# Homey Pro running out of RAM: apps fail with "Not Enough Memory Left To Start App". The core's memory use has nearly doubled across firmware updates (with 23 months of data) **URL:** \ **Category:** Questions & Help\ **Tags:** homey-pro\ **Created:** [November 8, 2026, 10:44pm UTC](https://community.homey.app/t/homey-pro-running-out-of-ram-apps-fail-with-not-enough-memory-left-to-start-app-the-cores-memory-use-has-nearly-doubled-across-firmware-updates-with-23-months-of-data/161972 "2026-11-08T22:44:14Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 2\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![guglez](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex025/user_avatar/community.homey.app/guglez/32/97989_2.png) [@guglez](https://community.homey.app/u/guglez)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2026, 10:44pm UTC](https://community.homey.app/t/homey-pro-running-out-of-ram-apps-fail-with-not-enough-memory-left-to-start-app-the-cores-memory-use-has-nearly-doubled-across-firmware-updates-with-23-months-of-data/161972/1 "2026-11-08T22:44:14Z")
Hi all / Athom team, I’m getting fed up with this, so I’ve brought data instead of only complaining. My Homey Pro (2023, ~1.9 GB RAM) has reached the point where apps fail to start with **“Not Enough Memory Left To Start App”** (exit code / signal: Unknown). This week the **Matter Bridge app (Athom’s own app)** went down and stayed down. I got no notification. I only found out because Matter devices stopped responding. To get it running again I had to disable three other apps. Around the same time, on Oct 29, Homey reboted, by itself or I did that I do not remember, (no firmware update that day). After the reboot my syslog/logging app didn’t come back properly, and I lost **10 days of logs** without any warning. ![1-free-ram-and-swap](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex025/uploads/athom/original/3X/f/f/fffd073154b684c3d231be3ceb053993bde822a4.png) ![2-homey-core-memory](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex025/uploads/athom/original/3X/c/b/cbcf00f7934641888d9e3f9ba4cb53494a02c668.png) ![3-apps-before-after-12.9.0](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex025/uploads/athom/original/3X/f/f/ff530909dc6150b1decad5bc880f69ec2421f314.png) ![4-top-apps-now](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex025/uploads/athom/original/3X/4/0/40cf299ce4049f5ea034b20909947d5a19734423.png) I’ve been scraping Homey’s memory stats into Prometheus/VictoriaMetrics since December 2024 (per-process memory, free RAM, swap, firmware version). I installed nearly every firmware update the day it was released. Here’s what the data shows: | Period / firmware | Apps | Homey core | All apps | Free RAM | Swap used | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Dec 2024 – v12.2.1 | 36 | 283 MB | 986 MB | ~440 MB | ~40 MB | | Nov 2025 – v12.8.2 | 43 | 349 MB | 1238 MB | ~367 MB | ~335 MB | | **Nov 25, 2025 – v12.9.0** | **43 (same)** | **489 MB** | **1430 MB** | **~160 MB** | **~760 MB** | | Jun 2026 – v13.2.1 | 47 | 536 MB | 1551 MB | ~148 MB | ~880 MB | | Oct/Nov 2026 – v13.5.x | 52 | ~520–535 MB | ~1850 MB | ~100–120 MB | **~1.1–1.2 GB** | (Values are medians over each firmware’s lifetime.) What stands out: 1. **v12.9.0 was a step change.** I had the same 43 apps before and after the update and changed nothing else. Overnight: 2. **The core keeps growing.** The Homey process itself went from **283 MB (12.2.1) to ~530 MB (13.5.x)**, nearly double, on top of the 12.9.0 jump. I don’t control this part. It’s yours. 3. **Swap is now 1.1–1.2 GB on a 1.9 GB device.** Free RAM is ~100 MB, with dips to 60–70 MB. That’s not a healthy margin, and I doubt so much swapping is good for the internal storage either. 4. **Matter Bridge (Athom’s own app) is the biggest app on my Homey at ~125–135 MB.** That’s more than twice the size of any third-party app I run. And it was the one that couldn’t get memory to start. To be fair: I did add apps over these two years (36 → 52). But the jump at 12.9.0 happened with **zero** app changes, and the core process alone has grown by ~250 MB. My apps didn’t cause that. **What I’m asking for** First and foremost: **please reduce the memory footprint of the firmware and of your own apps.