Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Safari is using close to 700MB ?! Why ?

I have been playing around with browsers for a while and can tell you that both Chrome and Firefox will use just as much memory as Safari, also Safari is the ONLY browser I have found so far that will use the integrated Intel GPU in the Macbook Pro.
This is a massive advantage as their is no point have the Nvidia or ATI chip running the battery down and heating your lap just to check some websites!

Anyway, you need to check what apps and extensions are active as if they are not compatible with Lion they will still run.

If you do have a desktop Mac then you may as well use Chrome or Firefox as you have no issue with the GPU, but I do believe Chrome is not 64 bit?

Also check the installed pluggins under the help menu.
 
Comment deleted, because it no longer represents my current view on subject.
 
Last edited:
Two observations:

1) "safariadblock" has always had high RAM usage or possibly a memory leak. If you are using it, you will need to restart Safari on occasion.

2) Adobe Flash also uses a large amount of RAM. The short time I had it installed on Snow Leopard, it was often using ~800MB of RAM itself. Uninstall Flash. Install "Youtube5" plugin and enjoy. One additional advantage of this is that the need for adblock is significantly reduced.
 
Mr. Gates said:
I've seen a few other posts on this subject.

It seems to bother people but I don't really see why.

My best guess is that in Lion, Safari integrates closer with other core programs like iCal Mail...etc.

If your just surfing the net, use chrome
Click to expand...

You don't see why??/ I can give you tenths of reasons: why do I have to shut down Safari if I want to use Lighroom (or even worse Aperture3) and listen to music with iTunes? Why does Safari has to use up to 1Gb while Chrome at worst just use 100Mb? Why does Apple market Lion minimum requirement 4Gb memory when it's plain to see if you don't have at least double, your everyday use of your computer becomes cumbersome and unpleasant?
This is just some of the reasons why people (like me) are bothered by this memory hog that is Safari!
 
tkermit said:
The posted number is meaningless when we don't know how many windows and tabs have been opened on that system :confused:
Click to expand...

- That's true. I'll add that information for you. While I can't be entirely sure how much I had open when I posted the RAM usage a couple of hours ago, it could not have been more than 3 windows with 7 tabs/sites.

At the moment, Safari is even higher: 1.44 GB for the web content process and ~280 MB for Safari itself.
It's quite a lot, but it should be noted that I have had Safari open for nearly 2 days and have visited 386 pages (according to my browsing history), some with heavy flash.
 
apolloa said:
I have been playing around with browsers for a while and can tell you that both Chrome and Firefox will use just as much memory as Safari, also Safari is
Click to expand...

This is patently FALSE. As a test I used Safari for two hours of browsing. One tab only. Between Safari and Safari Web Content, they gobbled up 500 meg of ram and moved on to nearly 2 gig of HD space. Now with Chrome Canary after 1.5 hours, Chrome and the Chrome Renderer are using a combined 140 meg. There is either something dreadfully wrong with Safari, or it's been programmed by blind chimps. The only extensions I'm running on either is Adblock.
 
dcorban said:
Two observations:

1) "safariadblock" has always had high RAM usage or possibly a memory leak. If you are using it, you will need to restart Safari on occasion.

2) Adobe Flash also uses a large amount of RAM. The short time I had it installed on Snow Leopard, it was often using ~800MB of RAM itself. Uninstall Flash. Install "Youtube5" plugin and enjoy. One additional advantage of this is that the need for adblock is significantly reduced.
Click to expand...

Or I can just use Chrome and view the entire Internet ad-free and also not worry about my browser eating up all of my computers RAM.
 
CapnJackGig said:
This is patently FALSE. As a test I used Safari for two hours of browsing. One tab only. Between Safari and Safari Web Content, they gobbled up 500 meg of ram and moved on to nearly 2 gig of HD space. Now with Chrome Canary after 1.5 hours, Chrome and the Chrome Renderer are using a combined 140 meg. There is either something dreadfully wrong with Safari, or it's been programmed by blind chimps. The only extensions I'm running on either is Adblock.
Click to expand...

Try and install a 64 bit browser then like Firefox? Or a browser that is fully tested before general release? Canary is a testers build right? Google do not test it before release, also add up ALL the entry's Chrome makes in Activity Monitor.
You still need to install extensions and plugins which still run in the back ground eating memory no matter what browser you use if you want to block flash, adverts, convert flash to html5....

