Participant

Low memory warning on brand new computer. Cache has beeen cleared, but nothing helps. 100GB of cache. Apple M5 MAx 64GB RAM - 52GB availble for AE

Forum|Forum|1 month ago
June 21, 2026
4 replies
68 views

AE is unusable. All solutions online are not working. What is going on?

I have hardly been pushing the program to it’s limits and it pretty useless right now.

Cache size is 100GB. It has been cleared. Bin emptied. Comp restarted. AE updated. Purged all memory and dish cache.

KingSlimRon666Author

Participant

Thank you all for the tips. I wasn’t aware I was able to run AE in safe mode, will give that a try.

I have now got AE back up and running having cleared the low memory code. I thinking it must have been a third party plugin, but have not had time to find out which one yet. It was preventing playback on all sequences but after clearing the cache and doing a few other steps to clean things up I discovered other sequence would now playback. As soon as I narrowed it down to one sequence I deleted that sequence and all seem to be working again. When I get time I’ll look into it further to try nail down the plugin causing the trouble.

For the record this was happening in After Effects 26.3.0 (Build 87). Dish cache is set to 100GB on a local internal SSD.

I really appreciate the help from you all. I now need to go away and learn about leaking RAM etc, but for now at least I can get on with the project!

Warren Heaton

Community Expert

@KingSlimRon666:

This sounds really frustrating.

I’d take a close look at things that tend to cause this type of unexpected behavior like third-party plugins, extensions, and add-ons.

Safe Mode will disable those (After Effects > Settings > Repair Options > Start in Safe Mode...). I’d try working a little bit in Safe Mode and if that’s working as expected then use the Effects Manager (Effects > Manage Effects) to load sets of third-party plugs-ins by publisher.

The Disk Cache should fill up (that’s to be expected), but you could try disabling it during troubleshooting.

- Warren

Henry_Collins

Participating Frequently

A brand-new machine with 64GB RAM shouldn't be throwing low-memory warnings under a light AE workload. I'd check Activity Monitor first to see if another process is consuming memory or if After Effects itself is leaking RAM. Also make sure your media cache is on a fast local drive and that AE's RAM allocation settings haven't been misconfigured.

Nishu Kushwaha

Community Manager

Hi KingSlimRon666, sorry you're hitting this low memory.

Can you share the following details?

1. Your exact After Effects version (Help > About).

2. Your macOS version.

3. Does it happen on a brand new empty project, or only on a specific project? If specific, what's in it (3D content, EXR sequences, heavy effects, third-party plugins)?

4. A screenshot of the actual low memory warning, and what's happening in Activity Monitor when it appears.

In the meantime, Roberto Tafuro shared a set of workarounds that have helped Windows users. Can you try them and see if they are helpful for you:

Let me know how it goes.

Thanks,

Nishu

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