Safari goes to a crawl with Gmail running

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Level 1

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Safari goes to a crawl with Gmail running

So, I noticed over the last few months that if Gmail is running (I usually leave it up on my MB Pro 2016 with 16 Gb Ram and 2.9 GHz Quad-Core i7 and 2 Tb SSD). My MB pro has been blazingly fast since new. Except for the last few months after both Apple and Gmail updated.

Now, if gmail is left running (sometimes it only takes a few minutes), opening a web page in Safari can take 5-10 minutes to render the page.

I can reproduce this ad infinitum. Closing only gmail (have like 9 other tabs open) solves the problem. Immediately pages open quickly and tabs render quickly. Open gmail back up and the problem recurs.

I have also left gmail on safari and opened up Chrome with no problems going to URL’s. So it is NOT a network issue and not RAM on my machine. I have run Sophos and now Malwarebytes with no viruses or adware.

As far as I can tell, it appears the gmail has a memory leak and at some point consumes all the memore and resources inside Safari. I have partially confirmed this by looking at the Activity Monitor. Safari with gmail running takes 99% of the cpu.

Maybe this is Google trying to get all the Apple people to switch to Chrome?

MacBook Pro with Touch Bar

Posted on Apr 4, 2021 5:20 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

dominic23

Level 10

83,952 points

Apr 4, 2021 6:26 AM in response to marcemarcsf

Go step by step and test.

1. Startup in Safe Mode: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201262

Login to your account.

Launch Safari and test.

To exit Safe Mode, click  in the menu bar and choose “Restart”.

Test.

Launch Safari holding the shift key down and test.

2. Clear all website data

https://support.apple.com/guide/safari/manage-cookies-and-website-data-sfri11471/mac

3. Enable Develop menu, click Develop in the menu bar and then Empty Caches from the dropdown.

https://support.apple.com/guide/safari/use-the-developer-tools-in-the-develop-menu-sfri20948/mac

Safari will remove all favicon as well. It will be replenished as you visit those sites again.

4. Disable extensions and test.

Safari > Preferences > Extensions

Uncheck the box beside name of the extension.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203051

Once in a while quitting Google accounts is not a bad idea.

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Answer 2

marcemarcsf Author

Level 1

10 points

Apr 6, 2021 8:22 AM in response to dominic23

Dominic23 - thanks for taking the time to reply. Unfortunately, your reply isn’t helpful as this is basically equivalent to “try deleting all the files in c:/temp and then do <ctrl><del>”.

I am aware of how to start up in safe mode, start applications WITHOUT reloading all the prior content. If you read my posting thoroughly, you will notice that the problem is simply solved by closing ONLY the tab/page with gmail on it. Once, I do that the problem goes away. This is also validated that it is not a network issue since other browsers (chrome) resolve the URL fine and work fine while Safari with the ‘gmail’ tab open moves at a crawling pace.

I suspect it is in the gmail code. I haven’t dug deep into it yet but likely it is either an unlimited spinning counting loop taking up CPU and memory resources or a memory leak that eventually consumes 100% of the memory until the computer crashes.

Anyone out there that wants to dig into it? Let me know

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Safari goes to a crawl with Gmail running

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