Safari is a JOKE

[pandamonia]

This problem has been my bane since Lion got installed on my 2010 MBP.

I just quit Safari with 1.2gb of "Safari Web Content"

When i reopened the window and all the tabs reloaded it is now 230mb

This looks to me like a memory leak or bad memory management.

Facebook seems to make the situation worse.

Even with 8GB of Ram and 4GB Free it starts to affect performance.

 

[webdevbrian]

This problem has been my bane since Lion got installed on my 2010 MBP.

I just quit Safari with 1.2gb of "Safari Web Content"

When i reopened the window and all the tabs reloaded it is now 230mb

This looks to me like a memory leak or bad memory management.

Facebook seems to make the situation worse.

Even with 8GB of Ram and 4GB Free it starts to affect performance.

I know this may not be a solution for you, but have you considered downloading google chrome instead? Safari recently had a few updates, so unfortunately I wouldn't be surprised if a memory leak slipped through the Apple QA/QC teams.

 

[adnbek]

Do you have any extensions installed?

 

[pandamonia]

Do you have any extensions installed?

ill take a look.

I use Ghostery and Click2Flash and both of those help performance.

Im moving to Retina MBP soon and ill be stuck with Safari on that due to hardware acceleration in the new Safari.

 

[maflynn]

I don't have any extensions and while not svelte when it comes to memory consumption, its no where near what you have. I would lay even money that it is related to extensions.

 

[pandamonia]

I don't have any extensions and while not svelte when it comes to memory consumption, its no where near what you have. I would lay even money that it is related to extensions.

As i said i only have 2 extensions installed. Ghostery is a tracking cookie blocker and click2flash blocks flash.

I don't see either of those 2 could eat 900mb of RAM.

 

[maflynn]

The best way to prove it, is to disable/remove the plugins and see if memory usage returns to normal

 

[SHIFTLife]

As i said i only have 2 extensions installed. Ghostery is a tracking cookie blocker and click2flash blocks flash.

I don't see either of those 2 could eat 900mb of RAM.

So you think that it's more likely poor memory handling in Safari, built by a large team of developers, rather than poor memory handling by an extension, most likely written by 1 or 2 devs?

I'd say disable both extensions, play with Safari for a bit, and watch memory consumption.

Also, what app are you using to look at memory consumption? If you're using Activity Monitor and your looking at the Virtual Memory column, that's not an accurate indicator of how much RAM your app is actually using.

 

[ixodes]

This problem has been my bane since Lion got installed on my 2010 MBP.

Oh my... why so dramatic?

Relax... sort it out by following the suggestions already posted in this thread and you'll be fine.

While Safari is not my favorite, it's hardly as bad as the title of your thread suggests. I hear that it's quite nicely improved on 10.8

It's not like you don't have options.

I find Chrome an incredibly good, ultra fast, stable browser. The Google Chrome Store is filled with a wide variety of terrific extensions, apps, and tools.

I'm running a stable version of Chrome as well as Canary, on each of my Macs & PC's. For my requirements, it simply cannot be beat.

 

[S.B.G]

The browser is caching the web content in an effort to speed up browsing. That's what is taking up all the RAM. Also when you first opened it and it went to 230MB, that was the Top Sites feature I believe and can be disabled.

From the page What is Safari?

Empty Cache
When you surf the Internet, Safari automatically caches web pages and images in temporary storage for easy repeat access and faster page loads. Safari clears the stored files when you choose Empty Cache from the Safari menu.

Remove Website Data
With Safari, it’s simple to clear away the information that websites might use to track you online. In the Privacy pane, click Remove All Website Data and confirm. Safari removes cookies, Flash plug-in data, and information from databases, local storage, and the application cache. You can also clear data on a site-by-site basis.

Media Caching
Safari can store audio and video data for web applications that use the HTML5 application cache, allowing for offline media playback and better media performance when an Internet connection is slow.

Advanced Page Caching
Safari stores the web pages you visit in the cache, which can speed up access to pages you’ve already viewed. Safari can add additional types of web pages to the cache so that they load fast when you return to them.

HTML5 Offline Support
Web developers can now create applications that you can use even when you don’t have access to the Internet. Thanks to HTML5 offline support, web applications that are stored on your computer are immediately accessible anytime. Along with the application, web developers can also choose to store the application’s data on your system, so you always have the information you need. Applications and data can be stored in a traditional SQL-like database serving as an application cache or in the familiar cookie format.

All browsers are caching content now, some more than others. I've seen Safari on my Mac use over 5GB of RAM before and I typically only have 1-3 tabs open at a time.

Without the caching, your Internet experience would be noticeably slower in many cases.

