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Safari's Memory Leak

I

iFizz

macrumors regular
Original poster
Apr 2, 2008
234
0
Third planet from the star called "Sun"
Why can't Apple fix the stupid memory leak in Safari? It's been a noted problem for as long as I can remember. :mad:
Also, how high does it go, in terms of memory usage (i.e. stats in activity monitor)? After just a couple of hours of moderate use, my Safari is hogging over 100MB of RAM. That's ridiculous! I wonder about those who never shut down, restart, or fully close Safari.
 
iFizz said:
I wonder about those who never shut down, restart, or fully close Safari.
Click to expand...

Wonder no more, my Safari is using 484.99MB of RAM :eek: I kinda have a habit of keeping 8 bazillion (yes bazillion) Safari Windows open at once. Even if you close all of the windows it doesn't free the RAM, you have to actually quit Safari.
 
iFizz said:
OK, I'll bite. What's the deal with that?

Also, BUMP OP: anyone care to comment on the memory leak?
Click to expand...

well, 100MB real memory usage isn't big, in most cases.

long time above 250MB, yes

Constant High CPU usage (60% and above) is when you feel your computer slowing down.
 
I doubt it's a memory leak. I think Safari just takes advantage of your extra memory by keeping all the sites you visited for the day in RAM.
 
iFizz said:
Your avatar and sig say you are biased! LOL :p
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:p I have no problem stating safari's memory management isn't good. but that usually applies to something like this
SafariMemoryUsage2.jpg
 
I never have to worry about restarting Safari. Apple does it for me considering how often Safari crashes (at least once or twice every day).

Safari 3.1 is definitely more stable than 3.0, but neither version can compare to the stability of version 2.
 
not sure about memory leak, because once you quit it, it should free up the space it took up.

while i'm sure there's a problem with it, common sense would say that its just caching stuff you've been to, like youtube etc. and once you quit, it should wipe it from the ram. (like mine does)
 
Iamtherealwoody said:
Firefox 3, the cure to safari's memory leak issue ;)
And if you miss the safari look, Grapples themes are beautiful
Click to expand...

Thanks for the info on themes. I'm loving Firefox beta on my PC laptop, and have installed it on my Mac as well, since Safari sucks on a PC. I have my Safari set up so sweetly on my MBP that I hate to move to another browser, but it looks like Firefox is the way to go, at least for now.
 
vandlism said:
bingo.
Click to expand...

trip1ex said:
I doubt it's a memory leak. I think Safari just takes advantage of your extra memory by keeping all the sites you visited for the day in RAM.
Click to expand...

altho I don't think 100MB is memory leak, this type of excuse is really not helping the improvement of safari.

There are alot of things that are subjective, but some basic good/bad, black/white definitions should be followed rather than distorted.
 
Iamtherealwoody said:
Firefox 3, the cure to safari's memory leak issue ;)
And if you miss the safari look, Grapples themes are beautiful
Click to expand...

Ohh looks nice! I just grabbed the Safari theme from here http://www.takebacktheweb.org/, but I have one question, how do I get the "Show All Bookmarks" button on the side of the Bookmarks Bar? I've noticed you don't have it either, but the screenshots of the theme have the button?
 
todd2000 said:
Ohh looks nice! I just grabbed the Safari theme from here http://www.takebacktheweb.org/, but I have one question, how do I get the "Show All Bookmarks" button on the side of the Bookmarks Bar? I've noticed you don't have it either, but the screenshots of the theme have the button?
Click to expand...

firefox's bookmark isn't really using same mechanism as safari.

you can customize toolbar and drag the bookmark button onto the toolbar, it will open bookmark sidebar when you click it. shortcut for this is cmd+B

But if you want to manage bookmarks, you will need to press cmd+shift+B

PS. I still want to mention that firefox 3's design to to use urlbar as spotlight search within all your history and bookmarks, it maybe more effective when you have large amount of bookmarks. Pt 3 in my signature may give you more idea on this (so called "awesomebar")
 

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clevin said:
altho I don't think 100MB is memory leak, this type of excuse is really not helping the improvement of safari.

