Safari 6 memory usage

[Crazy Badger]

Why is Safari using so much memory?

Runs nicely when it's first opened, but after a few hours the memory useage climbs up and everything starts to slow down. I saw the Safari Web Process VM over 1GB at one point!

 

[Nosoforos]

I had the same problem. It made me switch to Chrome for a while (which is very inelegant as a browser, so I did not enjoy it). Then I found out I had some extensions running in Safari apparently suffering from severe memory leaks. I disabled all the extensions, and it's running great since then (I think mostly Adblocker was the culprit). Could that be your situation as well?

 

[Crazy Badger]

I think Adblocker was the culprit and I didn't even realise I had that extension installed! Removed now and running much better

 

[204353]

A sticky topic really needs to be made about this. I swear there's a new thread complaining about Safari memory usage every week and every time it's been AdBlock causing the problem.

 

[clarkent5477]

Yes!

I'm so glad I found this post. I will be removing adblocker tonight. Safari will use between 1-1.5GB causing the machine to reduce to a crawl. Cheers!

 

[MonkeySee....]

Someone wrote in another thread about this.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1409475/

There are still misconceptions about memory usage in 2012?

Safari will use as much available RAM you have free until it's told to give it up. You still have almost 2GB of RAM free in that screenshot, why should Safari reduce its memory footprint without any actual benefit to your system? Just because it's using lots of RAM doesn't mean its "bloated". Chrome and other browsers have exactly the same behaviour.

 

[andy8]

I am using an extension called Ghostery instead of Adblocker and Safari 6 is working perfectly.

 

[monkeymajik]

Safari 6 is memory eater. I open 7 tabs (facebook and twitter, youtube, and others non flash web). Safari consumes 1GBram and 70% CPU resources.

Really sloppy.

And then, i use firefox, open the same tab and content. Only eat 300mb max. with 10% CPU resources.

 

[Mr. Retrofire]

A sticky topic really needs to be made about this. I swear there's a new thread complaining about Safari memory usage every week and every time it's been AdBlock causing the problem.

Safari/WebKit/WebKit2 had memory management problems in Mac OS X 10.2.x and higher, including Lion and Mountain Lion. So it is unlikely, that some Safari v5.x.x extension is the problem.

 

[Zwhaler]

Safari 6 is memory eater. I open 7 tabs (facebook and twitter, youtube, and others non flash web). Safari consumes 1GBram and 70% CPU resources.

Really sloppy.

And then, i use firefox, open the same tab and content. Only eat 300mb max. with 10% CPU resources.

Wow really 70%? What type of machine are you running? Is it dual core, or more? Less?

 

[204353]

Safari/WebKit/WebKit2 had memory management problems in Mac OS X 10.2.x and higher, including Lion and Mountain Lion. So it is unlikely, that some Safari v5.x.x extension is the problem.

Well, from personal experience (and from what I've heard from several others), Safari 5/6 hasn't had memory issues unless AdBlock has been installed. I've been running these versions of the browser with and without AdBlock and only experienced the horrific memory leaks with the extension installed, so I've given up on AdBlock until I hear that it's fixed.

 

[Skoopman]

Well, from personal experience (and from what I've heard from several others), Safari 5/6 hasn't had memory issues unless AdBlock has been installed. I've been running these versions of the browser with and without AdBlock and only experienced the horrific memory leaks with the extension installed, so I've given up on AdBlock until I hear that it's fixed.

Yep, I had the same problem and AdBlock was the culprit. Uninstalled the plugin and now Safari is not hogging memory anymore. Users with memory problems, disable all your plugins and enable them one by one to find the source of the problem.

 

[fiddleman]

Safari Memory Issue

I have this issue with no extensions installed - so for me it's a pure Safari memory leak. Shutting down Safari doesn't help - I have to kill the process in Activity Monitor. I also have a pretty bad memory leak with CUPSD Inkjet3 printing process. It starts out with a few MB of memory - and after a few days it's up to 1.5 GB. I'm pretty sure if I ask Apple about this they will say talk to HP and if I ask HP they will say talk to Apple. Probably why this stuff doesn't get fixed - everybody assume it is someone else's problem.

Eventually my SDD drive fills up - with almost no apps running or anything happening. The nasty hourglass appears with the message that my Startup Disk is full. Obviously some OS/App memory/disk management issues they don't have a handle on yet. I'm really surprised that Apple hasn't fixed this given there have been posts on this for a couple of years.

MacBook Air 13" 4 GB 128 GB SDD.

 

[Watabou]

300MB memory is really nothing to be worried about.

Now, what is worrying is when Safari uses all of my memory. Here it's using 2GB of memory with 16 tabs open. I think the "Safari will use as much available RAM you have free" reason is ********. I've had Safari use 2.34GB of memory and everything slows down to a crawl as the Safari demands even more memory and I have to quit applications and use the purge command because OS X doesn't want to give up inactive memory. Something is wrong here. I reported these bugs to Apple but even Safari 6.0.2 doesn't seem to have fixed the problems. And then I get the dreaded "force reload" popup every half an hour. Clearly, there's something wrong here.

Compared to Safari, Firefox 20 (Nightly build) uses 700-800 MB for 24 tabs. OS X is much more responsive since I have free space left over and everything is just faster.

 

[BRyken]

Good to know I have had similar issues cause I have Adblock installed.

 

[Jenni8]

I am using an extension called Ghostery instead of Adblocker and Safari 6 is working perfectly.

I use that too as I found running Adblock was too causing problems. The got rid of it when I found Ghostery. I only have two others running. I used to have trouble using Safari along other RAM hungry apps, and now that I added 8 GB to my already 4 GB I had, all problems solved. I can have like 20+ tabs open and it is only using like 1.5 gigs of RAM or less which is pretty good in my book.

 

[throAU]

If you leave some pages open (facebook being a prime example) some of them leak memory via javascript and just continue to use more and more memory.

 

[sparky1499]

even when javascript is already disabled in the Safari preferences>security tab?

 

[bdkennedy1]

Thanks for the tip. This has been driving me nuts. When I checked, AdBlocker was using 1.5 gigs of RAM.

 

[turtlez]

Thanks for the tip. This has been driving me nuts. When I checked, AdBlocker was using 1.5 gigs of RAM.

yep safari adblock is the main reason I am using chrome. Today's internet is painful without ad block.

 

[Isamilis]

You can replace / 'enrich' your host file by using hosts file from someonewhocares.org/hosts. Will be similar with Adblock but no additional program needed.