Anyone else having memory bloat issues with Safari (5.0.5)? Since the last update, It loads up a ton of memory and doesn't release it. I have 16 gig on my Mac tower and Safari is currently taking up 9.5 gig as I type this. I think this vers. has a serious memory leak. Any thoughts?
DF
Mac Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.4)
That's an interesting observation... I assumed that safari would run in 32 bit mode by default in a 32 bit kernel... but if it's running in 64 bit mode (in a 32 bit environment) then there could be some potential memory issues...
does anyone more technically savvy have some insight into this possibility??
could this simple combination/discrepancy manifest a bug that the safari programers overlooked?
Running Safari in 32bit mode does indeed significantly reduce the amount of memory that the app uses. After almost 24 hours of intense and constant use the memory used never went over 500mb. In 64bit mode it would have been well over 2gb by now... Very interesting.
So wait... I should shut down Safari and then make sure it's running in 32 bit mode? Why would it not do this by default?
I have the memory problem, also running the CPU up to 100% on Safari, which of course, kicks my fan into high gear.
Running all of this on a MacBook Pro (early 2010) with 8GB of RAM (Safari uses ~200MB, but 100% CPU).
help!!
It definitely makes a difference on my system... though I'm still convinced that no matter what, safari has some very screwy memory issues.
try it - open the "info" window for safari and check "open in 32bit mode" then restart safari...
That helped tremendously. I thought I was loosing my mind.
Thanks. Didn't know about 32-bit mode.
~Gracias
Safari continues to bring my system to a halt after a few hours use. Safari sequesters 2-3 GB on my 4 GB system. With this latest release things only got worse. I am so fed up, I just made my default browser Crome.
Yes to change the browser is one way to solve all the problems with safari specially since version 5.1, which is simply not usable.
With the Safari 5.05 I was able to reduce the ridiculous high memory wasting by throwing Adblock off my machine. Perhaps this could help. And I could only warn everybody: do not update to Safari 5.1, it will increase all problems you already have and give you some nice new, e.g. not or very slow working scrolling, constant CPU-usage, which reduces your ability to work on battery by at least 50% etcetc.
I'm a Windows user here - I wanted to post something in the Windows section, but there doesn't seem to be a section for that. My Win 7 machine has 3GB of memory and since updating to the new version of Safari 5.1 I seem to be getting around 500mb usage from the Webkit2Webprocess erm, process. This isn't enough to grind my system to a halt but it's irritating. There doesn't seem to be any obvious way of stopping this - my extensions are already off, not that I had any in the first place. Mine doesn't seem to be using any CPU, infact my whole system is using 1% as I type this. But Apple - fix this, and don't neglect the Windows users.
The Safari for Windows forum is here:
https://discussions.apple.com/community/mac_os/safari#/?tagSet=1041
Oops, how did I miss that?!
Thanks for pointing me in the right direction, and sorry for the angry rant :P
🙂
Your not alone. Safari has always eaten up way too much memory and eventually slows to a crawl and sometimes crashes which Firefox never does. At least for me anyway, after it hits >1.75GB I'm on borrowed time. I want to use it as my default browser, always start surfing the web with Safari, but then switch to something else after I notice the memory use piling up. Quiting and restarting fixes the issue but how is that a solution?
I haven't even bothered with 5.1 because I've heard it's buggy. Will try with 5.2 or whatever when that comes out. I can try the 32-bit mode but that's is just silly, its a 64-bit os and I'm not keen on losing the benefits of runnig safari in 64-bit mode. I'll try it though just to see what it does memory wise.
Yeah, I just recently switched over to Opera because of the memory issues. Opera is using 240MB after being open for around half an hour. I just launched Safari and it's already at 280MB!!
Chalk me up as someone also having memory issues with Safari. I'm using 5.0.6. Thought I was going crazy. As I type this, Activity Monitor is showing Safari as using 1.22GB of real memory, 2.36GB of virtual memory on a machine with 5GB of memory. It gets frustratingly slow when this happens, and it happens daily. I feel like the need to quit the browser and open it again is bogus. Seems like an oversight. Needing to repeatedly quit and restart an application seems to be not very Apple, in terms of user-friendliness.
Safari has always had these kind of memory issues. 5.0.5 and 5.1 in my experience are no different than previous versions. It just uses more and more memory and then you have to quit and relaunch.
Safari memory issues...
