Safari taking up 3GB of RAM, being sluggish?

[bryguy393]

Hello all, recently i've noticed that after running safari for any extended period of time, it's ram usage shoots through the roof up to almost 3 GB. activity monitor shows "Safari Web Content" taking up almost 2.5 GB and Safari the rest.

However, despite it taking up a huge amount of RAM, Safari is very sluggish at times! I've noticed it on macrumors, gizmodo, Facebook, tsn.ca and a number of others. I constantly get beach balls when the page first loads and the "reload or wait" pop-up. By quitting and reopening, the size of safari web content resets, but it's still incredibly annoying and slows down again.

Anybody have this problem?

P.S. I can't submit a bug report because um, well, i didn't go the "standard way" of obtaining the beta...

(edit: screenshot attached)

[mrapplegate]

Originally Posted by bryguy393

Hello all, recently i've noticed that after running safari for any extended period of time, it's ram usage shoots through the roof up to almost 3 GB. activity monitor shows "Safari Web Content" taking up almost 2.5 GB and Safari the rest.

However, despite it taking up a huge amount of RAM, Safari is very sluggish at times! I've noticed it on macrumors, gizmodo, Facebook, tsn.ca and a number of others. I constantly get beach balls when the page first loads and the "reload or wait" pop-up. By quitting and reopening, the size of safari web content resets, but it's still incredibly annoying and slows down again.

Anybody have this problem?

P.S. I can't submit a bug report because um, well, i didn't go the "standard way" of obtaining the beta...

(edit: screenshot attached)

One word: Preview

I think it is pretty much well known that Safari is a memory hog as it stands now. Don't worry though, I have reported the Reload or Wait dialog warning for you. Standard solution for now is to quit every couple of hours.

[TheAppleDragon]

Originally Posted by mrapplegate

One word: Preview

I think it is pretty much well known that Safari is a memory hog as it stands now. Don't worry though, I have reported the Reload or Wait dialog warning for you. Standard solution for now is to quit every couple of hours.

Thank you for the suggestion. This has happened to me tons of times, unfortunately. :P

[bryguy393]

Originally Posted by mrapplegate

One word: Preview

I think it is pretty much well known that Safari is a memory hog as it stands now. Don't worry though, I have reported the Reload or Wait dialog warning for you. Standard solution for now is to quit every couple of hours.

thanks, if you could report the massive memory consumption too that'd be great. it's ridiculous. i'm lucky my MBP has 8GB of ram, but not everyone is that fortunate. there's no reason it should be taking up such an outlandish amount of memory. it's too bad, cause i like safari and have used it since day 1, but it may be time to pick a new browser... perhaps opera or SRWare Iron...

[Coolestdude]

I've had that issue as well. I switched to Chrome. I'm a Firefox user on my Windows box. With Xmarks, it doesn't really matter which browser you use as it will synchronize between many. Not to mention, most extensions seem to be ported to the different ones also. I have found a few sites that don't work in Chrome, that require Safari or FireFox.

[bryguy393]

Originally Posted by Coolestdude

I've had that issue as well. I switched to Chrome. I'm a Firefox user on my Windows box. With Xmarks, it doesn't really matter which browser you use as it will synchronize between many. Not to mention, most extensions seem to be ported to the different ones also. I have found a few sites that don't work in Chrome, that require Safari or FireFox.

if you like chrome, i recommend http://www.srware.net/en/software_srware_iron.php. exactly the same as chrome, but without sending all your data to google.

[bushido]

i noticed that as well, once i go on pages like www.redmondpie.com my safari starts to act out and nothing is working anymore. oh and the ad blocker isn't working right either, sometimes it doesn't block anything unless i uncheck and check it in the settings again

[mrapplegate]

Originally Posted by bryguy393

thanks, if you could report the massive memory consumption too that'd be great. it's ridiculous. i'm lucky my MBP has 8GB of ram, but not everyone is that fortunate. there's no reason it should be taking up such an outlandish amount of memory. it's too bad, cause i like safari and have used it since day 1, but it may be time to pick a new browser... perhaps opera or SRWare Iron...

I have 8GB on my MBP and I have seen high RAM usage after 4 or 5 hours usage sometimes, but when I notice it I just close and relaunch Safari. It is a only a preview and I am not worried about memory leaks at this time. I'm sure Apple has not optimized their apps yep, so it is just something people have to deal with.

[TMRaven]

I've had safari take up to 6gigs of ram at times. I've also had firefox take a couple gigs as well. Browsers just consume more and more ram the longer you have them open. A simple restart fixes it. Preview leaks memory as well.

[cocky jeremy]

Dang. And i thought it was bad when Safari/Opera got up to 300 MB. lol.

[sheepopo39]

3gb of ram? That's more than my Macbook's current amount of RAM.

While I haven't had any problems with Safari that I have noticed, I've noticed that Chrome is also a very large memory hog (up to 1.15gb of ram). Maybe its a webkit problem with Lion?

[emonifi]

Originally Posted by sheepopo39

3gb of ram? That's more than my Macbook's current amount of RAM.

While I haven't had any problems with Safari that I have noticed, I've noticed that Chrome is also a very large memory hog (up to 1.15gb of ram). Maybe its a webkit problem with Lion?

I believe thats just how chrome is. Every new tab is a new process, which requires more memory than a typical browser.

