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Illustrator Using Excessive Memory on M4 Mac Mini Causing "System Has Run Out of Application Memory" Error

Forum|Forum|11 months ago
May 21, 2025
3 replies
394 views

What is going on. with Ilustrator? I'm on the latest version of Illustrator and the Mac OS, on a barnd new M4 Mac MIni and apparantly Illustrator is using 149GB of memory! This is happening all the time. Does anyone know what I can do about this?

Performance

Correct answer WTHARDIN

@Anubhav M It appears that by completely uninstalling all CC apps using the Adobe removal tool, rebooting and reinstalling that the situation has been corrected.

R

richardesignerUKAuthor

Inspiring

Hi WTHARDIN. So did uninstalling and re-installing sort out this problem ? Also did you keep your pre-existing prefs or did you start again from scratch?

R

richardesignerUKAuthor

Inspiring

Just happened again on my Mac. It’s bizarre. As I’m looking at this window the apps keep pinging up ’(Paused)’. It's the weirdest thing. Had to force quit everything before I could do a re-start.

Harshika Verma

Community Manager

Hi richardesignerUK,

We’re really sorry for the continued frustration. We completely understand how frustrating this must be, especially since you’ve been experiencing it for some time. We truly appreciate your patience while we work toward a resolution.

To assist you more effectively, could you please share your Adobe ID, phone number, location, and a convenient time to reach you on weekdays via DM with me or @Anubhav M? We’ll take ownership of this and do our best to arrange a support session with our team to help you further.

We look forward to your response so we can move forward and resolve this as quickly as possible.

Thanks,
Harshika

Abhishek Rao

Community Manager

Hi @richardesignerUK,

Thanks for reaching out. That sounds really frustrating, especially on such a powerful new Mac Mini! To help troubleshoot, could you please confirm the exact versions of Illustrator and macOS you're using? Also, does the high memory usage happen right when you launch Illustrator, or only after opening a document? If it's with a document, does it occur with all files or just a specific one?

Please try resetting Illustrator's preferences, but be sure to back up your preferences before doing so. Here's how: https://adobe.ly/438BDan. After resetting, check if the memory usage improves.

Also, try running the system in Safe Mode and test with a new local admin user account to rule out system- or user-specific issues. Here are the references:

https://adobe.ly/43qIudY
https://adobe.ly/4mwgHSm

Let me know how it goes or if anything changes after trying these steps.

I'm here to help and look forward to your update!

Abhishek

R

richardesignerUKAuthor

Inspiring

Hi Abhishek,

This is still happening. I left my Mac Mini the other day and came back to see this on my screen. Unfortunately I wasnt able to save any of my open files as I literally had to force quite everything to get my Mac working again (had to do a restart). What is going on? I’m on a M4 Mac mini (2024) with 24GB memory. Using Tahoe 26.3.1 and Illustrator 30.2.1.

Abhishek Rao

Community Manager

Hi @richardesignerUK,

Sorry to hear that you still experience this issue. Thanks for sharing the system details.

Could you please check if Illustrator and the Creative Cloud Desktop app have Full Disk Access enabled on your Mac? You can do this by going to System Settings, then going to Privacy & Security and selecting Full Disk Access. Click the lock icon to authenticate, then use the + button to add Illustrator and Creative Cloud Desktop if they are not already listed. After adding them, restart the Mac and check if the issue improves.

If it still happens, please try reinstalling the Creative Cloud components. Close all Adobe apps, then remove the Creative Cloud Desktop app, CCLibrary, and CoreSync using the Creative Cloud Cleaner Tool: https://adobe.ly/4mkYJCc. After that, reinstall the Creative Cloud Desktop app from https://adobe.ly/43fQrCS and relaunch Illustrator.

Let me know how it goes, and I will be happy to look into it further.

Abhishek

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