Why is Safari so slow after upgrading to macOS Sonoma?

Neither can I. Who wants to fiddle around with fixes? Obviously, there is a problem, and they need to fix it. We pay enough for their tech. Hope someone from the company is reading these comments.

Same on Mac Mini M1 16GB.

Safari 17.0 with Sonoma 14.0 is incredibly slow and unusable. Many pages taking 10-20 seconds to load. Some so slow it takes a minute or more. I have no VPN or extensions installed. Chrome works normally by comparison.

Behaves like throttling, but WiFi and internet are fine on MacBook Pro and other devices here, so not the connection.

I cleared cookies and Safari was much faster for 20 minutes. Quickly bogged down while visiting 10 other sites. Within an hour, it was unusable again. Correlates to the amount of cookies acquired. Something is very wrong.

Another day, another bootup and Safari is working as expected. :-))

Shift-launch seems to  prevent windows from reopening the next time you open Safari, so that appears to be the cause that Apple needs to fix.

I am having the exact same issue. No issues before Sonoma. Tonight, a 1.37GB file was going to take 2 hours and 18 minutes to upload with Safari. I switched to Chrome and it took six minutes. Absolutely a Safari issue that needs fixing ASAP.

Looks like one more flaw that Apple will never address.

Indeed. I just can't wrap my head around the "why"? Everything changed since Jobs died (rest his soul). And not in a good way.

Hmm.

Have you tried reinstalling Mac OS Sonoma in Mac OS recovery? Or repair your drive also in Mac OS recovery?

I would recommend calling Apple support if not done so yet if you need a manual. There a few critical steps you need to follow when you want to try repairing your drive. And don’t forget to make a back up if you reinstall Mac Sonoma. You files should still be there, but just in case.

I thought the problem is cured with deleting and regenerating the Wifi module in Systems Settings Network.

However this is not the case. The problem seems to affect all network connections - not only Safari.

My work around is to switch off network connections (via pulling the ethernet cable and switching off Wifi) and switching it on again. Again and again.

My unprofessional guess is that there is a problem with new network connections within the System. Old ones (like the same webpage domain) seem to be less affected. If this is true - we have to wait for an update by Apple.

Update: I disabled Avast Anti-Track and cleared cache etc, and with the latest update, Safari response time has improved. I tend to use Chrome now anyway, as a 'go to' browser. Its a shame the 'proprietary' Apple one doesn't work better on the Mac.

Same on Mac Mini M1 16GB.

Safari 17.0 with Sonoma 14.0 is incredibly slow and unusable. Many pages taking 10-20 seconds to load. Some so slow it takes a minute or more. I have no VPN or extensions installed. Chrome works normally by comparison.

Behaves like throttling, but WiFi and internet speed test fine and MacBook Pro and other devices are working normally here, so not the connection.

I cleared cookies and Safari was much faster for 20 minutes. Quickly bogged down while visiting 10 other sites. Within an hour, it was unusable again. Correlates to the amount of cookies acquired. Shutdown and restarted a few times with no difference. Something is very wrong.

Renewed DHCP lease under TCP/IP. Auto-Proxy discovery is already off. Still slow.

Same here! I am also on Monterey 12.7.1 and since Safari got an update, pages like Gmail or Notion became so slow and especially in Notion sometimes it takes second to register each key press and write the sentences or notes I wrote. On Gmail when I move my mouse on my mails, there is a "hover" effect, and it became super slow. On Youtube sometimes the video doesn't even fill the player's size, and I have to adjust it by switching to default view and then back to cinema view. I was like what the heck? I even did a fresh install on my Macbook Air M1 and this problem remained. I thought I did something wrong but it seems like Apple messed up Safari... I hope they will fix it asap!

Update: I noticed the problem occurs after reloading a page, perhaps more than once. After reloading once or a few times and when several windows and/or tabs are open, then Safari may start behaving erratically. There is some event that triggers this issue? It is not consistent and not that simple to replicate the issue though. Other browsers work fine and the internet connection is fine. No proxy used.

Safari in Sonoma is so slow on some sites as to be useless. Can take a minute or two to load some pages. Same pages on Chrome load in a split second, so it cannot be any network settings. It hadn't used to be this slow, which is why I have been using it (now my bookmarks, favourites, passwords are saved in it, I depend on it). I have only Ad Block extension installed, disabling it makes no difference. Apple, please fix this ASAP.

This fix made me so happy! I'd been living with this problem for 6 months. It seemed to affect all Apple apps including Maps and iTunes as well.

Side note - the problem didn't occur when connected to wifi at work, only at home.