High CPU usage "Safari Graphics and Media"

Probably not the answer you guys want to hear but - switched to Chrome and no more problems 🤷‍♂️

ekorko wrote:

Hello,

Has anyone else noticed seemingly random jumps in CPU usage by "Safari Graphics and Media"? The obvious symptom is increased fan noise. It happens to my MBP only occasionally, when I'm on youtube, twitch, or chess.com. First noticed the issue after a Big Sur update last summer. Currently in Monterey (12.1; Safari 15.2). I'm using a 2019 15-inch base model MBP.

The fans are designed to keep your Mac at safe temps...

Keep your Mac notebook within acceptable operating temperatures

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201640

You can try using a different browser to compare your results...

Chess is a very high demand application both CPU/GPU.

You can from the battery icon in the upper right —look at the drop down for significant Energy use and make changes here to reduce the count.

Also Any app the triggers the Discreet GPU will require more energy/heat.

The Integrated GPU (Intel) will cause less heat/ less fan

You can see this from the >About this Mac

Intel is the default, and you will see Intel only, Some apps like Photos.app for ex will trigger the Discreet GPU (AMD in this case) you will see both. You have to refresh this window when making changes to observe the current situation

I will add— if you are near the mains leave it plugged in, if you need the portability then run on battery only.

Has anyone else noticed seemingly random jumps in CPU usage by "Safari Graphics and Media"?

Is Activity Monitor reporting this or something else? If the latter, what is reporting the high usage?

Are you running any anti-virus or so-called "cleaning" apps? Any Safari extensions?

Remember that playing videos is not a low-demand task. Decoding and displaying video work the CPU and GPU quite hard. Even some sites with what seem to be simple graphics can run up temps, activating the thermostatically controlled fans.

I used to play an online game that used missile graphics that was in a small window. Should have been low impact but it lit up the fans on my MacBook Pro every time.

I have noticed a decrease of this issue (still happens sometimes i think) after stopping to use full screen in Safari, so maybe its related somehow.

I also see the same behavior, 300%+ for that `Safari Graphics and Media` process in Activity Monitor.

And interesting fact, it is also after going to chess.com for a while. I wonder if the WASM evaluation engine could get stuck in a loop or something.

Killing the tab does not stop the CPU usage, I need to restart Safari entirely, which is sad :/

I was on chess.com too when this happened to me. The CPU use for Safari Graphics and Media was hovering around 250%. I closed ALL tabs I had open in Safari and it stayed there. Quitting Safari altogether removed the process.

I'm wondering if Chess.com is the culprit. If this happens again, I will try to switch to Chrome for that website.

My machine is mac mini 2018.

Th fans are doing as designed to cool your Mac when it's worked hard. High CPU usage is an indicator of how hard it's working.

You can install an app to control the fans, but if you alter their cooling ability, you risk damaging your system because of overheating.

Do you have a case of any kind or in any way restrict air flow over the outside or into the interior? One of the best ways to keep your Mac cook is to not disrupt the flow of air via either route.

Os:

Monterey

I am having the same experience on my iMac 27, 2019 modell.

But one thing I am gonna test is to reset my settings in safari.

Perhaps one website have gotten to much rights or something.

So just to be safe, I am gonna reset every settings I safari.

Yup, seeing that quite frequently now with Monterey 12.2.1.

I have kept the Activity Monitor open for many years to watch for these sorts of memory leaks, (I assume that is what is going on) - but until Monterey, things have been quiet for more than a year. Suddenly it is back again

I was just looking at memory usage and compressed (this is what I normally watch on my oldish 8GB RAM iMac) was at 1.63 GB. Anything above 2GB gets my attention and concern. About a minute later, things started hanging, and I noticed it had ballooned to 3.03. I forced-quit Safari to avoid the hard reboot I had to do the other night for this same reason - my machine completely froze up then before I could force-quit.

The monitor indicated, as it has several times before "Safari Graphics & Media" was well in excess of 3GB. All other processes were in the MB region.

My situation:

Safari 15.0

Big Sur

i5 Chip

SGM at 232% and hence constant fan usage.

No real patterns emerging yet regarding likely triggers but I'll report back when/if they do.

It's very loud so annoying!

just experienced this on a new MacBook Air M1, which is quite strange as it has been the coolest running machine I've used so this was a strange experience. Currently running Safari Graphics and Media at 334% cpu utilisation. The only running extension is 1password. Not playing any videos.

Same here - just found this thread cause I googled the exact topic of the thread