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

MR should pull this article. They are putting the spotlight on a flawed test run by a competing web browser.

That said I am definitely a Chrome fan boy. I might consider switching to Safari if they ever support multiple 'People' or users/profiles that Chrome has. Safari would also have to be available on Windows with the ability to sync the same browser user/profiles. Until then, Chrome makes managing my job at least 10x faster.
 
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Absolutely embarrassing that this article was written and posted, the finding makes absolutely no sense and a quick check of activity monitor would confirm it. Like, seriously, every single website up takes an identical miniscule amount of RAM which stays constant regardless of the tab number? Not to mention that every single person in this thread had to endure the stupid "this page is taking up too much memory" warnings.

Even more embarrassing than the article is the response of the majority, who accepted the completely nonsensical news without even a tiny bit of doubt since it confirmed their "Apple best" belief. And even many confirmations that the finding is false and incorrect most still argue as if the findings are true.
 
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Haha can’t it be more obvious?
But I don’t think the difference is 10x.
More like 2x or so. 10x doesn’t really make a lot of sense.
 
This is too bad because I was thinking about switching to Chrome from Safari.
Big Sur has crippled Safari. It's awful
 
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But what about battery drain? I have the feeling my MacBook Pro gets emptied much faster via Chrome, but that's just my feeling. I try to avoid using Chrome when on battery. But as some posters said before, there's a whole lot of websites that do not run well (or at all) on Safari.
 
Would the results be similar or the same if they used any other chromium-based browser, such as Brave or Edge? Or is is it specific to Chrome?
 
I'm not a big fan of Chrome.

The fastest browser I've used recently is Edge - an order of magnitude faster than Safari. I'd use it in a heartbeat IF it integrated with the Keychain :/ That integration in Safari is so helpful it tips the balance for me, even given the relative performance impact.
 
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I loved using Safari on my M1 MBA but I got tired of Safari making my laptop crash and restart. It never does this while I'm using Chrome.

Come on Apple, fix this annoying crap!
 
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Firstly, I don’t use chrome. I’ve always been a Safari user since it’s inception.

Secondly, I’d bet Safari shares a lot of dependencies with other mac apps. Meaning, relying on more frameworks and resources built into macOS (like how iTunes on Windows required the installation of QuickTime) so I don’t think it’s a fair comparison. There’s a lot of generic processes running on macOS consuming RAM that Safari needs to be there.

Chrome runs like dog crap and it’s poorly optimized, and for all intents and purposes, and additional 10x RAM usage is exactly what it is so reasons are irrelevant, but I think these results don’t take everything into account either.
 
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I guess most people dont pay much attention to their Browser's Memory consumption .

Because those figures are simply wrong.

Why link to HN as reference? This is going to pollute HN into even worst state.
 
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MauiPa said:
Why? that makes no sense. You are allowed to use different browsers. If you want to use windows, use the one you want. Really not getting your statement
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I am so sick of managing multiple browsers. I am not going to band-aid my browser with third-party extensions and password managers to make it feel uniform.
 
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iBluetooth said:
The hard drive was made to be used - so Chrome should fill up your hard drive. Well you would probably not like that, so your statement was missing the sarcasm.
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Huh? RAM and hard drive do very different tasks. I don't get this comment.
 
I use Safari and I am more than happy with it. I do wish it had more extensions because that is the only department I prefer Chrome over Safari. If I need to use a Chrome-based browser I use Edge which I need to do to watch video from Giant Bomb since that site was causing Safari to crash.
 
The last time I opened Safari, I immediately downloaded Chrome and never opened Safari again. That was about 8 years ago.
 
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dopeytree said:
I don't understand this. My safari 14.0.3 on Big Sur 11.2.1 uses 448mb just for the app. Then each window uses between 600-300mb. So total ram usage for safari is into several GB's easily. This is on an i9 16" MacBook Pro 1TB with 4gb 5500m.
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This may be, even partially, because Safari 14 saves a preview of each tab, and that consumes memory. However, I find this feature pretty useful.
 
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