out of application memory” since I upgraded to macOS Tahoe. I’ve casually tried to fix it, but hadn’t found any good solutions until now.

The main clue: mds_stores using much much more memory than any other process. The solution: the caches this process is building became corrupt at some point during the macOS 26 betas and now the process just can’t get over that hump to finish them up. The solution is to delete the stores.

sudo mdutil -X /; sudo mdutil -X /System/Volumes/Preboot; sudo mdutil -X /System/Volumes/Data

After running this restart. Boom, no more out of control mds_stores.

Thanks to ZodiacPigeon on Reddit for the secret command.

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