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Is it just me or does Safari suck.. really bad?

Do you find Safari slow in Mojave?

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pogoyoyo

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jun 17, 2010
162
10
Toronto, Canada
So I had a 2013 15" rMBP and it was starting to slow down, had a bad battery etc... bought a brand new 15" mbp core i9, vega 20.. all the bells and whistles... Safari still sucks... Overall super slow on facebook and reddit especially which makes up the majority of my web activity... Chrome is smooth as expected.

Anyone else experience brutal performance with safari on the latest OS? Been like this since the release of Mojave..
 
I don't find Safari super slow, but it's slower than Firefox or Vivaldi for me. I still use it though because of Apple Pay and the ability to share bookmarks etc.
 
I'm afraid that it's possibly you - or at least something about your Safari configuration. I'm running a 2016 15" MacBook Pro and can't really notice a difference in speed between Firefox and Safari. I generally use Safari, then Firefox, and Chrome as an absolute last resort - in order of the least to worst impact on my laptop's battery life.

I'm not sure what would cause your Safari to run so slowly, but if you aren't running an adblocker, I'd definitely give that a shot and see if it makes any difference. Maybe you're hitting an ad on one or more of those sites which is optimized for Chrome over other browsers. You may also want to check to see if you have any Safari extensions loaded that might be doing something odd.
 
It's fast for me the few times a week that I use it. I'd use it more if they made extensions easier to write and added user profiles like Chrome has.
 
I haven't had any issues with Safari, but I do admit I switched to the Safari Technology Preview version because for some reasons I was having issues with the regular Safari becoming unresponsive under 10.14.4 beta 3
 
I've gone backwards and forwards over this issue a lot.
I've had Safari very slow- meaning 10 seconds or more to load a page, and I'm convinced that it's Google that's the problem.
If I block Google ads it does some sort of timeout and makes me wait.
It doesn't do it with Chrome because Chrome is natively configured to use Google.
Firefox seems to be ok for a while but for me, slows down after a while too.

My advice is to clear out all history and cookies and choose another search engine by default- DuckDuckGo or if you really want Google searches, use Startpage on a fresh page which aggregates them.
See if that helps because I've got a normal Safari experience since I did that and have no complaints about it at all.
Best
 
If it's any consolation, I switched from Safari to Firefox (not for performance reasons) and both Facebook and Reddit are slow on that, too. It's those websites and their trying to be clever with the mix of forums, posts, menus, adverts, "look at this!!" crap that they all try to load up and move around.
 
PC world rated the best browsers and safari was last
Firefox is great, but stores too much web junk, 1gb per game i stream
since I love Opera (Puccini wrote some of the best music ever) I use Opera as my browser, and happy!
 
Last edited by a moderator:
If you are going to use a 3rd party browser skip Chrome as it is a resource hog and huge privacy compromise. If I have to go 3rd party, I use Firefox because it has much improved speed over previous iterations and isn't made to sell out your privacy.
That said, I have had zero issues with Safari on macOS. I do not use ad-blocker or any extensions although I do use a CSS style sheet to remove some clutter. Safari is standards compliant and works admirably in the Apple ecosystem.
 
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I find the new Reddit site slow in every browser, but especially slow in Safari. Other sites are fine.
 
One of the two reasons I moved from Windows 7 to mac is because firefox and chrome had major memory leaks. Safari lets me open as many tabs as I want without affecting memory.
 
Anyone got any suggestions for tracking blockers for Safari on Mac? I use Firefox and have a choice of Disconnect, Privacy Badger or DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials (my choice). My wife uses Safari and the only in-browser extension available seems to be Ghostery (which I've heard bad things about).
 
I still like 1Blocker (paired with the iPhone version and it syncs settings) but there are plenty available for Mac.

Search for “block” in the Mac App Store.
 
@kiranmk2 There's still the availability of uBlock Origin for macOS Mojave and Safari (even the latest Technology Preview of Safari from a few days ago) - go here,https://github.com/el1t/uBlock-Safari/releases and drag the downloaded(latest release) file over the Safari icon in the Dock and install - accept the popup following the first initial complaint from Safari and allow installation from the Extension Gallery and you're off. Safari will complain to no end(in Preferences) of course with it being the cause of slow downs whilst surfing the Web.

The above is done a few minutes ago to test a solution to the issue of a content blocker for Safari. And while using the latest Technology Preview of Safari.

Also - seeing that you mention all other tracker blockers than uBlock Origin I'm now uncertain if that meets your criteria. 1Blocker is one blocker I also use but it's a weird program for when whitelisting a website. The whitelisting only takes place when the 1Blocker.app is opened and not only when using the extension - in my experience. I'm quite pleased that uBlock Origin works.

uBlock Origin is an ad-blocker but I guess also blocker for tracking around the web.

And to OP - I have no issues with Safari - I have been back and forth with Firefox but it has many quirks that I can't unsee. Like the contextual menu - it's the worst; on a dark interface this is still white and the menu itself is a weird combo of blur and it appears that the menu seperators are too tall? - looks dreadful. The solution is to use shadowfox and use a dark theme all the time which is also tiresome. Shadowfox is to viewed here https://github.com/overdodactyl/ShadowFox

Firefox has generally been a bad citizen on macOS with their messed up interface. The browser itself is hella good and boasts many features over Safari. I like that about Firefox. In turn I like that Safari has the interface down as it obviously should have. The experience of surfing the Web is a pleasure on both browsers. Both equally speedy. I get where I need to go in time.
 
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allan.nyholm said:
The whitelisting only takes place when the 1Blocker.app is opened and not only when using the extension - in my experience.
Click to expand...

1Blocker.app will open when you add a site to the whitelist because it rebuilds the content blocker data that safari uses.

A “blocker” that runs just as javascript in an old-style safari extension is likely blocking stuff at the javascript layer, which is why it’s a) less efficient and b) allows the blocker script itself to see what urls you’re visiting, which somewhat defeats the purpose if your goal is to increase/protect your privacy from third parties.
 
Stephen.R said:
1Blocker.app will open when you add a site to the whitelist because it rebuilds the content blocker data that safari uses.

A “blocker” that runs just as javascript in an old-style safari extension is likely blocking stuff at the javascript layer, which is why it’s a) less efficient and b) allows the blocker script itself to see what urls you’re visiting, which somewhat defeats the purpose if your goal is to increase/protect your privacy from third parties.
Click to expand...

All terrible advice from me I guess. Thanks for being a good sport and not destroying my post despite the info given in same. And the explaination on 1Blocker is also appreciated.
 
kiranmk2 said:
Anyone got any suggestions for tracking blockers for Safari on Mac? I use Firefox and have a choice of Disconnect, Privacy Badger or DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials (my choice). My wife uses Safari and the only in-browser extension available seems to be Ghostery (which I've heard bad things about).
Click to expand...

I use Adguard for Safari available from the Mac App Store. It's open source, free, and comes from a company that has a good reputation. They make an extension for Chrome and Firefox too.
 
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