Safari 5.1.3 being a memory hog again?

[RJCP]

Hi guys, recently Safari started acting really weird. I won't get any spinning wheels, but Safari Web Content will consume 700Mb of ram, and my ventilation just goes balistic for no apparent reason.

The only plugin i have installed is the add blocker, nothing else...

 

[GGJstudios]

Hi guys, recently Safari started acting really weird. I won't get any spinning wheels, but Safari Web Content will consume 700Mb of ram

700MB of RAM is not an unusual amount for Safari, depending on how many tabs and what web content you're viewing. Reset Safari, clearing cookies and cache, then quit and restart Safari if it's not responding well.

For Flash-related issues:

• Find your Flash version and make sure it's the latest version available.
• Install ClickToFlash (Safari), Flashblock (Firefox) or FlashBlock (Chrome) to control which Flash content plays on websites.
• Use the YouTube HTML5 Video Player to watch YouTube videos, when available. (May impact fullscreen viewing. See link for details.)

my ventilation just goes balistic for no apparent reason.

What do you mean by "ventilation just goes balistic"? Do you mean your fans spin faster?

Launch Activity Monitor and change "My Processes" at the top to "All Processes", then click on the CPU column heading once or twice, so the arrow points downward (highest values on top). Also, click on the System Memory tab at the bottom. Then take a screen shot, scroll down to see the rest of the list, take another screen shot and post them.

 

[RJCP]

700MB of RAM is not an unusual amount for Safari, depending on how many tabs and what web content you're viewing. Reset Safari, clearing cookies and cache, then quit and restart Safari if it's not responding well.

For Flash-related issues:

• Find your Flash version and make sure it's the latest version available.
• Install ClickToFlash (Safari), Flashblock (Firefox) or FlashBlock (Chrome) to control which Flash content plays on websites.
• Use the YouTube HTML5 Video Player to watch YouTube videos, when available. (May impact fullscreen viewing. See link for details.)

What do you mean by "ventilation just goes balistic"? Do you mean your fans spin faster?

Launch Activity Monitor and change "My Processes" at the top to "All Processes", then click on the CPU column heading once or twice, so the arrow points downward (highest values on top). Also, click on the System Memory tab at the bottom. Then take a screen shot, scroll down to see the rest of the list, take another screen shot and post them.

This is very odd. I've done all that and there was no app pushing the CPU to a level where it should make the fans accelerate. I've performed a SMC reset and then checked with iStatPro, my CPU temperature was 63º and the fans started going up to 2700rpm without apparent reason. Before that, they were going to 4000rpm with the processor at close to 70º. I only used to get 4000rpm when it would get somewhere around 75º and this was only very occasionaly when doing heavier tasks.

 

[GGJstudios]

This is very odd. I've done all that ...

If you've done all of that, where are the screen shots?

 

[RJCP]

there you go, but i don't see anything abnormal at the moment. Fans are normal now too.

i have been noticing Spotlight indexing for a little while immediately after startup. Maybe these are Lion issues? They do sound like some of the issues people report.

 

[GGJstudios]

there you go, but i don't see anything abnormal at the moment. Fans are normal now too.

i have been noticing Spotlight indexing for a little while immediately after startup. Maybe these are Lion issues? They do sound like some of the issues people report.

There's nothing in that screen shot to indicate Safari, or any other process, is placing high demands on your system. If Spotlight was indexing, that would explain it. If a drive is constantly active or your CPU utilization is high (possibly with increased temps and fan speed) when you're not running any major apps, you can check to see if Spotlight is indexing by looking at the Menu Bar icon:

(not indexing)

(indexing) (pulsing dot)
​

Once a drive has been initially indexed, maintaining that index won't use nearly as many resources.

 

[RJCP]

There's nothing in that screen shot to indicate Safari, or any other process, is placing high demands on your system. If Spotlight was indexing, that would explain it. If a drive is constantly active or your CPU utilization is high (possibly with increased temps and fan speed) when you're not running any major apps, you can check to see if Spotlight is indexing by looking at the Menu Bar icon:

Image (not indexing)
Image (indexing) (pulsing dot)
​

Once a drive has been initially indexed, maintaining that index won't use nearly as many resources.

Thanks GGJ. The system is behaving normally now. If I run into more issues I'll post again.

 

[yssy2ymml]

Safari Memory Hogging

Hi guys, recently Safari started acting really weird. I won't get any spinning wheels, but Safari Web Content will consume 700Mb of ram, and my ventilation just goes balistic for no apparent reason.

The only plugin i have installed is the add blocker, nothing else...

Guys, I did a bit of playing around with this - it appears to be a bug in the 64 bit version of Safari. As others have found, the Safari Web Content process holds memory and never releases it. As a result, it just continues to hog memory until other things start swapping out. To me, it seems like a simple bug, but Apple are really dragging their feet in fixing it.

Resolution for me was to switch it back to 32 bit. This doesn't hold memory and releases it back when not in use. To switch it back to 32 bit, in the applications folder, do an (cmd) I on the safari icon, and select 32 bit. Really seems to work.

 

[GrabASnookie]

reset content

Hi guys, recently Safari started acting really weird. I won't get any spinning wheels, but Safari Web Content will consume 700Mb of ram, and my ventilation just goes balistic for no apparent reason.

The only plugin i have installed is the add blocker, nothing else...

So, my safari was using 2GB of data and I was able to delete all the content data by going to "Safari (menu) and select "Reset Safari" check all the boxes and wait about a minute or so and all the content will be flushed from your system.
My iMac 2011 is now only using 2.4GB instead of 4.2