Safari 14 on Big Sur: How to prevent a webpage from automatically reloading because it was using significant memory?

Well, notreallytristan, a setting for how to handle webpages that use excessive memory (perhaps the “amount” should, likewise, be a user option) would be a great request to send to Apple, via their Feedback mechanisms: Product Feedback - Apple.

Same issue with the website Lecturio, but initially it kept reloading the webpage, after 4-5 days it started freezing instead of reloading. Now using Google Chrome, but Safari is now not answer for my big use(. Hope it will get fixed soon.

jelleverbeek wrote:

Halliday considering this is a thread about an error message in Safari you can correctly assume I'm running this through the browser Safari. Considering the 6 pages of replies also mentions it several times, you'd also be correct to assume Safari is the only browser on macOS that gives these messages, so yes, a different browser would fix the problem but a different browser would give me other issues I don't have with Safari.

I have learned, over decades of experience, to do as little assuming as possible.

I don’t access Disney+ nor Netflix through a browser.

Additionally, all we can do, here—seeing as we are but fellow users and Apple does not frequent this User Community—is to provide whatever “solutions” may already exist—usually only consisting of workarounds.

If you actually need Apple to make a change/fix, then you will be best served by providing Apple Feedback through their designated Feedback mechanisms: See Product Feedback - Apple

If people don’t provide such Feedback, there is little chance that Apple will change anything.

I would provide my Feedback in the form of a Bug Report, on matters such as this.

It's not just Big Sur -- it's Safari, period.

I'm using a 48G ram iMac Mohave, Safari Version 14.0.3 (14610.4.3.1.6)

I cannot with a full length movie without that high use message -- shortly followed by a forced reload message -- with the accompanying reload, of course. It is really irritating.😠

At least Disney+ handles it somewhat gracefully: my interrupted video resumes a bit rewound. Some others, at the other end, require logging in again and finding the movie again and---🤬

Halliday wrote:

The problem, Gregory Jones11. , is that websites are not supposed to be using so much of any browsers’ resources

2. Other browsers, such as Google Chrome, don’t seem to have this issue.

My machine has plenty of resources.

I have watched my resources -- and there are cores and real ram still available when Safari decides to do its thing. I have a few programs that are much more intensive users of my resources that a behave just fine.

Safari **is** the problem, as you pointed out with your Chrome workaround.

As you have suggested to many others, I have done the Apple product feedback thing with every OS and/or Safari update that has NOT fixed the issue ---- it has been around quite some time.

My first test, to try to reproduce this issue, was Safari 14.0.3, on Big Sur 11.2.3, running on an Intel Mac mini (2018) with only 8GB RAM; I tried to watch videos on Netflix.

Memory use was steady, w/ 0 Swap, the entire time. No glitches, no “significant memory” use warning.

For Disney+, the first observations were higher Memory use (increasing Swap to a few hundred MB).

However, it remained stable. (I did notice, additionally, that the video I watched on Disney+ was at higher resolution [more like the 4K of my monitor].)

I wrote too soon: the Disney+ tab just reloaded, completely without any warning or other dialogue! (Starting back a little before where it quit.)

Note: the original Disney+ process was terminated, and a new Disney+ process was started in its place.

Swap is now at over 1 GB.

The Memory Pressure gradually increases a few minutes before the restart of the Tab.

I’ve not, yet, been able to get Netflix to have any trouble, even with explicitly 4K videos.

I am also having the same issue. I am having to switch over to chrome. This update reloads my lectures and forces me to restart and search for my original position. I am also participating in research surveys for a class, and I have had the issue where my progress was completely lost due to the automatic reloading feature. It does the same thing with certain streaming websites, like Disney+. I would really appreciate if this feature was something that could be toggled on and off.

Try Edge, it’s better at displaying streaming content !!

the bad part is that none of the other browsers as yet support full HD streaming !! It’s only safari, and Apple managed to break that as well !!

DeepS Tunes wrote:

… So until we get to a utopian stage, should we not have an option ourselves to manage the website !! …

Unfortunately, there is no way or mechanism for end users «to manage the website !!»

… There should be an option to make safari behave the way it used to behave previous to the update?

The entire web-industry is in the process of changing how websites identify the features of our web-browsers.

Once this is more fully adopted, things should be far better, even compared to how things «used to behave» (where browsers would “spoof” their identity, in order to “trick” websites into “doing the right thing”™️).

Until then, things will be sort of “hit-n-miss”, with the majority of the “misses” being the more poorly programmed and maintained websites.

Our product may be completely broken by the new "feature" of automatic page reloads due to memory usage.

To give you some context, we are developing an Office.js based add-in (Velixo) that is used to build Excel reports from corporate ERP (accounting) data residing in the cloud.

