ssd swap - high usage of Terabytes Written

[TheSynchronizer]

Does that ONLY stop YouTube videos from caching, or web pages too?

Should stop most caching including web pages. Do see my post for my other tips as they all universally apply between Edge and Chrome as far as I'm aware, especially the built in flags for which those that I mentioned seem to have something to do with caching. For chrome that would be chrome://flags instead.

Also keep in mind that with all of my tweaks Edge/Chrome/Safari/pretty much every browser will write 1-5MB per website you visit - but this has always been this way on all macs. I'm not entirely sure why this is, but it happens on all browsers and so it's probably core browser functionality. Nevertheless its not really a problem as it'll probably only account to around 1GB of write per day.

 

[TheSynchronizer]

Which extension (that works well) for Chrome?

Auto Tab Discard from the Chrome Web Store is what I use with great success, and it has great reviews overall. It offers a lot of customisability in the Options panel so you can adjust its behaviour as you see fit.

 

[k-hawinkler]

Tab discarding: best of both worlds. I can have as many tabs 'open' as I comfortably want (my record so far is 286), and yet only use the memory required for however many I need and am actually using and switching between (usually 5 tabs).

If only Safari had a decent extension to achieve this, but unfortunately only Chromium browsers (chrome, edge) have one available as far as I'm aware.

I am really curious what you use those many tabs for.
Could you please give me a one sentence characterization of the work you are doing?
I am firmly of the opinion everybody should use their computers as they best see fit.
TIA.

 

[TheSynchronizer]

I am really curious what you use those many tabs for.
Could you please give me a one sentence characterization of the work you are doing?
I am firmly of the opinion everybody should use their computers as they best see fit.
TIA.

I'm a computer science student and a software developer - hundreds of stackoverflow tabs, code snippets I might find useful later, assignment research, essay research, and of course MacRumours <3

Pro tip: Edge/Chrome have tab grouping flags available to be enabled, so when you are going tab crazy like I do basically daily you can keep everything organised and useable.

 

[k-hawinkler]

I'm a computer science student and a software developer - hundreds of stackoverflow tabs, code snippets I might find useful later, assignment research, essay research, and of course MacRumours <3

Pro tip: Edge/Chrome have tab grouping flags available to be enabled, so when you are going tab crazy like I do basically daily you can keep everything organised and useable.

Thank you so much.Fascinating indeed.How times are changing fast! Good luck to your work.

 

[leons]

Still looking for Chrome Cache. I found a folder:
~/Library/Caches/Google/Chrome/Default/Cache/
that has over 23,000 files in it, many created today. Is that it?
So, should I modify the ability to write to that entire folder?

 

[TheSynchronizer]

Still looking for Chrome Cache. I found a folder:
~/Library/Caches/Google/Chrome/Default/Cache/
that has over 23,000 files in it, many created today. Is that it?
So, should I modify the ability to write to that entire folder?

That's the one - you can leave all the files in there as they are, and set the permissions of the folder as per my screenshot.

 

[fwilers]

To prevent edge from writing YouTube videos to disk, go to ~/Library/Caches/Microsoft Edge/Default/ , select the 'Cache' folder and click Get Info, and under 'Sharing & Permissions' set your admin/user account to Read only, so that it says 'You can only read'.

I'm attaching a screenshot of some of the extensions I have in Edge, most importantly Tab Discarder.

Lastly in edge, type edge://flags in the search bar, and where it says 'Search flags' search:
Partial swap - Disable
AppCache web API - Disable
Heavy Ad Intervention - Enable
Back-forward Cache - Disable

Thanks you so much for this.
Even as a casual user, I've somehow manage 4TB in a very short period of time (2 weeks).

I have no idea where the data is coming from, because I'm capped at 1TB a month from my ISP.

Safari is somehow rewriting data over and over again for no reason, which really pisses me off.
If I had a mechanical drive, I probably wouldn't even be able to work because of so much disk activity.

 

[leons]

That's the one - you can leave all the files in there as they are, and set the permissions of the folder as per my screenshot.

Unfortunately, Uncle Google is not cooperating. The folder is now set to Read Only per your example, but the system is still able (and is) putting files in it. Any ideas?
(in addition to "seeing" the cache entries continue to appear in that folder after changing permissions, my Disk Writes went up 1GB after watching a 1 1/2 hr movie.)

 

[leons]

Hey @TheSynchronizer, I've been looking into this more. As you see in my previous post, Uncle Google is ignoring the Read-Only flag. I found this suggestion for Windoze:

The best way to do this if using Windows is to locate the ”Cache’ folder under “%localappdata%\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Cache. Right-Click, Properties, [Security] Tab. [Advanced] button, [Disable Inheritance], ‘Removal All’. There should be no object listing, click [OK]. [OK] again. Now Chrome wont be able to cache anything. You can do the same to the MediaCache and GPUCache and all other Cache folders as well.​

I'm wondering if you (or one of the other CS geniuses here who sees this) can come up with a way (maybe terminal command?) that can really make this folder not writable. Other info on the web suggests that deleting or renaming it does not work either.
TIA!

 

[Aleksandro]

@TheSynchronizer thank you very much for you help with the Edge. Should the same method would work with the Safari?