Anyway, what's everybody's obsession with memory? Macs have always and will always eat memory, the more the better. My machine is now running fine since I removed DivX and flip4mac and then installed Flash 11 beta. No issues at all so far and my lap is cool and my battery lasts a lot longer. :)
 
tkermit said:
And which browser would that be? I'm pretty sure the Safari guys know what they're doing. With Google Chrome separating its tabs out into distinct processes, it actually takes up more RAM for me. Of course it gets freed again when you close the tabs, but that's easy when you terminate a process, Safari does the same thing once you close all windows.
Click to expand...

I find this to be my experience as well...Chrome tabs eat up A LOT of resourses and my i5 MBP runs significantly hotter...
 
my safari was using about 300MB with another 1.3GB for web content after a couple hours of use. I disabled my 2 extensions (mlb toolbar and adblock) and it helped slow down the rate of the leak a lot, but didn't prevent it. I would like to see some more efficiency from this program.
 
Both Safari and Firefox
1 Window
8 Tabs
No Extensions
Reseted Caches etc.


AseaR.png
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Better on Lion

Hmmm... this seems sort of opposite for me.
For me, Safari has had better performance and low RAM usage than in Snow Leopard.
In SL I just gave up and used Chrome.
Now, I have 25 content-heavy pages open in 4 windows, and Safari (+ the Web Content) are only using 500MB of RAM.
 
i hope beta 6 of firefox reduces ram load as i am near 2 gb on a 8gb ram mac mini i have used firefox for a long time and since 3.5.10 and up even on windows its been ram heavy
 
ljonesj said:
i hope beta 6 of firefox reduces ram load as i am near 2 gb on a 8gb ram mac mini i have used firefox for a long time and since 3.5.10 and up even on windows its been ram heavy
Click to expand...


That's completely normal. What people have to understand is that when you have a lot of ram, the applications also use more ram. And that's a good thing. Free ram is useless. That's why you bought 8GB of ram right?

I have 2GB of ram and Firefox to me uses between 450-550 MB of ram with ~15 tabs open. If I upgrade my ram to 4gb, I would expect firefox to use much more ram than that.

If you are noticing any slowdowns, then just restart your browser. If you're not seeing any slowdowns Firefox using 2gb of ram isn't harmful.
 
Also, you can go to activity monitor and literally Quit "Safari Web Content" while Safari is running. QUIT, not FORCE QUIT.

Memory usage will drop, but each page will need to reload off the interwebs.
 
Opening 537 BM's from Camino to create History transfer to Safari.....



Camino History



Open Thursday History (BM's) in Safari


Safari Activity monitor Memory


Safari Thursday BM's transferred to History

Amazing quick opening 537 tabs in Safari (10 mins)
And it didn't stop responding at any time, though Camino wouldn't open whilst Safari was downloading 537 tabs.

 
I currently have 3 tabs open, no Flash. Safari app: 215MB; Safari Web Content: 935MB. So that's 1150MB of RAM for 3 tabs. Bit much, no?

I'm guessing it had to used this much for previous tabs, and simply doesn't release it. No idea if gets released whenever RAM is needed for other applications...
 
For me it was basically an AdBlock issue. I have uninstalled it and now with 3 tabs open i have a 116+80 MB used by Safari Content and Safari itslef. I still use ClickToFlash. The memory consumpiton is also constant: with AdBlock it was a slowly increasing function of time.
 
CapnJackGig said:
For me it's 1 browser, 1 tab. It eats whatever remaining RAM is available and then goes on to devour the HD, and as it does so the browser becomes more and more sluggish. This is not how you competently code a browser. Name another browser that does this. I can't think of one. I'd like to be using Safari and its new two-finger swipes/animations, but its' so shoddy in design that I can't. So it's back to Canary for me and hopefully Google will show once again why theirs is the vastly superior product.
Click to expand...

Then it's something about you. I have had 2 tabs open in Safari since for 5 hours or so and the ram usage is 120 MB's.
 
MacmancUK said:
Amazing quick opening 537 tabs in Safari (10 mins)
And it didn't stop responding at any time, though Camino wouldn't open whilst Safari was downloading 537 tabs.
Click to expand...

Try doing that with Firefox. Forget about 537, open 50+ tabs with Firefox and you'll have to pray that it doesn't crash. Safari is the most stable browser I've seen on Mac.
 
iBug2 said:
Try doing that with Firefox. Forget about 537, open 50+ tabs with Firefox and you'll have to pray that it doesn't crash. Safari is the most stable browser I've seen on Mac.
Click to expand...

Fortunately I don't have to.

Once I've copied the BM's from Camino to Safari to open, to create history, I just import into Firefox & Chrome "from Safari"

I'd like to try it with Aurora (FF7), but it would mess up my BM's and history, I have to import using Firefox as Aurora doesn't have import yet !!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back