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Chrome Used 10X More RAM Than Safari on macOS Big Sur in Recent Test [Updated]

"But it's probably not as bad as it looks. It's not a terrible thing that an app actually uses your computer. And you've got to hand it to Chrome: it is fast!

I'm sure Chrome is going out of its way to manage its memory usage across tabs, keeping the current tab fast and responsive. That's great if you're not running any other macOS apps than Chrome, effectively using Chrome as your operating system, and macOS as a kind of bootloader.

But when you're using Sketch, Final Cut, Photoshop next to Chrome, that seems to be a problem. MacOS likely tries to tell Chrome to take it easy, and Chrome likely does take it easy. These graphs don't tell that story."
 
Apple_Robert said:
I don't want to see any ads in my browser, which I don't see with 1Blocker. I also don't like that Apple injects ads as well. If there was a way to block those, I definitely would.
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It seems a bit unethical to consume content that publishers had to work to create without helping them monetize their hard work.
 
magicschoolbus said:
I hate Chrome. I don't understand the wide adaption of this spyware.
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I use Safari and Brave on MacOS/iOS and Brave on AndroidOS. ChromeBrowser never thought to cross my mind unless we are talking about ChromeBooks and I find the earliest opportunity to install Brave after setup.
 
I don’t understand fascination with Chrome and why this garbage is so widely adopted. Chrome is not even a consideration in our household. We use Safari and Edge as browsers of choice. Before Edge, we were using Firefox.
 
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If I want gmail, Google’s office suite or I’m doing a lot of searching, I use Chrome. For everything else I use Safari on Mac and Edge on Windows. It’s a pity Apple scrapped Safari on Windows. Given Apple‘ domination in the tablet space, I think Safari could have eventually gained some traction, on Windows, had Apple taken a longer view.
 
mi7chy said:
Brave should be banned from being mentioned for violating trust.

https://decrypt.co/31522/crypto-brave-browser-redirect
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That article was from June 6th, 2020. If I remember correctly Brave has made many changes since. Yes, their were caught and apoligiesed however many larger technology firms have done similar if not worse. Let's now pretend that Google is an innocent data collection and harvesting advertisement pushing company.
 
Internaut said:
If I want gmail, Google’s office suite or I’m doing a lot of searching, I use Chrome. For everything else I use Safari on Mac and Edge on Windows. It’s a pity Apple scrapped Safari on Windows. Given Apple‘ domination in the tablet space, I think Safari could have eventually gained some traction, on Windows, had Apple taken a longer view.
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Apple's long view on WindowsOS PC's is to sell them users an iPad with Safari on it and has more power and security along with privacy than most WindowsOS PC customers are aware of what malware infects their system.

Another option is to make an AppleSilicon MacBook that is more affordable than the M1 MBA.
 
I wouldn't use Chrome anyway, though I do use Viridium occasionally to test whether Web pages work/work better in Chromium than with Webkit. Just wondering, though, do current versions of Chrome crash or hang up as often as Safari 14.0.3 in macOS 11.2.1?
 
code-m said:
That article was from June 6th, 2020. If I remember correctly Brave has made many changes since. Yes, their were caught and apoligiesed however many larger technology firms have done similar if not worse. Let's now pretend that Google is an innocent data collection and harvesting advertisement pushing company.
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Not everyone has low standards. All it takes is one broken trust with malware redirect behavior and they're out.
 
What did these guys test? A single glance at Activity Viewer shows me that Safari and it's subprocesses are using so much more than 80 MB of RAM. Some tabs use over 1.5 GB per tab!

Safari Catalina was great. Some news site on Safari/BS/Intel became so bad that I had to use Chrome. With a couple of tabs Safari became so bad that scrolling didn't work anymore. Safari/BS/M1 is better but by no means as good as Safari on Catalina.
 
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mi7chy said:
Not everyone has low standards. All it takes is one broken trust with malware redirect behavior and they're out.
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Google, FaceBook, Equifax, etc have all broken trust in major ways but hey those companies are not out of business. It seems setting the bar high for a small company and low for larger companies is say something about bias. Do I agree with what Brave have done, no. Is this a first time offence and does it effect many users. It seems it redirected users who were conducting searches for "CRYPTO CURRENCIES" to affiliate companies, without disclosure that is the problem.

Many websites online provide "reviews" of products and services while being affiliates, the decency is for full disclosure.
 
I only use Chrome when developing, better web inspector but it’s still not that great. Everything else goes to safari!
 
Well, I do use Safari and prefer it over Chrome, but I'm not sure it's all that efficient. Right now I have 2 tabs open and another 8 pinned and Safari is using 2.2 GB. It doesn't seem like it does a good job cleaning up after closed tabs.

EDIT: Quit Safari and reopened it with the same 10 tabs, it uses 440 MB.
 
Harmonious Zen said:
I'm surprised by how many people hate Chrome. Granted this is MacRumors but still. Outside of Macrumors, it feels like everyone's favorite browser is Chrome.
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It is amusing.

Chrome is not my first choice, but neither is Safari. I even have the newer Microsoft Edge on Mac and Windows. Firefox is my first, best choice, but others will complain. The tracking protection is phenomenal.

I use what's best for the moment. Safari works well with Hulu, due to its lack of privacy features. Hulu has some problems with Chrome, and barely even works at a minimum with Firefox.
 
I'm browser agnostics, so I usually have Safari, Chrome and Firefox open. I use Chrome the most, but I don't see much RAM usage beyond the normal. Firefox on the other hand remains a high user of RAM. This is on my M1. To be honest though, I've never really had a problem with RAM usage except for cases where I am using a VM. I personally macOS does exceptionally better job than Windows with RAM.

Screen Shot 2021-02-20 at 5.31.45 PM.png
 
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Original article says Safari is making his computer warmer compared to Chrome.

Also as others mentioned, the article is fundamentally wrong since it failed to capture Safari’s page rendering sub processes. So... it proves nothing, really.
 
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Well, I have to say that I already abandoned Chrome for a long long time.

Safari and Brave is enough to me. Even on the Windows, I would use Edge install Brave and change it as the default browser. Hahaha.
 
Just try compiling that crap. Building Chromium for Linux takes gobs of resources and can still crash during the build. Esplain to me why people think Google knows what they're doing.
 
I'm sorry but "Big Surfari" needs work. It's pig-slow on my M1 Mac and it freezes up even when there is plenty of CPU available. I really want to like it, but I've tried quite a bit of troubleshooting, and nothing seems to help.

I'm no Google Fanboy, but Chrome on M1 is amazing for performance.
 
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