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

Would be useful if people stopped regurgitating this flawed 'research' like it was fact.
It isn't.

The developer made an error - quite a big one - of judgement.

Also, seriously, a browser using a lot of RAM is not a bad thing at all.
You've got RAM spare? The browser will use it - and you'll get a better experience because of that.
 
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As Conan the Barbarian used to say ‘Everyone shall bow before Crom including your CPU and RAM’
 
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MikhailT said:
M1 Macs are already paging badly to disk because they don't have enough memory and people are reporting on Twitter that their SSDs already hit 200TB of data written to disk.
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Do you have a link to such a tweet or know what software they use to see that information? I ask, as I want to find out myself.
 
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Am I the last person who uses Firefox? I don't want all the Chrome tracking, even if I make the compromise of trading a bit of my soul for their free services. I am fine with Safari, but I also like synching my browser between devices with an ID other than my Apple ID or Google ID.

Safari seems better with plugins, but Firefox lets me install all kinds of blockers. Perusing news or the random blog site is practically unusable on the Internet to me without blocking cookie trackers, https restrictions, two adblockers, and specific apps to block all Facebook tracking.
 
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Dozer_Zaibatsu said:
Am I the last person who uses Firefox? I don't want all the Chrome tracking, even if I make the compromise of trading a bit of my soul for their free services. I am fine with Safari, but I also like synching my browser between devices with an ID other than my Apple ID or Google ID.

Safari seems better with plugins, but Firefox lets me install all kinds of blockers. Perusing news or the random blog site is practically unusable on the Internet to me without blocking cookie trackers, https restrictions, two adblockers, and specific apps to block all Facebook tracking.
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Firefox is not as popular anymore, but it is still updated regularly. As for Safari, I recommend the free “Hush” from the Mac App Store. It’s also available for iOS.
 
mi7chy said:
Last I checked 1Blocker doesn't block YouTube ads which Chrome + uBlock Origin do. Looking forward to the day when I can wipe subscription adware MacOS and install a different OS on my Macbook Air M1.
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Or you could pay for YouTube Premium. I know people don't like ads because they want stuff for free, but people need to depend on ads to continue to work. This is why I block ads but pay when I can. This is why I pay Macrumors for an ad free experience, and why I pay YouTube Premium for an ad free experience. That way I am still supporting the platform/accounts I watch.
 
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mi7chy said:
False. Chrome is usable on 4GB Windows 10 PC. Clean boot into Windows 10 uses <=2GB vs ~4GB+ plus on MBA M1. Linux is even better at <=1GB and lightest is ChromeOS.
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Let’s not pretend that Chrome is efficient with its RAM usage. Even Google has acknowledged the problem, and is attempting to make some adjustments to improve things on Windows:

www.techradar.com

Google Chrome update may finally stop it hogging all your RAM

New update will bring performance improvements with less RAM usage
www.techradar.com www.techradar.com
 
I run Brave which is built on Chromium and have around 30-40 tabs open normally. The memory use I'm seeing is nowhere near what the article reports. A few of the tabs are over 100 MB with the highest being 283 MB. And most of the tabs are under 100 MB. And my Safari memory usage is way higher than the article reports. While not nearly as much as Brave still much higher than claimed. Regardless, I always have both browsers running and my late 2012 Mini w/ 16 GB or ram handles it with a problem.
 
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xWhiplash said:
Or you could pay for YouTube Premium. I know people don't like ads because they want stuff for free, but people need to depend on ads to continue to work. This is why I block ads but pay when I can. This is why I pay Macrumors for an ad free experience, and why I pay YouTube Premium for an ad free experience. That way I am still supporting the platform/accounts I watch.
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Or, put the brain to work and monetize via other ways than ads which opens users up to drive-by malware and bogs down device and user experience such as alternatively through affiliate links, merchandise, patreon, etc.
 
Martin75 said:
That post is total nonsense. Yes, Safari itself always uses about 100MB of RAM, but it creates a separate process for each tab, which for me uses close to 1GB for the current MacRumors tab for example. Chrome spawns a whole bunch of subprocesses which taken together have a roughly similar memory footprint (actually slightly lower, at least on my setup).
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Wrong.
 
