How to increase PHP memory limit on Mac

Problem

If you’re getting the error when running a PHP command:

Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 123456789 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 4096 bytes)

Then that means your PHP memory limit is too low:

php -i | grep memory_limit

memory_limit => 128M => 128M

To increase your PHP memory limit, you need to update the configuration file.

Find your php.ini path:

php -r 'phpinfo();' | grep php.ini

It should look like:

Configuration File (php.ini) Path => /opt/homebrew/etc/php/8.3
Loaded Configuration File => /opt/homebrew/etc/php/8.3/php.ini

Open php.ini with your text editor:

nano /opt/homebrew/etc/php/8.3/php.ini

Increase the memory_limit (e.g., 2GB):

-memory_limit = 128M
+memory_limit = 2048M

Save the file and open a new Terminal window. Verify your PHP memory limit has increased:

php -i | grep memory_limit

memory_limit => 2048M => 2048M