I’m thinking 🤔 the video is being seen as a never ending stream? Thusly taking 112gb up on the MacBook Air and then running out of memory… ???
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Why does Safari write to disk?
- Thread starter MichaelDroste
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I presuming you're doing the site yourself. There's a lot of pop-up modal windows asking you to take more action and they keep coming up. When not coded properly, these types of scripts are notorious for spawning endless copies of themselves instead of bringing up the same copy that was already created.
Most of the time, these only affect the experience on the page itself, but if they're spawning additional media streams or doing something else that's resource intensive, they can be a much greater problem.
There's probably one or two things being problematic. You can try process of elimination and remove all the widgets and see if the problem persists... then put half of them back. If everything's fine, put the other half back.
If the problem re-occurs when you put your widgets back, divide the problematic set into halves and restore them one half at a time until you've narrowed down your choices.
I suggest measuring it instead of speculating.
You'd first create an environment where you can measure one thing accurately. That means closing the 75 tabs. Record the URLs as bookmarks first, so you can come back to them.
Next, visit the one site you're trying to measure. Write down the RAM usage when you first visit the site. Remain at the site for your chosen measurement period. Write down the RAM usage at the end of the period. As an additional test, remain at the single site overnight, with no other apps running, and with the computer set to never sleep.
If you measure things systematically, it should become clear fairly quickly which things are consuming RAM and which aren't.
EDIT
If you don't want to record 75 tabs as bookmarks, there is another approach: create another Mac-local user account.
Change Users & Groups settings on Mac
On your Mac, set up individual user accounts or groups, let occasional users log in as guests, and change network account server settings.
support.apple.com
It should be a simple user, not tied to any iCloud account. It can be an admin user.
To do measurements, logout of your main user account, then login to the measuring account. Perform the measurements, again using a single site, then logout. Don't use Fast User Switching, because that leaves the main user logged in, and all the apps it's running will still be active.
If you'll be doing more measuring, keep the account around and reuse it. If not, you can delete it after using it.
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Swap to SSD is your friend on a box with limiting RAM like 8 GB. Do not try to circumvent it.
Your M-series Mac uses RAM intensively, a good thing for performance. The Mac OS aggressively manages that RAM and the OS and all open apps to maximize how well the Mac computes. Read up on Apple's Unified Memory Architecture; you will find that RAM [which is fast and a good way to compute] is used constantly for everything, not simply for your open web pages.
As the Mac OS works to optimize computing with limiting RAM like 8 GB the OS will swap some things back and forth to disk [relatively very very slow compared to Unified Memory Architecture RAM operation] on an ongoing basis. Although less optimal than if you had more RAM available, this swapping is normal operation and you should not consider trying to prevent it.
Although very slow compared to RAM, modern SSDs are quick enough that the Mac OS swapping to SSD often does a great job of coping with limiting RAM. Many users never notice that their work is constrained until the offensive SBBOD appears with frequency. The ways to minimize swapping to SSD are:
1) Ideally, equip each new Mac purchase with sufficient RAM to minimize sub-optimal swapping over the life cycle of the new Mac, ensuring smooth operation for the life cycle. Many choose not to optimize RAM, in which case see #2 below.
2) If one's computing is pushing hard enough on RAM to force constant swapping to SSD:
2a) Manually close all apps, restart, open only one app and use that app only. This is a kludge of course, but it is the best way to cope with having less than ideal RAM on board. Note that as soon as one does something like checking email one no longer has just one app open.
2b) When a browser is that one open app, minimize the number of browser tabs kept open, and be aware that some websites can be huge memory users for whatever reason.
2c) If RAM is not being overdriven too much, more than one app can be open and operable, albeit sub-optimally. One finds the acceptable balance of open apps by trial and error, and how much lack of smoothness [speed slowdowns, hiccups, app crashes, SBBOD] one will tolerate.
2d) Maintain the boot SSD at no more than 50%-80% [maximum] full by offloading files to external drives as necessary.
Note that simple restarting does not necessarily solve RAM over-demanding issues, because the OS will often auto-reopen things that were previously in use. One must first manually close everything prior to restarting; and also make sure that there are not hidden apps that always open that peripherals (printers, mice, NAS, etc.) have surreptitiously installed and are needlessly using RAM.
