Apple's new tablet, the iPad Pro 2021, has received rave reviews and made not one but two of our best tablets lists. Most notable among them is Apple's fast M1 chip and powerful 8GB to 16GB of internal RAM.

It is rare for Apple to state the amount of RAM built into the iPad, but the gigabytes of RAM that drive the new iPad Pros is part of the marketing, so customers now know how much raw power these tablets have. And we have learned that not all of that power is fully available, as the iPadOS limits third-party apps to about 5GB each.

This is a big problem, since the option of 16GB of RAM is a major selling point of the new iPad Pro. the memory limit that iPadOS imposes on third-party apps is a result of the M1-equipped iPad's ability to run paint apps better than The memory limitations imposed by the iPadOS on third-party apps came to light thanks to the recent Procreate update, which aims to make painting apps work better on the iPad with M1.

Procreate now runs faster and can handle more layers on the iPad Pro 2021, but when one fan asked what the new RAM limit is for the iPad Pro with 16GB built-in, the Procreate folks were the same on all M1 iPads claimed that it is the same on all M1 iPads.

"We tested the RAM limit on iOS 14.5.x, 14.6, 14.7beta, and both the iPad M1 8GB and 16GB, and in all cases the maximum amount of memory the app could allocate was exactly 5.1GB." We got this number by stress testing (allocating memory until the app crashes) and calling 'os_proc_available_memory()'.

We contacted an Apple representative to confirm this 5GB limit on RAM usage for third-party apps and asked if there were plans to change it. In the meantime, the Procreate team has promised to update the app if Apple allows the iPad Pro to use more RAM.