Manually Changing the beaTunes Memory Configuration on Windows

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 Notepad.

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

Both files are located in the beaTunes3 installation directory, typically in c:\Program Files\beaTunes3

One is named beaTunes3.l4j.ini, the other is named beaTunes3.l4j.ini.template.

1. Open beaTunes3.l4j.ini with Notepad (e.g. through right-click, Open With).
2. Find the line starting with -Xmx
3. 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.
4. Change the -Xmx parameter to a higher value, e.g. to -Xmx900m
5. Save the file

To make the change permanent, you need to also edit the second file, i.e. beaTunes3.l4j.ini.template:

1. Open beaTunes3.l4j.ini.template with Notepad.
2. Find the line containing -Xmx${vm.memory.heap.max}
3. Replace the whole expression with the same parameter you used in beaTunes3.l4j.ini, e.g. -Xmx900m.
4. 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.

Also, keep in mind that beaTunes3 is a 32bit process. This implies that there is a maximal heap size allowed in your system somewhere around 1200 megabytes. If you specify a too high value, beaTunes will not start up again until you lower that value.

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

For OS X, please see here