diff --git a/pkgs/by-name/pl/plzip/package.nix b/pkgs/by-name/pl/plzip/package.nix
index 891952e63d87..13b620b3d99d 100644
--- a/pkgs/by-name/pl/plzip/package.nix
+++ b/pkgs/by-name/pl/plzip/package.nix
@@ -30,7 +30,8 @@ stdenv.mkDerivation (finalAttrs: {
 
   enableParallelBuilding = true;
 
-  doCheck = true;
+  # throws bogus out of memory errors in tests, but the binaries work
+  doCheck = !stdenv.hostPlatform.isDarwin;
 
   meta = {
     homepage = "https://www.nongnu.org/lzip/plzip.html";