Safari Web Content high CPU usage

Stuart,

Your answer resolved something that had been driving me nuts: when idle for a while, Safari web content would start downloading something at about 50kbps, giving fears of some kind of malware.

I think I had a couple of spurious entries in the reading list. Deleted them - problem gone.

hey guys... been having issues with safari... since... well... forever.

its slow as MOFO after a while.

i run all the purge stuff... the resetting safari... etc.

i use no extensions and have java off.

i noticed its slow as MOFO with FLASH.

in fact sites that have any flash or heavy graphics tend to bring out the spinning beach ball of doom.

i have a 17 inch... 2.6 with 8 gigs of ram and a 500 ssd HD... this thing was like $4k when new.

shouldn't have issues with performance.... its a beast and i run a lot of video and graphics stuff with it.

my active memory was like 300mb.... when i shut safari off, it'd go to 3-4GIGS

so something is wrong.

I read every response in the 16 pages of this thread.

the thing that worked for me INSTANTLY, was installing Ghostery on the browser.

No clue why or how... but i've checked a few times and it's removed the issue.

just checked again... 3.72 gigs avail. with safari open.

try it, see if it works for ya. :-)

Well, I have no Google folder under Library, only one under Library, Application Support. And that folder only has the Googletalkplugin,app and then in the Internet plugins folder is one called "Googletalkbrowerplugin.plugin". No Google folder under Library.... Any ideas?

Well, I tried installing Ghostery, and for awhile it did seem to help. But within a few days it's now acting as before, energy hog, every pic I open has to open twice, it''ll show it, then refresh the page, every single time. It's crashed on me today a few times, the last time with ONE window open, and did so within ten minutes! I'm so completely disgusted with it, and I want so much to use it, as I like it over the others, and really, it's APPLE'S OWN BROWSER, so WHY DOESN'T IT PLAY WITH APPLE COMPUTERS & OS????

Really, I sometimes think I'm in an alternate universe and I'm suddenly using Microsoft equipment & OS, I long for the days back when Apple stuff just worked.....

It's fairly clear, from my own analysis and what others write here, that we have a mixture of issues here, some Apple's doing, some not.

a) the primary problem is ill-behaved web content, be that extensions (locally loaded web content (JS and resources), in essence), or remote sites like google, various slide shows, etc. The biggest culprits seem to be slide shows, google docs, and various plugins/extensions, although even with all of the latter removed, the issues still occur, pointing to the fact that any badly written script can suck up ridiculous amounts of resources. It used to be that most scripts were Flash, so Flash used to be the main problem, but JS/HTML5 is no solution to bad or malicious script programming: now the issue has simply shifted.

b) a secondary problem might be, that this third party content triggers some sort of memory/resource leak in Apple's code, but that may or may not be the case, it may simply be a case that these badly written JS scripts on the web pages consume the resources, and there's primarily nothing Apple can do about this, short of reprogramming third party web sites and extensions (which is obviously not going to happen)

c) and that IS APPLE's responsibility: it was advertised how Safari would 'sleep' windows that aren't visible, etc. and that's obviously NOT the case. Even when not a single Safari window is visible (Safari hidden with cmd-h, or on a space without a Safari window), these WebContent processes, instead of ground to a halt with the equivalent of a SIGSTOP, they continue to happily churn CPU, RAM and network resources. Can anyone at Apple tell me why I would want banner ads updated, slide shows going on, and all sorts of other unwanted background processing going on in ANY tab that's not visible?

So if I have a 150 tabs in 20 windows, distributed over 5 out of 6 screen spaces with 4 windows each, then at no point should more than four tabs get any CPU resources at all. All other threads should be absolutely and completely STOPPED: no network traffic, no graphics update, no nothing. Period. And should I be on the one space with no Safari window, Safari and all it's combined web-content processes should consume exactly 0% CPU time.

This is NOT the case, so while Apple can't fix a), they can and should fix b)

There was a time when I could manually send a SIGSTOP to all web processes, and then a SIGCONT to resume, but since OS X 10.10 that doesn't work anymore because it seems to interfere with the woefully inadequately implemented AppNap feature, which if AppNap would work properly, we'd not have this issue in its current severity in the first place.

An additional fix Apple could make, is to add a watchdog to its JavaScript engine and to set low limits on total amount of CPU time any page may use without being MANUALLY being refreshed, or being MANUALLY being put into a white-list that increases the allowable CPU/RAM limits. After the limit has been reached, any scripts associated with the page would then simply be stopped.

Lastly, automatic page refresh should be a disabled/ask by default, i.e. when a user loads a page that wants to auto-refresh any part of itself, the user should be alerted about the fact and be given the options [ask] [allow] [prohibit] and a "remember this choice" checkbox.

Between AppNap, JS-Nap, JS-Limiter-Watchdog, page-refresh-disable, and plug-in-block, these issues could be mitigated, even though the real problem lies to a large part elsewhere, but that doesn't mean Apple couldn't do things to stop nasty code on a glue trap.

BTW: Apple unfortunately castrated the tool-tip-type pop-up in Activity Monitor that would list all the URLs of the various tabs that were served by a particular web content process, now it just shows the first one and then "..." which is totally useless trying to track down specific tabs with ill-behaved content, and even though Activity Monitor obviously has access to that information, even inspecting a Safari Web Content process doesn't reveal it.

