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Safari lagging/disk icon

T

Totty1987

macrumors regular
Original poster
Oct 7, 2011
153
14
For the past couple of weeks, I've noticed a slow down and slight lag in safari. I normally have 5-6 tabs open at once, so I'm not sure if the problem may lay there.

I'm running 4gig of ram.
 
Troubleshooting slowdowns are challenging. You may have to run System Profiler (in Applications --> Utilities) and watch the CPU and RAM usage. 4GB of RAM should be plenty for 5-6 tabs in Safari, but what else is running? System Profiler will help you with that.
 
Totty1987 said:
For the past couple of weeks, I've noticed a slow down and slight lag in safari. I normally have 5-6 tabs open at once, so I'm not sure if the problem may lay there.

I'm running 4gig of ram.
Click to expand...
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). Then look to see what may be consuming system resources.

If you haven't already done so, try changing your DNS servers on your Mac and your router to OpenDNS servers. This will show you how: Why am I being redirected to other sites?

Try disabling your Safari extensions and ad-blockers.

For Flash-related issues:
  • Find your Flash version and make sure it's the latest version available. Never install or update Flash from a pop-up on a website. Always go to Adobe's site to get Flash or updates.
  • Install ClickToFlash (Safari), Flashblock (Firefox) or FlashBlock (Chrome) to control which Flash content plays on websites.
  • Try using the YouTube HTML5 Video Player to watch YouTube videos, when available. (May impact fullscreen viewing. See link for details.) Some have reported better performance with HTML5, while some have reported worse. Try it and find out what works best for you.
 
GGJstudios said:
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). Then look to see what may be consuming system resources.

If you haven't already done so, try changing your DNS servers on your Mac and your router to OpenDNS servers. This will show you how: Why am I being redirected to other sites?

Try disabling your Safari extensions and ad-blockers.

For Flash-related issues:
  • Find your Flash version and make sure it's the latest version available. Never install or update Flash from a pop-up on a website. Always go to Adobe's site to get Flash or updates.
  • Install ClickToFlash (Safari), Flashblock (Firefox) or FlashBlock (Chrome) to control which Flash content plays on websites.
  • Try using the YouTube HTML5 Video Player to watch YouTube videos, when available. (May impact fullscreen viewing. See link for details.) Some have reported better performance with HTML5, while some have reported worse. Try it and find out what works best for you.
Click to expand...

Sorry, but how do I do this?
 
Totty1987 said:
The part I highlighted in red
Click to expand...
Safari > Preferences > Extensions > Off

If you have any ad-blockers that you've installed, you should disable those, as well. You should know what you've installed. They may be extensions or they may be other tabs on the Preferences.
 
GGJstudios said:
Safari > Preferences > Extensions > Off

If you have any ad-blockers that you've installed, you should disable those, as well. You should know what you've installed. They may be extensions or they may be other tabs on the Preferences.
Click to expand...

I have AdBlock 2.5.37 installed. Shall I uninstall it from my system?
 
Totty1987 said:
I have AdBlock 2.5.37 installed. Shall I uninstall it from my system?
Click to expand...
No need to uninstall it. If you turn extensions off, that will also disable the AdBlock extension. Disabling extensions and ad-blockers is only for the purpose of determining if one of them is causing performance issues. If you don't experience lags with them disabled, but do when they're enabled, that tells you that an extension is likely the culprit. If there's no difference either way, you can re-enable them.
 
GGJstudios said:
No need to uninstall it. If you turn extensions off, that will also disable the AdBlock extension. Disabling extensions and ad-blockers is only for the purpose of determining if one of them is causing performance issues. If you don't experience lags with them disabled, but do when they're enabled, that tells you that an extension is likely the culprit. If there's no difference either way, you can re-enable them.
Click to expand...

I've just turned off extensions and it seems to be AdBlock causing the lag/slowdown issues. Safari now seems to be more responsive.

If I have extensions turned off, I'm unable to use clicktoflash.
 
Totty1987 said:
I've just turned off extensions and it seems to be AdBlock causing the lag/slowdown issues. Safari now seems to be more responsive.

If I have extensions turned off, I'm unable to use clicktoflash.
Click to expand...

Try turning your extensions back on, but disable AdBlock, and see what happens.
 
One other thing, Looking at my activity monitor, For some reason I only have around 435.00mb of free ram even though I'm just using Safari with 8 tabs open.
 
Totty1987 said:
One other thing, Looking at my activity monitor, For some reason I only have around 435.00mb of free ram even though I'm just using Safari with 8 tabs open.
Click to expand...
That's ok. You don't need to track free RAM. The only thing to keep an eye on is page outs.
 
Has anyone noticed that when you have 5-6 tabs open and you try to close one then safari crashes. It been happing a lot to me. Seems to happen a lot when I have tabs open with pics. Like if I am opening pics (in multiple tabs) from a forum site or something like that, then I look at said pics and try to close tabs safari crashes. It doesn't happen all the time but enough to make it a problem. Any suggestions.
 
GGJstudios said:
I definitely recommend ClickToFlash. Some have reported problems with AdBlock, so you can uninstall it. A couple others I run are GlimmerBlocker and JavaScript Blacklist.
Click to expand...

GlimmerBlocker looks terrific! I would love to block ads from our iPad and Touch, but my iMac is usually powered off when not in use. Are you familiar with any equivalent Windows apps? We have a Windows server that is always on.
 
kaielement said:
Has anyone noticed that when you have 5-6 tabs open and you try to close one then safari crashes.
Click to expand...
I've never had that happen. I routinely open 50-60 tabs at a time, then close them as I read them. I've never had it crash from doing so. You might want to try some of the suggestions in this thread to isolate the problem.
smirk said:
Are you familiar with any equivalent Windows apps? We have a Windows server that is always on.
Click to expand...
It's been over 4 years since I had a Windows PC, so I'm not familiar with what ad-blockers are available for Windows.
 
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