Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Safari 5.1 Memory Leak in Lion
- Thread starter hyperpiper45
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Webkit has always had major memory leaks. I can get mine in the course of 1 hour to eat up 1.5GB + Real memory. Chrome does the same only it is arbitrated over each individual process. 10 tabs and 133MB each nets you in the gig range for the whole app. It just appears less. Garbage collection in OS X has always been somewhat dodgy. It may or may not reclaim the memory. Depends on the timing and calls being made. Best bet is to restart every so often. This issue is more pronounced in 5.1 as they split out the renderer from the host app but it has not gotten better since Safari 2.x. It is not a leak so much as an ever present "feature".
Your theory ignores the fact that using only one tab in Safari results in 2+gig of my memory being gobbled up in less than 2 hours.
Well then add that to the "theory" as I never said it was only in tabbed use. It will leak even if you only use 1 window and go to sites very minimally. It will leak idle. I was trying to curb all the "fix it Apple" rants. As this is a problem with the basic core of webkit and to a certain extent OS X's memory management in general. Been his way give or take for 10 years. Just much worse with 5.1 Safari.
Whatever the problem is, disabling javascript does the trick.
With or without memory leaks, the biggest issue with the current version is that it starts to froze and beach ball when the "memory leak" reaches about 1gb (in my computer). Even if the previous versions of safari may have the memory leak issue, the browser still worked. The way it is right now makes it unusable once the leak starts getting sky high.
With or without memory leaks, the biggest issue with the current version is that it starts to froze and beach ball when the "memory leak" reaches about 1gb (in my computer). Even if the previous versions of safari may have the memory leak issue, the browser still worked. The way it is right now makes it unusable once the leak starts getting sky high.
To me, disabling JavaScript is as good as not using the browser at all. Much of the web depends on JS.
Yes it is a problem, but for me, not a big deal, I can use it as usual, just a little stuff won't work, that's why chrome or firefox are on my launchpad.
My safari at the moment is 423MB and the Safari web content is 728MB totalling just over 1.1GB. I have 8 tabs open, but if I have the same 8 tabs open in firefox it only uses less than 200MB. Safari has to be the problem for sure but then the question lies why are some having issues and some are not?
I cannot disable JS because most of what I view requires it.
I cannot disable JS because most of what I view requires it.
that is not normal at all. I'm using firefox, and opened 20tabs = 500mb.
Firefox is better than safari (LION) right now.
I've been having problems with full screen apps and four-finger-swiping and they always seem to start with safari. the swiping just stops working, and when i use cmd-tab to try to switch to any other app that's in full-screen mode i'll switch to the space but i just see the desktop and the app window doesn't appear. once the safari url and tab bars were stuck at the top of the screen no matter which space i was in and sometimes the menu bar gets stuck at the top of safari and doesn't disappear
I'm having memory leak/management issues as well.
Mid-2009 13" MacBook Pro
4GB RAM, 2.26Ghz Core2Duo
Unacceptable amounts of RAM are being consumed until everything is gone eventually. I tried posting this on the Apple forums, and while many replied as having the same issues... I also got replies from one user who claimed it was working as intended. Unfortunately there is a trend of some users over there, that no matter what the problem... it can't possibly be Apple's software that is the culprit of anything, ever.
Mid-2009 13" MacBook Pro
4GB RAM, 2.26Ghz Core2Duo
Unacceptable amounts of RAM are being consumed until everything is gone eventually. I tried posting this on the Apple forums, and while many replied as having the same issues... I also got replies from one user who claimed it was working as intended. Unfortunately there is a trend of some users over there, that no matter what the problem... it can't possibly be Apple's software that is the culprit of anything, ever.
No. It just consumes less memory. It is still slower at actual rendering and built on an ancient code base. Native widgets are better when they went cocoa but it still does not feel like a Mac app the way Camino did. Too bad Camino is effectively done.
Are you going to say that a 5+ year old problem is because of an upgrade install? I hope not. Mine is from a completely clean install. Reformat then 10.7. No 10.6 needed. No upgrade. In fact I really was answering others I don't feel like I have a problem with webkit. It acts like it always has acted.
The memory leak in Safari doesn't happen to me. I did a install on a Jump Drive (clean) and having install no other software. I haven't turned any thing off, running it in it's default setting. Been using it this way for one week now.
I'm wondering if this memory leak you guys are having, because of 3rd party plug-ins. Just a thought... :/
Late 2007 MacBook 2.2ghz 4gig RAM, x3100.
Hugh
I'm wondering if this memory leak you guys are having, because of 3rd party plug-ins. Just a thought... :/
Late 2007 MacBook 2.2ghz 4gig RAM, x3100.
Hugh
Probably the best thought
I should mention that I do have one 3rd party plug in installed, and that is Flash. Also no problems with Flash either, I'm using the new version Beta 11.
Hugh
A quick search on goggle would have given what it is you seek.
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplatformruntimes/flashplayer11/
So far I having any problems with flash even though it's a beta.
Hugh
It's been stated numerous times in this thread that removing all extensions and disabling Flash has absolutely no effect on the memory leak. It's the browser. A poorly coded browser.
If it was just a case of being poorly coded it would affect everyone, but it doesn't. Apparently here is some other software issue that has not been unearthed yet.
FWIW, I have had no crashes or slowdowns with Safari since the upgrade to Lion. I know others have - I had lots of crashes under SL - so I want to know what is causing it too. I don't want to return to my crash SL days.