Stop "your system has run out of application memory" pop up

Solution 1:

This happens when your boot volume is almost completely full and your current workload has overflowed your physical memory, causing some of it to get swapped out to disk.

This is a dangerous condition because many user and system processes were not designed or tested under out-of-space conditions and frequently end up corrupting data.

To avoid system slowdown and crashes at best, and data loss at worst, you must immediately:

  1. Quit as many apps as possible.
  2. (Optional but highly recommended) Reboot into Recovery and run Disk First Aid on your boot volume to fix any corruption that may have occurred.
  3. Free up space on your drive. Try to keep at least 10% free at all times. This will prevent a recurrence of the issue and also reduce file fragmentation as a bonus.
  4. You may (in addition to #3 which is absolutely necessary in all cases) want to invest in upgrading to more DRAM if your system is capable of it. It sounds like your workflow frequently exceeds physical memory and this would help reduce slowdowns due to swap.