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Safari 5.1 Memory Leak in Lion

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_4 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8K2 Safari/6533.18.5)

I like the new Safari but in still not using it. I can't stand the memory problems.

It's pretty bad that Apple is forcing me to use Chrome instead if their shiny new Safari
 
aeaglex07 said:
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_4 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8K2 Safari/6533.18.5)

I like the new Safari but in still not using it. I can't stand the memory problems.

It's pretty bad that Apple is forcing me to use Chrome instead if their shiny new Safari
Click to expand...

I can't use Chrome, I dislike the fullscreen support and it seems slower than safari regardless of memory problems.
 
Safari has always had memory leaks, but 5.1 seems to be better - for me.

I have no plug-ins installed, so maybe that is why. I really like the new Safari.
 
Indeed Safari 5.1 has major memory problems my Lion MBA is consuming memory like crazy, the fact is that this problem is not limited to Lion.

On my SL machine which has 8 GB RAM safari was open for the day about 8 hrs or so around 3 (websites) tabs open and I was editing my a video and I was using swap which normally does not happen, so I went ahead and checked the resources with Activity monitor and I was shocked to see the safari using just over 2 GB......... with just 3 tabs opened..... it's just crazy.
 
ranjitb said:
Indeed Safari 5.1 has major memory problems my Lion MBA is consuming memory like crazy, the fact is that this problem is not limited to Lion.

On my SL machine which has 8 GB RAM safari was open for the day about 8 hrs or so around 3 (websites) tabs open and I was editing my a video and I was using swap which normally does not happen, so I went ahead and checked the resources with Activity monitor and I was shocked to see the safari using just over 2 GB......... with just 3 tabs opened..... it's just crazy.
Click to expand...

Can you verify if this still happens after you disable all your extensions?
Same thing happened to me, in my case I only had the youtube5 extension enabled so I disabled it and was able to open up to 24 tabs, 12 of those were with websites loaded with lots of flash content.
 
I am so glad I found this thread !

I thought I was the only one going mad about this issue, but it seems that ALOT of people are experiencing the same thing !

I was running 2GB DDR3 RAM in my Macbook Pro, upgraded to Lion and was very laggy, so decided to bump the memory to 8GB DDR3, to which I was pleased about, until I tested Safari and it has slowed everything right down !

Checked Activity Monitor through Memory Usage, and Safari together with Safari Web Content was using close to 800MB ?!

APPLE, PLEASE FIX THIS PROBLEM !
 
I´m experiencing the same issues with Safari. For now i disabled AdBlock, we will see if this will fix it or not.
 
I've been experiencing the apparently memory leaks and slow-downs some people have reported here.

I just tried switching to integrated graphics (using gfxcardstatus), see my Mac model in my signature, and the stuttering immediately disappeared. Does seem to be a combination of a memory leak (the same one that Safari has always had... :mad:) and dodgy graphics drivers.
 
coredumped said:
I disabled all my extensions, problem solved
Click to expand...

I don't even have any extensions installed in Safari, and it is still bloody slow and laggy !

Marcbook, that is a good idea, will give the Graphics switch a go and see if that helps, ill switch over to the shared card as well and see how I go
 
I tried enabling and disabling extensions and the difference is not that noticeable.

Since RAM usage accumulates, I believe it is something related to cache.
When I see a video (720p trailer from Apple Trailers), close and reopen the same page, the video will be there already cached. If the video is HD, expect many MB for a few minute video and your RAM is gone.
 
miknos said:
Since RAM usage accumulates, I believe it is something related to cache.When I see a video (720p trailer from Apple Trailers), close and reopen the same page, the video will be there already cached. If the video is HD, expect many MB for a few minute video and your RAM is gone.
Click to expand...

Have you verified this in the activity monitor?
 
Start listing what we have in common..no leak on C2D MBP

This has to be something other than Safari itself, as installed. I have Lion on a brand new i7 MBP with 8GB that I use all the time, and it will shrink to 20MB free memory all the time.

I installed Lion on my old C2D MBP with 4GB (and the old nVidia card) and almost no extra programs installed besides MS Office'11, and I can't open enough tabs or plugins to get it below 2GB free with 300-400MB used by Safari's processes or kernaltask.