Disable Caches
Choose Disable Caches from the Develop menu to force the browser to grab live graphics, pages, and other resources from the network instead of using cached resources.

Here is more on how OS X manages RAM for it's applications. The more system RAM available, the more concurrent apps you can run and allows apps to use more of the available RAM.

Question about memory management from the Apple Support Communities

It isn't poor memory management; it's by design.

 

[Damers]

I just quit Safari with 1.2gb of "Safari Web Content" ... This looks to me like a memory leak or bad memory management.

I've got a 2010 MBP as well and had the same problems with safari. I switched to chrome.

 

[netslacker]

As I write this my Safari Web Content memory usage is at 1.65gb, surprisingly though flash is at a new low of 227mb. I have 11 tabs open.

This is par for the course for Safari. I've been using it almost exclusively for the past 2 years and memory has always been an issue with it. I've just come to accept that it needs a restart every once in a while (restart safari and not the computer).

 

[phuocsandiego]

I use Chrome as well and while it also caches web content for faster browsing, it doesn't seem nearly the memory hog as other browsers. This is with AdBlock Plus, Ghostery, Click2Flash, and Ghostery Incognito.

 

[pandamonia]

As I write this my Safari Web Content memory usage is at 1.65gb, surprisingly though flash is at a new low of 227mb. I have 11 tabs open.

This is par for the course for Safari. I've been using it almost exclusively for the past 2 years and memory has always been an issue with it. I've just come to accept that it needs a restart every once in a while (restart safari and not the computer).

This is exactly the same problem as mine. I have to reboot Safari to fix it.

Let me be clear here. I was using 1.2gb of REAL Ram. and i opened the EXACT same tabs i was using before and now use 330mb.

Unless we use the same extensions then Safari is to blame. Googling Safari Memory leak shows this is not isolated.

This did not happen on SL this is new to Lion. Lion is a dog tbh i hope ML is better

 

[BaldiMac]

This is exactly the same problem as mine. I have to reboot Safari to fix it.

Let me be clear here. I was using 1.2gb of REAL Ram. and i opened the EXACT same tabs i was using before and now use 330mb.

Unless we use the same extensions then Safari is to blame. Googling Safari Memory leak shows this is not isolated.

This did not happen on SL this is new to Lion. Lion is a dog tbh i hope ML is better

I'm sure Safari does have memory issues, but using a lot of RAM is not a problem by itself. Safari aggressively caches content in RAM to increase speed. As long as Safari releases the inactive RAM as it is needed by other apps, what you describe isn't necessarily a problem.

 

[MisterMe]

This is exactly the same problem as mine. I have to reboot Safari to fix it.

Let me be clear here. I was using 1.2gb of REAL Ram. and i opened the EXACT same tabs i was using before and now use 330mb.

Unless we use the same extensions then Safari is to blame. Googling Safari Memory leak shows this is not isolated.

This did not happen on SL this is new to Lion. Lion is a dog tbh i hope ML is better

Is there a real problem here or are you just concerned about numbers that you don't understand?

 

[pandamonia]

Is there a real problem here or are you just concerned about numbers that you don't understand?

Seriously. wtf

Dont understand?

I can build a PC from scratch within a couple hours, clock it up to 5ghz and have my memory running at insane speeds with tight timings. Whilst modifying voltages to keep the temps nice and performance beyond what is normally capable.

But if i use safari on my MBP it starts to slow down to a creep with general use after a few hours. This should not happen!

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I'm sure Safari does have memory issues, but using a lot of RAM is not a problem by itself. Safari aggressively caches content in RAM to increase speed. As long as Safari releases the inactive RAM as it is needed by other apps, what you describe isn't necessarily a problem.

This is a slow death of performance which gets worse with use. there is still free ram but safari just grinds down in responsiveness even with 3GB of Free ram left.

 

[adnbek]

Turn off extensions and try it out. Some extensions have known memory leaks. I have Adblock for Safari installed and memory use is out of control when it's on. If I go to extensions and turn them off, RAM usage is much better.

 

[pandamonia]

Turn off extensions and try it out. Some extensions have known memory leaks. I have Adblock for Safari installed and memory use is out of control when it's on. If I go to extensions and turn them off, RAM usage is much better.

Sadly. i can't live without Ghostery or Click2Flash.

Id rather move to Chrome.

 

[aaronvan]

How do I find out how much memory Safari is using. Just run top?

 

[MonkeySee....]

Seriously. wtf

Dont understand?

I can build a PC from scratch within a couple hours, clock it up to 5ghz and have my memory running at insane speeds with tight timings. Whilst modifying voltages to keep the temps nice and performance beyond what is normally capable.