Setting Eclipse and Java application JVM heap size on Mac OS X

Posted by in Eclipse, Java, OSX on Nov 23rd, 2006 | 34 comments

The other day I kept on getting annoying “out of heap space” errors in Eclipse while running a memory intensive Java application I had written and it took a bit of searching to find the answer, so I thought I’d make a quick screencast that demonstrates how to increase the heap size of the JVM that Eclipse uses as well as how to increase the heap size allocated to your Java applications by Eclipse.

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This screencast is also available in podcast format for video iPods.

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34 Responses to “ “Setting Eclipse and Java application JVM heap size on Mac OS X”

  1. Patrick says:
    November 24, 2006 at 7:32 am

    Hi Brooks,

    which software did you use to record your screen under MacOSX?

    Thanks in advance

  2. luke says:
    November 28, 2006 at 10:10 am

    this really helped me out. thanks very much.

  3. Olga says:
    January 9, 2007 at 5:22 am

    Thank you! This was great help!

  4. caren says:
    April 17, 2007 at 3:09 am

    that was total awesome and really helped me out! thank you!

  5. gzur says:
    May 4, 2007 at 7:47 am

    Kick ass screencast. Encapsulated my problem to the letter.
    Great job.

  6. English Hentai says:
    November 14, 2007 at 6:58 pm

    Thanks. Nice info

  7. Hentai Blog says:
    November 14, 2007 at 6:59 pm

    And, by the way, what software did you use to record your screen?

  8. DLO says:
    February 3, 2008 at 5:43 pm

    Excellent! Thank you!! I’ve just bookmarked your blog site now.

  9. Brooks says:
    February 22, 2008 at 9:57 pm

    I actually used Jing to record this screencast and After Effects to add the perspective and effects.

  10. Kevin says:
    April 2, 2008 at 12:08 am

    Bravo! This solved my problem. Keep up the screencasts!

  11. john says:
    May 12, 2008 at 3:22 pm

    thanks so much, couldn’t find it as hard as i look.
    very interesting recording style, i kinda like it

  12. David K says:
    July 10, 2008 at 8:14 am

    Thank you very much, this helped me quite a bit

  13. Jason says:
    July 29, 2008 at 5:29 pm

    Thank you so much! This problem has been plaguing me all year as I’m often loading very large corpora, and everyone I’ve asked about this has directed me to the eclipse.ini file…very frustrating! Had I just found this first I could have saved myself 80+ hours of workarounds and aimless searching…

  14. ye says:
    September 2, 2008 at 2:48 am

    Thanks a lot, buddy! It really helps!!

  15. burnt says:
    January 19, 2009 at 8:12 am

    THANX! GREAT HELP!

  16. Aleksander Grande says:
    February 3, 2009 at 9:23 am

    Nice screencast, ive really had some problems, and all the answers i could find ony set the max and min for the jvm from where eclipse ran!
    Thanks a bunch!

  17. Sumiran Pradhan says:
    February 18, 2009 at 9:51 am

    Thanx man!!Helped me out a lot!!

  18. David Jameson says:
    May 12, 2009 at 10:09 pm

    I couldn’t get your screencast to play (on my Mac under Firefox) — I wish you had posted a textual explanation of what to do!

  19. Elham says:
    June 18, 2009 at 9:49 am

    Dear Brooks,
    This was awesome. You are crystal clear about the process and this is a helpful movie. My problem is the VM argument in my eclipse is not active. It is empty and I can not change it.
    Any idea?

    Thanks

  20. observer says:
    June 30, 2009 at 2:25 pm

    Thank you so much!

  21. pvremort says:
    September 25, 2009 at 8:46 am

    Thanks ! Finally a good and clear solution to the memory spaghetti in Eclipse.

  22. Troy says:
    September 29, 2009 at 2:05 pm

    Awesome vid! This was just what I was looking for.

  23. Jawad ashraf says:
    October 5, 2009 at 6:06 pm

    Dear Brooks
    I dont usually comment in forums, but the solution I was looking for many days is only given by you, not even on very technical sites. I couldnt stop myself to comment on it.
    Hats off for you.

    Thanks

  24. Adam B says:
    June 14, 2010 at 10:24 pm

    Thanks a lot. this really helped. I’m kind of a newb when it comes to java, Do you know how it works if i send this as a .jar to a friend, will he have to up his heap size too? or will the JVM do that for him automatically for .jars?

  25. Gary S says:
    July 17, 2010 at 3:58 pm

    AWESOME!!! Exactly the information I needed. Can’t thank you enough.

  26. Basim says:
    August 19, 2010 at 9:03 pm

    Thanks a million!

  27. tona says:
    August 24, 2010 at 11:12 pm

    Wow!!! I’ve been looking for this for a WHILE… thanks! everybody tells you to increase it on the eclipse.ini, but that didn’t help… thanks for explaining where to increase it to directly affect the program.

  28. John T. Vonachen says:
    December 25, 2010 at 6:36 pm

    cudos

  29. koorosh says:
    January 12, 2011 at 11:31 am

    Thanks man, you solved my problem!. It is very interesting, you posted this in 2006, its now 2011 and you are still receiving kudos for it :D

  30. dfunkt says:
    March 23, 2011 at 12:38 am

    much thanks, very helpful!

    however, i agree with David Jameson that it would be awesome if you also had a text summary…sometimes i forget my headphones, and playing videos in a very confined cube zone at work is annoying for everyone.

  31. zauhar says:
    March 13, 2012 at 3:38 pm

    Late to the party, but wanted to thank you for this great screencast. For whatever reason, the ‘vmargs’ box in run configuration was not registering, and I was trying to set the heap size on the eclipse command line…..

  32. Mike says:
    September 15, 2012 at 9:50 am

    thanks!

  33. Soundar says:
    October 26, 2012 at 5:49 am

    Thanks a lot.

  34. zbenta says:
    March 26, 2013 at 6:32 pm

    Thanks a lot for this tip, you’ve just saved my day.

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