** The core process has nearly doubled, 12.9.0 made every app heavier overnight, and Matter Bridge alone needs ~130 MB. That’s where the RAM went, and it’s in Athom’s hands, not mine. I know the newer Homey Pro has twice the RAM. But buying a new, expensive hub every couple of years just because each firmware update needs more memory isn’t an option for me, and I don’t think it should be the answer for anyone. The hardware I bought should keep running the setup it was sold for. Beyond fixing the regressions, here are a few ideas that would give existing owners room to grow: - **Pair Homey Pro with a Homey Self-Hosted Server.** Let the Pro handle the radios (Zigbee, Z-Wave, Matter/Thread, IR/433) and local devices, and let a paired Self-Hosted Server on my NAS or Linux box run the heavy cloud/LAN apps. Ideally, Homey Pro owners would get the Self-Hosted Server license free or at a big discount, since we’ve already paid for the hub. - **Or, more simply, offload individual apps.** An official Docker image that runs selected apps on a Synology, Linux server or Raspberry Pi and connects back to Homey over the LAN. Flows and devices stay on Homey; only the app process moves. - **Hibernate idle apps.** Apps like Email, Public Holidays or Countdown sit in RAM 24/7 for a few events a day. Let apps (or users) opt into being suspended and woken on a flow trigger or a timer. - **Share one runtime between small apps.** Each app is a separate Node.js process with its own ~15–20 MB baseline. Running small, lightweight apps together in one shared process could save hundreds of MB across a typical install. - **Let me turn off core features I don’t use** , so they don’t take RAM. Video/cameras, energy, Thread/Matter controller, Insights retention, whatever is modular. - **Make memory visible and enforced:** per-app memory limits, a warning when free RAM gets low, and a clear “this app needs X MB” in the App Store before installing. - **Make crash detection reliable.** There is a flow card for app crashes, but it doesn’t fire reliably. Matter Bridge was dead for days before I noticed. Failed starts should notify me and retry automatically once memory frees up. - Built-in remote syslog. Let me send Homey’s own system logs to an external log server: firmware events, reboots and their reason, app crashes, failed app starts, out-of-memory kills. Right now this depends on a third-party app that runs on the same overloaded Homey, so it dies exactly when I need it most. A native syslog target in settings, independent of apps, would make problems like this visible and much easier to report to you. - If none of this is possible, at least offer a **fair trade-in/upgrade program** for existing Homey Pro owners. I like Homey and want to keep using it. But right now every firmware update leaves less room for my apps, and when the RAM runs out, things break silently. I’d really like to know whether Athom sees this trend and plans to do something about it. Happy to share graphs or the raw data if it helps. Full disclosure: I used an AI assistant to pull these numbers out of my own Prometheus/VictoriaMetrics and Elastic data, make the charts, and help with my English. All data comes from my own Homey, and I checked the numbers and the text myself. ---
**Author:** ![guglez](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex025/user_avatar/community.homey.app/guglez/32/97989_2.png) [@guglez](https://community.homey.app/u/guglez)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2026, 10:47pm UTC](https://community.homey.app/t/homey-pro-running-out-of-ram-apps-fail-with-not-enough-memory-left-to-start-app-the-cores-memory-use-has-nearly-doubled-across-firmware-updates-with-23-months-of-data/161972/2 "2026-11-08T22:47:05Z")
Prof that matter app can’t start anymore: ![IMG_0523.PNG](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex025/uploads/athom/original/3X/9/7/971d763bfb3ac98f1f8be82651cea830f9122629.jpeg)