What software does everyone have installed? Adobe Suite? Apple Pro stuff (Final Cut, etc)? Java stuff like ThinkDesk (Think or Swim) or JDownloader? Transmission? Is FaceTime hooked up to accept calls while it's off? Anyone want to admit to frequenting any sites that may have some kind of mac viral deal we don't know about (hey I'm in no position to judge, trust me)?

I wouldn't be surprised if it's some piece of Adobe garbage that's doing it...that suite scatters files all over your computer that send data back to it from like 3 dozen angles...LilSnitch got a workout.
I also wouldn't be surprised if it's something that all the unibodys have, like the graphics switching (but you think a leak like this would have come up during the beta testing).

Gestures...external hard drives (FW800?USB?)...SSD boot drives (OCZ? OWC? OEM?)...etc.
What do we all have in common guys? List it out.
(Especially if we all have SSDs of some kind as the boot drive in the affected computer. Perhaps Apple did something different with the swap file w/ SSDs or something. I don't know how to check that besides running 'top' in Terminal and watching the copious paging when it gets down below 100MB free.)

Thanks much
 
Last edited:
Same problems. I disabled all my extensions and all's fixed. Added back some extensions and degradation reoccurred. Disabled all extensions again. Fixed!
 
craigseverance said:
Same problems. I disabled all my extensions and all's fixed. Added back some extensions and degradation reoccurred. Disabled all extensions again. Fixed!
Click to expand...

I can't comment on your situation, but for me, disabling extensions only slowed the memory leak. It still occurs and accumulates just as much, but just at a slower rate.
 
no problems here...

Did a Safari stress test of sorts last night. Had 98 tabs open with 25 downloads rolling, and just climbed over 1.2 GB of memory used. I was impressed. With 2 user accounts open and surfing in the 2nd user account, Safari seemed a bit faster and more stable than with SL. 2009 i7 16gb btw... Adblock, and ClickToFlash enabled.

I was noticing all kinds of weird glitches in Lion and Safari for a couple days before I repaired permissions. Since then it's been mostly smooth sailing...
 
miknos said:
I tried enabling and disabling extensions and the difference is not that noticeable.

Since RAM usage accumulates, I believe it is something related to cache.
When I see a video (720p trailer from Apple Trailers), close and reopen the same page, the video will be there already cached. If the video is HD, expect many MB for a few minute video and your RAM is gone.
Click to expand...

That's an interesting theory. As I stated above I had no problems, BUT I did clear the cache after every 25 downloads (seems to keeps the downloads flowing). Maybe that's relevant.
 
NeverEnuf81 said:
This has to be something other than Safari itself, as installed. I have Lion on a brand new i7 MBP with 8GB that I use all the time, and it will shrink to 20MB free memory all the time.

I installed Lion on my old C2D MBP with 4GB (and the old nVidia card) and almost no extra programs installed besides MS Office'11, and I can't open enough tabs or plugins to get it below 2GB free with 300-400MB used by Safari's processes or kernaltask.

What software does everyone have installed? Adobe Suite? Apple Pro stuff (Final Cut, etc)? Java stuff like ThinkDesk (Think or Swim) or JDownloader? Transmission? Is FaceTime hooked up to accept calls while it's off? Anyone want to admit to frequenting any sites that may have some kind of mac viral deal we don't know about (hey I'm in no position to judge, trust me)?

I wouldn't be surprised if it's some piece of Adobe garbage that's doing it...that suite scatters files all over your computer that send data back to it from like 3 dozen angles...LilSnitch got a workout.
I also wouldn't be surprised if it's something that all the unibodys have, like the graphics switching (but you think a leak like this would have come up during the beta testing).

Gestures...external hard drives (FW800?USB?)...SSD boot drives (OCZ? OWC? OEM?)...etc.
What do we all have in common guys? List it out.
(Especially if we all have SSDs of some kind as the boot drive in the affected computer. Perhaps Apple did something different with the swap file w/ SSDs or something. I don't know how to check that besides running 'top' in Terminal and watching the copious paging when it gets down below 100MB free.)

Thanks much
Click to expand...

You'd be wrong. It's Safari.
 
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