 

[leons]

The tools that read the SMART information give a "Percent Used". Is there anywhere to display the variable that they are computing the "Percent Used" from (i.e. what is the 100% number)?

 

[gank41]

FWIW I've been checking my SMART stats daily, getting screenshots of Terminal so I can reference later, and I'm seeing less than 1 TBW for almost a week... I received my M1 MBP 16GB/2TB Nov 27, 2020 and didn't check my stats until Feb 23, 2021 where I was at 22.7 TBW. Soooo, the initial shock is gone. I'm using all of the same apps other people are troubleshooting, Edge, Safari, Parallels (4 VMs), streaming lots of videos on YouTube and even using the HBOmax app to watch the Snyder Cut. I'm pretty sure if caches building up and writing a lot to disk from streaming were a universal problem, I'd be seeing an issue as well. And I'm no longer noticing a large amount of TBW after macOS 11.2.2 or 11.2.3, one of those. And now on macOS 11.3 b4 & b5.

 

[leons]

Wait, to be clear: you said "no longer"....are you saying that you DID have excess writes before installing the beta, or at what point did it get better? Also, do you run many tabs at once regularly?

 

[gank41]

Wait, to be clear: you said "no longer"....are you saying that you DID have excess writes before installing the beta, or at what point did it get better? Also, do you run many tabs at once regularly?

I was at 22.7 TBW on my 2TB drive as of Feb 23 after getting it Nov 27. So, after roughly 3 months my drive had 22.7 TBW, and I wish I knew what the drive was at the day I got it. About 23 TBW for roughly 3 months now seems realistic, now noticing much less day over day. That could have to do with Time Machine local backups and initially installing all of my apps & data and then again after a Reinstall. I was initially worried, but now the data seems to show as accurate for me, at least.

 

[leons]

How about your Tab open "habits"?

 

[gank41]

How about your Tab open "habits"?

I tend to have between 3-8 or so tabs open in Safari and then I use Edge with maybe 2-3 tabs, but I also use MS Teams & MS Outlook & ServiceNow as "installed" web apps that launch from my Applications Folder that run with Edge. I would assume the 3 of those all running at once along with Edge and Safari, would be a contributor just like what's been speculated/looked into above.

 

[leons]

I gave no idea what the significance is, but in case it means anything:
According to Task Manager, over the last 7 days I've written 8.68TB.
8.52 (almost all) of that is listed as kernal_task.

 

[TheSynchronizer]

Unfortunately, Uncle Google is not cooperating. The folder is now set to Read Only per your example, but the system is still able (and is) putting files in it. Any ideas?

I use Edge and not Chrome so I don’t know why that is - it shouldn’t really be possible.

If you look in activity monitor you should only be writing 3-5MB to disk per website visited, and any videos you watch shouldn’t be causing any disk writes in activity monitor.

The only thing i can think of is to press the ‘Locked’ checkbox in the Cache folder settings, but that is essentially setting the folder to read only, but maybe it’s a worth a try.

@TheSynchronizer thank you very much for you help with the Edge. Should the same method would work with the Safari?

Unfortunately none of what I described can be done with Safari as far as I know, though I haven’t tried much myself.

Someone here reported trying to set some Safari cache folders to read only but it caused memory to go into red.

My opinion is that Apple has some optimising/fixing to do with Safari and the caching. Im a big fan of Edge due to all the extensions but i’d love if I could just use Safari without having to worry about SSD writes.

 

[leons]

I use Edge and not Chrome...

Were you a former Chrome user? I use Chrome for the same reasons you mentioned - all the extensions. Does Edge have as many (or more)? Do you think that Edge is overall the best browser? If so, why?

 

[Fomalhaut]

I gave no idea what the significance is, but in case it means anything:
According to Task Manager, over the last 7 days I've written 8.68TB.
8.52 (almost all) of that is listed as kernal_task.

You can use the following command to find out what kernel_task is actually writing to:

sudo fs_usage -w -f diskio kernel_task

 

[TheSynchronizer]

Were you a former Chrome user? I use Chrome for the same reasons you mentioned - all the extensions. Does Edge have as many (or more)? Do you think that Edge is overall the best browser? If so, why?

I was indeed a former Chrome user. I find Edge to just be a better, more refined version of chrome - they can both use the Chrome web store for extensions as they’re both Chromium browsers, and MS edge also has access to its own microsoft extension store.

I have the M1 MBP and I find edge to also have a much better touchbar implementation, the side tabs are a nice feature, and there are various other things i prefer over chrome. It also seems to be maintained a lot more than chrome is these days.

 

[wirtandi]

Looks like this thread has gone into a discussion on Edge/Chrome/FIrefox etc 😕 I mean it is related, but still....

 

[iLog.Genius]

This just gets worse and worse...

This is just from watching YouTube in Safari and nothing else opened or running in the background.

 

[TheSynchronizer]

Looks like this thread has gone into a discussion on Edge/Chrome/FIrefox etc 😕 I mean it is related, but still....

Safari was one of the main reasons for my excessive SSD writes personally, so that’s where the relevancy lies. Some people seem to have no issues with safari while others do, which leads to a lot of discussion.

This just gets worse and worse...

This is just from watching YouTube in Safari and nothing else opened or running in the background.

By your description this much swap seems practically impossible. Have you tried rebooting? Or better yet booting into safe mode and trying there?