Manually Changing the beaTunes Memory Configuration on OS X

Starting with beaTunes 4, you should be prompted by beaTunes to increase the heap size, should it be necessary.

To force a larger heap, without prior prompt, you can enter the following command in Terminal.app:

defaults write -app beaTunes4 /com/tagtraum/beatunes/ -dict-add JVMOptions/ '{"-Xmx"="-Xmx2G";}'

This will set the max heap to 2GB. If you want to grant even more memory, use values like "-Xmx3G" or "-Xmx4G". Please be careful! Any typos for these values will cause beaTunes to not start anymore.

Note that for beaTunes5 you need to adjust the line to:

defaults write -app beaTunes5 /com/tagtraum/beatunes/ -dict-add JVMOptions/ '{"-Xmx"="-Xmx2G";}'

You can verify the current memory settings in the About dialog.

beaTunes 3

The following recipe is for beaTunes3 on OSX with Apple's Java 6. It will not work for beaTunes4 or the bundled Java 7. If you don't know, what you are using, check beaTunes' About dialog. Starting with beaTunes 3.5.14, the dialog also shows your currently configured minimum and maximum heap sizes under Memory.

If you repeatedly run into OutOfMemoryErrors, and other remedies don't help, you might want to manually change beaTunes' memory configuration.

To do so, you have to edit two files with a simple text editor like TextEdit.

But before you do anything else, make sure you have shut down beaTunes.

Both files are located in the beaTunes3 application bundle. To get to them, CTRL-click (or right-click) on the beaTunes3 application in Finder and select Show Package Contents. This will open a new Finder window with the contents of the application bundle. In this window open the Contents folder.

The Contents folder contains two files. One named Info.plist, another named Info.plist.template.

1. Open Info.plist with TextEdit (e.g. through CTRL-click, Open With).
   
2. Find the line containing <key>VMOptions</key> ( not <key>JVMOptions</key> )
   
3. In the next line, find the parameter that starts with -Xmx
   
4. This parameter specifies the maximum heap size of the Java beaTunes3 process. By changing this parameter you can grant more or less memory to beaTunes. Typically this parameter is less than 1000m, meaning less than 1000 megabytes.
   
5. Change the -Xmx parameter to a higher value, e.g. to -Xmx1500m
   
6. Save the file

In older 3.5.x versions of beaTunes, you need to also edit the second file, i.e. Info.plist.template. If this file does not exist in your version, don't worry about it:

1. Open Info.plist.template with TextEdit.
   
2. Find the line containing <key>VMOptions</key>
   
3. In the next line, find the parameter -Xmx${vm.memory.heap.max}
   
4. Replace the whole expression with the same parameter you used in Info.plist, e.g. -Xmx1500m.
   
5. Save the file

One thing to keep in mind when changing the -Xmx parameter is, that you cannot assign more memory to beaTunes than your system has to offer. E.g. granting beaTunes a value of 4000m does not make any sense on a system with only 2GB of RAM.

After you saved both files, start using beaTunes with the changed settings.

For Windows, please see here