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preetb said:
Probably one of the reasons that Chrome is using so much RAM is that it's continually tattling on your privacy by continually going back to Google servers. So little RAM and so much to surveil.

When I installed gigabit internet, I couldn't understand why Speedtest was only showing 279 down. Then the ISP said, try doing Speedtest on Safari instead of Chrome. Sure 'nuff, the speed was 800+ down! That difference of 500+ bandwidth is going somewhere and it's got to be communication between every website, every bookmark, every favicon, every cookie and every bit of cache on your computer.
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I find your remark interesting. More and more commercial web sites are make Chrome the one and only browser that can be used. For example: Citibank and Vision Service Plan (VSP). Safari will no longer work on either of these web sites. I think part of the reason is that they can cut time in supporting two browsers instead of one. Chrome works on Mac & PC platforms. Safari and IE on only one. VSP's support has told me that the reason they went to Chrome is because Google tends to maintain security better than Safari, which I thought very strange.
 
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Stewart Gooderman said:
I find your remark interesting. More and more commercial web sites are make Chrome the one and only browser that can be used. For example: Citibank and Vision Service Plan (VSP). Safari will no longer work on either of these web sites. I think part of the reason is that they can cut time in supporting two browsers instead of one. Chrome works on Mac & PC platforms. Safari and IE on only one. VSP's support has told me that the reason they went to Chrome is because Google tends to maintain security better than Safari, which I thought very strange.
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VSP works fine for me on safari/mac?
 
bb_mac said:
Also, seriously, a browser using a lot of RAM is not a bad thing at all.
You've got RAM spare? The browser will use it - and you'll get a better experience because of that.
Click to expand...
Ideally it would be as efficient as possible with RAM. 8GB isn't a lot to spare.
 
SuperMatt said:
Let’s not pretend that Chrome is efficient with its RAM usage. Even Google has acknowledged the problem, and is attempting to make some adjustments to improve things on Windows:

www.techradar.com

Google Chrome update may finally stop it hogging all your RAM

New update will bring performance improvements with less RAM usage
www.techradar.com www.techradar.com
Click to expand...

That's optimization. Chrome works better on $250 4GB Lenovo Duet Chrome than Safari on Macbook Air M1. Already nuked Safari from my dock since Big Sur 11.0.1 and replaced with Chrome since I need something that works properly, cross compatible with all my Apple and non-Apple devices, has uBlock Origin, isn't taken down easily at Pwn2Own, etc.
 
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bb_mac said:
Would be useful if people stopped regurgitating this flawed 'research' like it was fact.
It isn't.

The developer made an error - quite a big one - of judgement.

Also, seriously, a browser using a lot of RAM is not a bad thing at all.
You've got RAM spare? The browser will use it - and you'll get a better experience because of that.
Click to expand...
The author is a very young journalist. Maybe this will be a good learning experience https://twitter.com/samifathi_?lang=en
 
mi7chy said:
That's optimization. Chrome works better on $250 4GB Lenovo Duet Chrome than Safari on Macbook Air M1. Already nuked Safari from my dock since Big Sur 11.0.1 and replaced with Chrome since I need something that works properly, cross compatible with all my Apple and non-Apple devices, has uBlock Origin, isn't taken down easily at Pwn2Own, etc.
Click to expand...
Please provide a source for this claim.
 
Dozer_Zaibatsu said:
Am I the last person who uses Firefox?
Click to expand...

No, you are not, I use Firefox too. Tried it out back then when Google announced its work on Manifest v3 while considering alternatives to Chrome and never looked back.

I don't consider Safari an acceptable choice due to its inferior support for advanced content blockers.
 
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bn-7bc said:
I was abbout to say about the same as you two, but going with pi-hole instead, bonus nerwork wide adblocking as long as the application in question respects system dnd
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Isn't pi-hole more of a stationary solution? What do you use for mobile?
 
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