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So, beyond the amount of active tabs, we’ve seemingly narrowed down the other culprits.
developer.apple.com
webkit.org
So, at least a couple have runaway events.
In which, we appear to be going down another path. With that said, I’ll provide these final notes:
Web Inspector | Apple Developer Documentation
Use Web Inspector to inspect and debug your HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
Timelines Tab
The Timelines Tab contains all of the performance profiling and introspection tools provided by Web Inspector, organized into different timelines each with their own area of interest and specialized interface.
So, at least a couple have runaway events.
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In 2025? Where every webpage is loaded with scripts and other advertising garbage and no one takes load times seriously on the developers end?
Color me shocked.
Hey, watch your mouth man! (I'm kidding).
A lot of us actually do care, but lots of sites aren't done by full time developers and even when they are, we are constantly overruled by the people who pay our bills.
And Kudos to @MacCheetah3 for putting in the effort to do a Web Inspector profiling.
Sorry when I say devs I should say the project managers they report to who are tech illiterate 😉
I was keeping it short and simple. I'm not here to write an essay on how MacOS uses swap.
Have you heard about bookmarks and reading list? Also it’s interesting how usable the tab ui is when you have 75 tabs open. Each tab must be really really small.
After reading all the replies, the alternative is to micromanage what tabs you have open.👎🏿
Is that "seems strange" feeling you have based on the actual RAM usage of the 75 web pages and the hardware you're discussing? Or is it just based on wishful thinking?
Use Chrome and open up a bunch of tabs that you often use. When you hover over a tab it would show you how much memory that tab is using (unless you toggled it off). I'm just entering this page 30 seconds ago, and it's already using 370MB. I have seen a page using 1.2GB. Having 75 pages open would go way over 8GB even if the system isn't using RAM for anything else. I've had over 100+ tabs open on a 8GB M1 Air so I do this too.
Memory swapping is an essential part of memory management. The presence of a few GB of swap and some compressed memory shows that your Mac is handling your demands on memory. Given that you have one app using more than your physical RAM is the cause for concern.
Your MBA has the minimum RAM (8 GB) and is likely to struggle when you go beyond basic usage. Assuming you don't want to replace the MBA, reducing Safari's memory use is the obvious step.
As others have said, 1) don't have so many tabs open and 2) identify particular tabs which may be consuming more than average RAM. Web pages are often not passive objects and behave more like applications consuming significant resources.
Stop misleading folks if you can’t or won’t explain how swap works. That’s how FUD starts online.
What about non RW websites? I would start investigating what is rapid weaver doing here. I see my M1 Max with 64 GB start spinning the fans, which I don’t usually see under heavy load on the website you mentioned.
After about 20 tabs it ceases being micromanaging and just turns into managing.
1) Safari is not the only thing that is running on your Mac.
2) 75 Safari pages are a lot! I mean, A LOT for an 8GB computer. But that doesn’t matter because… well Swapping is a feature not a problem.
3) therefore, why would you want to stop the swapping. MacOS is doing its job so that you can focus on doing yours, so stop worrying about it.
At work I'm often dealing with several dozen open tabs (big Google Docs workplace). I use Safari and use Tab Groups to keep them separated so I'm only opening at most like 10 at a time -- pertinent to the project I'm working on. Works brilliantly, and the Tab Groups sync seamlessly between my office and home Macs.
Good suggestion. I did forget that organization and management tool.
How to Use Safari Tab Groups in macOS
In macOS Monterey, Tab Groups are a new Safari feature that aim to make organizing and preserving your open browser tabs more manageable without...
www.macrumors.com
Group tabs in Safari on Mac
In Safari on your Mac, organize tabs into groups to conveniently move among related websites.
support.apple.com
Just another voice in the chorus saying dude you’ve got WAY too many tabs open. Seriously, if you think you need 75 tabs open you’re not using the technology the way it was intended. Safari now offers Tab Groups and Profiles and Reading Lists and Browsing History to let you tame your overflowing tabs. Try some of these great Safari features to cut-down on your tab anxiety. Call me old fashioned but I rarely have more than ONE tab open at a time.