Also, in case anyone thinks this is a Safari issue: It's not. Same thing happens with Chrome, Opera, and Firefox once you have a bunch of windows and a bunch of open tabs: as soon as the wrong combination of ill-behaved web sites, plug-ins and/or extensions are involved, you have the same issue, even though different browsers might be triggered by different sites due to browser-sensing scripts that may exhibit specific behaviors only with particular browsers. This is why Apple needs to fix this for Safari partially at the OS-level (AppNap), and partially at the browser level (JS-Nap, JS-ResourceWatchdog, page refresh blocking, plug-in blocking). Trying not to ****-off some advertising partners or "key web sites" (like Google junk) doesn't help the user experience. Apple has shown in the case of Flash that they can shape up the industry, and they can do it again if they put into place tools that catch and disable ill-behaved web sites.

+1 with the same issue. Activity Monitor shows 2 processes, "Safari" and :Safari Networking", both take 99-105%, Safari does not update any pages until I quit it. Then works again for next 15-20 min - and issue gets back 😟

UPD: OS X 10.10.2, MBP 13" Retina

>>Solved the problem, at last.

>>Mostly it was 3rd party extensions, which were hogging CPU space.

An update on this.

This was not a fix. Over the next week, it got slower and slower until I was back to square one.

There is a good fix, though - use Firefox !!

Ralphy

Same JAVASCRIPT mega-CPU usage here (along with ramping up fans) even when the Safari tab isn't in focus, etc.

Toggling Safari's Javascript OFF in Safari's security-pref pane totally corrects the problem within a few seconds (fans start to ramp down, etc.).

MBP Retina Mid-2012 15".

No Extensions & No Plugins Ever Installed (except whatever, if any, Apple includes in a clean Yosemite install).

All Software/System Updates current as of Aug 25, 2015.

{edit}

No Kernel/Kexts ever installed, either.

No non-Apple software installed, period, including no codecs or anything else downloaded — only what Apple installs in a clean Yosemite install, plus some Apple Apps from App Store.

{end of edit}

--Justin

I thought it was the user account, or the system configuration folder. I created a new user and everything was fine, for 24 hours and then the new user started slowing down again drastically. I put the system configuration folder in the trash, did a restart, a new sys config folder was created after a restart and everything was fine - for a few hours. I did this twice more over the next couple of days and on the thirds try it did not create a new sys config folder.

So, I used it as an excuse to spend some money and I received a nice large parcel from the delivery man yesterday with a shiny 27 inch imac. I migrated everything off the old machine, opened Safari and it was like lightning - for an hour and then it started to slow down dramatically.

If I look at Activity Monitor with Safari open, Safari Networking has gobbled 12.3 MB of download in around 15 minutes. With a maximum download limit of 10GB I am paying a usage penalty every month purely because of this stupid programme. Other programmes running and using download are mDNSresponder, netbiosd, SpotlightNetHelper, com.Apple,Safari.Searchhelper, and apsd all using varying small amounts of download apart from mDNS responder which occasionally goes ballistic and uses 5 or 10 meg in five minutes. Three months ago, none of these progammes ever appeared in my Activity Monitor.

I spent half an hour on the phone to the free support line that comes with a new machine. After getting nowhere at a slower and slower speed, the muppet on the other end decided that all the problems on the new machine must be because my brand new machine was running on 10.10.4 and that if I downloaded 10.10.5 all my problems should be solved. It did not sink in that I had had the same problem with 10.5 on my older machine. I think they are giving down-and-outs job experience on the help lines now.

So I downloaded Firefox's latest version and tried that. It will not import bookmarks, I cannot create bookmarks from within Firefox, it does not remember any sites I have visited and it logs me out of sites when I have ticked the remember-me box.

Following is what solved the problem for me.

On Safari -> Preferences -> General It was configured as "New window open with Favorites" and "New tab open with Favorites" .

I changed "Favorites" to "Homepage" or "Empty page" and reopened Safari and the problem was solved!!!

I don't know the reason, probably it is trying to connect to some of the sites.

I also can't take the credit. I found the solution here: http://www.jiaaro.com/safari-web-content-cpu-ram/

Hopefully it works for all others

Gilad

In addition you'll need to uncheck the box in Safari -> preferences -> search -> Show favorites

If the box is checked then when ever you enter the search box in order to type a site name, it suggests all the Favorites and the CPU starts working again.

Gilad

Hello one and all. I have been having problems with safari using over 100% of CPU with fan blazing on a 2015 16gig MBP. Solution - re install flash. Worked a charm. Thanks for this suggestion who ever you are.

Thanks so much, and for the directions on where to find this. PS For anybody who doesn't know how to get to Library, when you're in your Finder, hold down "option" and then pull down the Go menu above. Library is hidden unless you do this.

When I open Safari with my default tabs, I do not get the excessive CPU usage, but as soon as I open another, I get the CPU and fan ramping up. I've found that I can open Activity Monitor, kill safari_web_content, and I get everything returning to normal. In fact my current safari sessions do not appear to be affected by killing the process.