Safari on Ventura 2018 MacBook Pro

[neumanc]

Is anyone else having issues with Safari running poorly on macOS Ventura (on Intel mac's)?

I'm on a 2018 (Intel 2.9 i9) MacBook Pro with 32GB ram. I can have 3 Safari windows with 8-10 tabs each and the lag between windows/tabs is unreal. Some outright quit responding. Brave and Firefox, no problem.

Very frustrating, I like using Safari up until macOS Ventura. My wife's M1 MacBook Air doesn't have the problem.

 

[svenmany]

I have that exact computer and haven't noticed any lagging behavior in Safari. Could you describe the lag a bit more? Does it just lag when drawing the page, when it's accessing the network, or what?

 

[neumanc]

The page is already loaded. Sitting in a tab on one of my Safari windows. Most of the time, every tab will say "Webpage is using significant energy". At any given time I'll have several things going on while handling client migrations (hosting, domain, DNS, CMS). I'll be logged into the client's third-party accounts and trying to switch between tabs.

I generally shut Safari down and switch to Brave or Firefox. This behavior started with Ventura.

 

[svenmany]

So, there's something running in those high use tabs that's consuming the resources. Do you have any extensions running in Safari?

If not, I wonder if there's something unique about the pages you are visiting compared to the ones I am. Can you pin down particular sites that consume a lot of resources, or do many well-known sites do that?

 

[neumanc]

1Password. Also runs in Firefox and Brave.

It's mostly web hosting, domain, and DNS providers (godaddy, wpengine, google domains, namecheap, dreamhost, cloudflare, DNS made easy, etc.) as well as the client's website (WordPress, drupal).

Screenshot 2023-07-27 at 4.21.39 PM

Photo created with Dropbox Capture.

capture.dropbox.com

Mind you, this is one client. I generally have 3-5 clients open at a time for a migration in 3-5 different windows with 4-8 tabs each.

 

[svenmany]

1Password. Also runs in Firefox and Brave.

It's mostly web hosting, domain, and DNS providers (godaddy, wpengine, google domains, namecheap, dreamhost, cloudflare, DNS made easy, etc.) as well as the client's website (WordPress, drupal).

Screenshot 2023-07-27 at 4.21.39 PM

Photo created with Dropbox Capture.

capture.dropbox.com

Mind you, this is one client. I generally have 3-5 clients open at a time for a migration in 3-5 different windows with 4-8 tabs each.

The only overlap I have with you is Namecheap. I hung out there for a bit, poking around. I've had the site open for an hour. I'm an extremely light user - just 11 domains. I don't see any CPU spikes in Activity Monitor.

Do you have Private Relay turned on? Do you have any internet blocking somewhere - on your router for example?

 

[neumanc]

It doesn't happen with a single window. It's always when I have multiple Safari windows with several tabs open.

Here is an example today:

Screenshot 2023-07-27 at 9.30.16 PM

Photo created with Dropbox Capture.

capture.dropbox.com

Fans are in high gear and huge delay in switching tabs and between applications.

edit: I'm in front of the router (wired connection from modem.) The private relay is turned off. This doesn't happen on M1 MacBook Air. Nor does it happen with Firefox or Brave. Only happens on the Intel MacBook Pro with Safari.

I'm almost ready to pull the trigger on an M2 MacBook Pro.

 

[koelsh]

I'm on a 2018 13-inch i5 MBP 16GB of RAM on Ventura and have similar experiences with Safari intermittently.

• System heating up with fans going
• Webapps like Monday.com are laggy and pixellate
• Tabs that don't respond to clicks
• Infinite scroll websites that stop pulling in new data
• Tabs that take up multiple GB of RAM if used for long enough.

Safari has behaved this way for me since macOS 11 but it's also sort of random. It'll run without any issues for a few weeks then be practically unusable for a few weeks. Have tried with and without extensions with little change in behavior. Only thing that's made a noticeable change in performance was uninstalling the 1Password extension in Safari.

Meanwhile Firefox and Edge will happily browse along without any performance hits and far fewer instances of the fan spinning up.

 

[svenmany]

I also run 1Password. I do think 1Password 8's Safari browser application, "1Password for Safari.app", is an inferior product. Sometimes, it fails to connect to the desktop application.

I wonder, when the browser tabs are misbehaving, if you click on the 1Password toolbar button, does it function properly?