Safari is eating all my memory

Looks like the RAM usage/swap is quite high. I'm stipulating that you have quite a large uptime? This causes a world of problems with Safari.

Best thing to do is restart your Mac with the option 'Reopen windows when logging back in' disabled. I'm hoping it's just as simple as that. If it does do the trick I'd recommend shutting down every couple of days/whenever you're not using it in future.

 

Hi there Renato, apologies for the confusion. 'Uptime' simply means the time since the system was last shutdown. You can verify this exact number simply by opening up Terminal and typing uptime.

Again even if you're restarting often you may not see the full benefit of this unless you have the option 'reopen windows when logging back in' disabled. Please could you advise?

 

This means your system has been up 5 hours and 20 minutes. If you type who in a terminal window, it should show two lines. These are the 2 users active on your machine.

 

keep activity monitor open, look at the memory tab and see which tab (website) in safari is eating all your memory, then quit it.

 

That really looks like Safari's causing the RAM issue. There's gotta be a memory leak somewhere. Do all your tabs auto reopen? If they do then keep pressing Cmd+W until all windows are closed, then Cmd+Q to close Safari. Then restart the computer & open Safari again.

Also is Safari up-to-date?

If the above steps do nothing, it may be best to briefly try a different Internet browser to at least confirm if it's doing it on the other ones. If it is then it could possibly be a frequently visited site that has some horrible scripts runnning ... how many tabs do you normally run?

 

Wow. There is something seriously wrong with Safari. Maybe a rogue plug-in or something. Consider trying another browser on the same pages and see if you have the same memory issues.

https://www.mozilla.org/pt-BR/firefox/new/

 

Okay, we've at least identified that the problem is isolated to Safari. So a few quick questions about your computer:

- What Mac do you have?
- What operating system is it on?
- If it's a newer model, did you do a clean install/setup or restore from a previous Time Machine backup?
- Have you tried a clean install?

I know this sounds really odd but my RAM previously failed on my MacBook Pro and it was causing a world of issues with Safari. As Safari is linked with the OS, issues this high may well indicate a larger problem. Forgive me for running through some additional troubleshooting. Please could you run through the below steps in the order they're given and stop/quote this message if any of them indicate a problem?

1) Check HDD/SSD SMART data (indicates if the hardware is corrupted). I use SMART Utility, direct download here: http://cloudfront.volitans-software.com/smartutility314.zip

2) If that comes out clean, try verify the Macintosh HD volume through Disk Utility. Any errors detected?

3) If that doesn't work, try update to the latest OS (if you're not already)

4) Apple Hardware Test - rarely finds an error even when there is one, but it's worth trying. Simply hold down the D key on startup and then select 'extended test', then run that. Should take between 15-30 minutes, depending on the speed of your computer.

5) Might be the RAM itself? Download Memtest here: http://static.command-tab.com/2008/memtest_422.zip Then, restart in single user mode by holding Cmd+S on startup, and type in memtest all 10 and press Enter. This will do 10 passes on the RAM -- please be aware it may take a number of hours, so if you'd rather do less passes you can simply change the number at the end. If there are any issues detected here it could be the RAM.

The latter of the three steps will take some time so if you just want to quickly check the HDD & OS volume and reply to this then we can try some other things. I'm sure other people will have more suggestions too, which are less time consuming

 

I had a same prblm when i open safari and now finally i got prblm solved i dnt knw will work for others or not but mine is ok i open my mac back cover took out my both ram and installed them again but the memory which was up first i installed that to the lower and the lower memory that was b4 i installed to upper and yeah thats it just changed them to antiwise hope this works too for others

 

How come not a single browser even comes close to Safari's scrolling performance?

 

uncheck preload top hits as you can see on istat i use 1.2 gig n free 6.79 ii hade the same problem try it

--- Post Merged, Dec 7, 2016 ---

all you have to do uncheck preload top hit pages

 

I just sign up this forum to talk on this issue. I had the same problem and the memory Safari occupy more than 10 G some times. After uncheck preload top hit pages inside Safari configuration, at beginning the memory of Safari occupy around 100M, and then it grows constantly, 1G, 2G, ..., so uncheck preload top hit pages does not work with my iMac and Safari.

--- Post Merged, Dec 24, 2016 ---

I just sign up this forum to talk on this issue. I had the same problem and the memory Safari occupy more than 10 G some times. After uncheck preload top hit pages inside Safari configuration, at beginning the memory of Safari occupy around 100M, and then it grows constantly, 1G, 2G, ..., so uncheck preload top hit pages does not work with my iMac and Safari.

 

I just sign up this forum to talk on this issue. I had the same problem and the memory Safari occupy more than 10 G some times. After uncheck preload top hit pages inside Safari configuration, at beginning the memory of Safari occupy around 100M, and then it grows constantly, 1G, 2G, ..., so uncheck preload top hit pages does not work with my iMac and Safari.

--- Post Merged, Dec 25, 2016 ---

I called to the apple service and finally solved this issue. Their way is to delete the old Safari and install a new one. Here is how :

(1) Open the "Finder"
(2) While pressing "Option" key, click "go" inside the Finder menu, then one item called "Library" will appear
(3) Click the "Library"
(4) Then a lot of folders will appear, find the folder named "Safari" and drop it into Rubbish bin. (Delete the Safari APP)
(5) Click "Safari" on the dock bar to run Safari.

This really solved the "Safari eat to much memory, some times 8G memory" problem.

But all the configuration along with the old Safari, like your bookmark, etc. will also be deleted. After the steps above, you will get a totally new Safari. So if you need to keep some thing useful, firstly do some records and backup, then follow the steps above.