There are alot of things that are subjective, but some basic good/bad, black/white definitions should be followed rather than distorted.
Click to expand...

iFizz said:
Ummmm....try googling this: safari memory leak
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What and get a bunch of hits from folks in forums showing us Activity Monitor and declaring Safari has a memory leak? :rolleyes:

I've seen the memory Safari uses first hand and yet I think it's just using free memory that available to it. There's also the common sense that if it were truly a 'bug' Apple would have fixed it since this has been the case for years now.

I've used Safari and Leopard on an old Emac with 640mb of Ram and had no performance problems.

Also who is to say that Safari won't give up memory to other programs if they need it? Who's to say the memory use attributed to it in Activity monitor doesn't represent both active and inactive memory? Who's to say Safari doesn't load your old history into memory when it opens up?

I'd have to bet on Apple and its programmers on this issue.
 
clevin said:
firefox's bookmark isn't really using same mechanism as safari.

you can customize toolbar and drag the bookmark button onto the toolbar, it will open bookmark sidebar when you click it. shortcut for this is cmd+B

But if you want to manage bookmarks, you will need to press cmd+shift+B

PS. I still want to mention that firefox 3's design to to use urlbar as spotlight search within all your history and bookmarks, it maybe more effective when you have large amount of bookmarks. Pt 3 in my signature may give you more idea on this (so called "awesomebar")
Click to expand...

Thanks, I must have been blind! I looked in the Customize Toolbar section, but missed the BookMarks icon the first time. Got it now. The search from the address bar does work out better though.
 
Re: Is Safari's memory usage really a problem?

trip1ex said:
What and get a bunch of hits from folks in forums showing us Activity Monitor and declaring Safari has a memory leak? :rolleyes:

I've seen the memory Safari uses first hand and yet I think it's just using free memory that available to it. There's also the common sense that if it were truly a 'bug' Apple would have fixed it since this has been the case for years now.
Click to expand...

Memory leaks can be very nasty... And they can creep into new code at any time. The "real" fix may require massive changes in the code base.. who knows. I work in the software industry and know first hand that companies do not always fix bugs for long periods of time (even years).

trip1ex said:
Also who is to say that Safari won't give up memory to other programs if they need it?
Click to expand...

It does not. Many people have shown this by waiting until the memory use is very high. Say 500MB+. Then start opening other programs until all physical memory is being used. Safari will NOT give up part of its memory back to the OS.

trip1ex said:
Who's to say the memory use attributed to it in Activity monitor doesn't represent both active and inactive memory?
Click to expand...
It's a given that memory can be swapped to disk... The point is when that happens performance is degraded. If you have 1GB of memory and Safari is using 800MB (I have seen it use over 1GB myself) then you will be swapping to disk.

trip1ex said:
Who's to say Safari doesn't load your old history into memory when it opens up?
Click to expand...
If this really was the cause then it is something that happens over many hours... (eg. a very slow loading of history). On the otherhand you can clear *ALL* cache, memory, and other data (or even start with a fresh OS install) startup Safari start surfing and leave safari running for a couple of days and the memory usage will continue to go up with out stopping.

trip1ex said:
I'd have to bet on Apple and its programmers on this issue.
Click to expand...

They are not gods. They make mistakes like any programmers. As I mentioned before memory leaks happen all over the place. Some software is completely scrapped and rewritten from scratch w/o ever getting close to fixing all bugs (even major ones).

I will say this... I prefer browsing and using Safari (with the Saft plugin) over any other browser most of the time. If it was not for the memory issue I would only use others during development and testing. Firefox 3 w/o plugins is much better w/regards to performance though. Unfortunately if you add plugins to get some of the functionality I must have that is in Safari then it becomes much less stable and some plugins kill performance (usually CPU).
 
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