[bryguy393]

it appears the problem has been drastically improved in Dev Preview 3. after running for quite a while, safari now weighs in at just over 500MB and safari web content is around 300MB.
safari is much more responsive now. however it occasionally still gives a spinning beach ball, but oddly enough, when i click on the page when the beach ball is spinning it pops up with the reload warning thing for less than half a second, then it goes away, and the website appears to be completely fine. it's very odd.
still i'm now back using safari again, after a brief run with FireFox 4. let's hope safari just keeps getting better!

[bedifferent]

Safari with no extensions (Click to Flash, etc) in DP3 appears to want to reload quite often. Tried it on clean install, guest accounts, etc. Don't know why, although I like that it keeps from crashing however constantly having a window message while working is annoying.

I reported this bug, no response as of yet. Any other developers experiencing this same issue?

[mrapplegate]

Originally Posted by bedifferent

Safari with no extensions (Click to Flash, etc) in DP3 appears to want to reload quite often. Tried it on clean install, guest accounts, etc. Don't know why, although I like that it keeps from crashing however constantly having a window message while working is annoying.

I reported this bug, no response as of yet. Any other developers experiencing this same issue?

I have the same issue. I reported it in DP2, but not DP3. I have read about others reporting it, so did not for this release.

[thenewperson]

Originally Posted by bedifferent

Safari with no extensions (Click to Flash, etc) in DP3 appears to want to reload quite often. Tried it on clean install, guest accounts, etc. Don't know why, although I like that it keeps from crashing however constantly having a window message while working is annoying.

I reported this bug, no response as of yet. Any other developers experiencing this same issue?

I do have the issue. In DP1 and DP2, Safari + Safari Web Content took about 3GB (out of 4GB) of RAM and was simply unsable without a reload or restart. In DP3 it seems the RAM usage has decreased a lot but the sluggish behaviour got worse. I get much more spinning beachballs than ever before.

[one1]

I have found Safari 5.1 to be completely unusable. For the first time in my entire Mac existence (bout ten years) I have been forced to Firefox if I intend to continue evaluating DP3.

[2RedDogs]

Originally Posted by bryguy393

Hello all, recently i've noticed that after running safari for any extended period of time, it's ram usage shoots through the roof up to almost 3 GB. activity monitor shows "Safari Web Content" taking up almost 2.5 GB and Safari the rest.

However, despite it taking up a huge amount of RAM, Safari is very sluggish at times! I've noticed it on macrumors, gizmodo, Facebook, tsn.ca and a number of others. I constantly get beach balls when the page first loads and the "reload or wait" pop-up. By quitting and reopening, the size of safari web content resets, but it's still incredibly annoying and slows down again.

Anybody have this problem?

P.S. I can't submit a bug report because um, well, i didn't go the "standard way" of obtaining the beta...

(edit: screenshot attached)

I had this problem (beach balls and painfully slow) for many months using Safari (on Leopard). Yesterday I downloaded a fresh copy of Safari and didn't install Flash and now Safari is flying. Not sue how long I can last without flash, but I am highly suspicious the problem comes from Flash.

[mrapplegate]

Originally Posted by 2RedDogs

I had this problem (beach balls and painfully slow) for many months using Safari (on Leopard). Yesterday I downloaded a fresh copy of Safari and didn't install Flash and now Safari is flying. Not sue how long I can last without flash, but I am highly suspicious the problem comes from Flash.

You don't need to get a "fresh copy" of Safari to get rid of flash. Just remove it from Internet Plug-Ins.
Or follow this

First, I disabled the Flash Player and old ClickToFlash plugins. On my system, Flash Player was in the default location: /Library/Internet Plug-Ins/. I moved “Flash Player.plugin”, “flashplayer.xpt”, and “NP-PPC-Dir-Shockwave” out of that folder and into a new folder I created next to it named “Internet Plug-Ins (Disabled)”. All you need to do to disable them is move them out of /Library/Internet Plug-Ins/. I also moved ClickToFlash (“ClickToFlash.webplugin”) to this disabled plugins folder. (ClickToFlash, if you have it installed, might be in the Library/Internet Plug-Ins/ folder in your home folder, rather than at the root level of your startup drive.)

After logging out and logging back in to my user account, Flash Player is no longer available to Safari or Firefox. This is more or less the state Mac OS X is now shipping in by default. To me this is better, and in some way more honest, than using ClickToFlash. Without Flash installed, Safari effectively tells websites you visit, “Hey, I don’t have Flash installed”, which allows the sites to send alternative content. Static images instead of Flash for ads, for example. With ClickToFlash, Safari is effectively telling websites you visit, “Yes, sure, I have Flash installed,” but then not actually loading Flash content. I see far fewer “Flash missing” boxes in web pages now than I did with ClickToFlash."

[MikhailT]

How many of you upgraded from Snow Leopard? It may have carried over old stuff from SL which could slow down Safari.

The reason Safari is taking up more memory on Lion is that each tab is now a separate process (WebKit2) and that means more memory required for each tab. There’s also the cache being used for each tab when you swipe left and right to give you that animation.

Hopefully, they’ll optimize it more before the GM.

[bryguy393]

i installed lion alongside snow leopard, so nothing was carried over. it definitely still needs to be optimized, and the frequent freezes and lock ups need to be addressed.