Some of our clients have enormous reports coming from ~10 ERP tenants, each of which can provide on the order of 10-100 MiB of data!

To avoid re-downloading upon every refresh, the data is cached both in-memory and using local browser storage. Thus,

1. Only new data is fetched upon refresh.
2. We avoid storing this (sensitive) data on our servers.

The add-in is designed to be memory-intensive, and our clients are fully aware of that.

However, since the advent of Big Sur, we started seeing page reloads due to "significant memory usage" and there is positively no way to turn off this feature.

PLEASE ADD A WHITELIST FOR IT!

pkabirr wrote:

@Halliday,

I understand and respect your opinion on the matter.

On my end, I see no problem (and our clients didn't either) with computationally and memory intensive JS applications. …

The problem is that you wish to impose your desires upon software that is not yours to control.

… Whether we like it or not, much of even desktop software (non-resource-constrained!) is written in JS / TypeScript nowadays.

(Emphasis added)

That’s not anything close to an excuse for abusing the resources of an application you do not control.

Additionally, the highlighted portion provides the pattern for the solution I have already pointed out: write your own «desktop software (non-resource-constrained!) … written in JS / TypeScript».

In 2021, a browser tab is not really semantically different from a standalone application. …

Maybe in some people’s minds. However, that is no excuse for “trampling” upon the resources of the entire «browser».

… If one disagrees with a particular tab's resource usage, they can opt out using their legs (and CMD+W).

Again, not an appropriate “solution”.

I was always absolutely OK with a guided warning (Ideally in the format of "We see that this tab here is using a lot of memory which can take resources from other apps and make your Mac less responsive. Do you want to shut it down, or do you want us not to ask about it again?")

I agree with you, here.

However. From what I have been observing, with regard to Web-Browsers, and the issues of Website resource use and abuse, it appears that the applicable International Internet Standards organizations are in the process of taking a different, far more proactive approach.

At the same time, a force shutdown without asking is so Joseph Stalin.

Meh…

On my end, I hold an opinion that at all times the user should stay in control of their resource allocation. What Apple did with this update is take that away from the users. Any sort of "food stamp style" RAM caps risk throwing out a baby with the bathwater.

Yet. As I have repeatedly pointed out, you, and all websites, have appropriate mechanisms that don’t involve a similarly «Stalin[esk]» abuse of people’s browser resources.

This whole thread with over 1.5k upvotes is a proof of how both people and application developers are unhappy with this move, and no amount of Kool-Aid is going to fix this.

Actually, those aren’t «upvotes», per se. They are but “me-too” votes.

Unfortunately, as pointed out many times, the problem is with website «developers» (and lazy «application developers» trying to get away with using website development as a quick-n-dirty substitute for actual «application» development [*]) abusing Web-Browser resources that are not theirs to “abuse”.

As also already pointed out, there are multiple causal pathways that have brought about the current level of abuse.

The solution is not going to be a case of Web-Browsers simply “rolling over”, and sacrificing the user’s resources and user-experience.

The solution must come from «developers» respecting resources of software they have no right to control, and relearning appropriate software development techniques.

—

* Confession: I have done the same. The difference is that I didn’t “rail” against the Web-Browsers for limiting my software.

LemonsterOG wrote:

Thanks for the link to your previous comments. I've now reviewed them.

…

Seriously though, I get what you're saying, but there should be something we could do as a temporary workaround that doesn't require us to use another browser.

As I’ve said, within my previous comments, y’all are certainly free to provide Apple with your Feedback (as well as the problematic websites). Only Apple can make the changes that would provide for what you want as a workaround, without using the currently available (partial) workaround of trying other web-browsers.

As I have mentioned within some of my previous comments, I see some signs that suggest there is an industry (through the International Internet Standards orgs.) push to create a far more flexible and reliable means for browsers to communicate features and limitations (probably with negotiation) to websites.

Unfortunately, this effort will take some time.

(I have had my own experiences in creating JavaScript code that ran into various memory limitations on all browsers. I did not have the benefit of a server platform, so I couldn’t use Server-side Storage [unlike all these troublesome websites]. I wished, even then, for a better means of finding out how much memory a given browser would let me allocate. None-such existed, at that time.)

It's been almost a year since this post and the problem has yet to be solved. Since no one mentioned it, here’s the Safari Feedback link to “suggest” a fix to Apple:

https://www.apple.com/feedback/safari.html

🙄

Same issue here. MacOS11:6. Recently had to do an online course and assessment, with the assessment (or test) only allowing one attempt at each question... page reloads, answer gone and no more attempts allowed. The educational institute said to basically use Chrome, as they were having issues with students using Safari. Not a good look.

There was one suggestion I read somewhere that reinstalling the macOS may solve it? Has anyone try this yet?