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ChromeCrescendo

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jan 3, 2020
459
252
Being home during the COVID crisis, I discovered the Reddit gifs subreddit

However, whenever I go there, I get a warning that "This website is using significant memory"

late-2015 27" iMac
32 GB 1867 MHz DDR3

Shouldn't 32GB RAM be more than enough to browse the web?
 
Who knows? Maybe the site has some malware on it like bitcoin miner.

Are you using a content blocker with your browser? You really need to in 2020, not to block ads but for security reasons.

I've used content blocking software for web browsers since the late Nineties primarily for security reasons -- an unassailable stance.
 
Who knows? Maybe the site has some malware on it like bitcoin miner.

Are you using a content blocker with your browser? You really need to in 2020, not to block ads but for security reasons.

I've used content blocking software for web browsers since the late Nineties primarily for security reasons -- an unassailable stance.


It only happens on Reddit
 
I opened the reddit 'gifs' page and that tab alone chomped up 1.2GB of memory, almost instantly, and then reduced a little (I didn't actually scroll the page at all) to around 950MB.

Another reddit page hit about 300MB when I opened it.

Welcome to user-generated content sites, memory efficiency is probably on their todo list right after "make a dating site for rats".
 
Reddit's rich post thing plus infinite scrolling seems like it could be more of a memory hog than almost any web thing I can think of. I can't see any reason to think it's doing anything to manage its used memory between page loads – I'd say Reddit's web design seems more like the "insane" thing than the browser.
 
The warning doesn't mean that your RAM is gone, it means that page is requiring more than typical amounts of memory. Long pages with lots of images, auto-refreshing ads, auto-play videos, animated gifs... they can demand more than typical amounts of memory. The warning is there to help you pinpoint specific pages/tabs that may be contributing to an overall performance issue.
 
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