Safari Web Content high CPU usage

i am facing the exact same problem! this is rather annoying as i rely on safari heavily. It just feels the whole Macbook doesn't work anymore! hope to see some solution soon. meanwhile, it does looks like many people are facing the same problem.

I'm seeing the two parts of Safari using over 5GBs of my RAM & it's slowing everything down terribly! Ever since i updated this browser has sucked up all my RAM, and been a huge time & energy waster. Is this supposed to be only for those using LION? If so, why was it included in my Software Update, cause I don't have Lion installed, so it should not have been sent me, no?
I'm so frustrated, cause the previous Safari was finally working better than any I'd used in many years. Any way to revert back?

You're welcome.

If Safari functions as expected in another User Account, then the problem is specific to your regular user account. That would narrow it down to any Safari plug-in or extension unique to the regular User Account.

I suggest focusing on extensions first. If you have one or more extensions installed follow these steps.

Open Safari Preferences>Extensions and disable each extension by clicking on the extension, then unchecking the "enable" box. Then, restart Safari.

If performance improves, then return to Safari Preferences and enable one or two extensions. Restart Safari. If CPU activity is normal, then continue down the list following the above sequence until you find the culprit.

As with any major OS or application update, it's up to the 3rd party developer to bring their product into compliance with new system requirments.

Check the extensions as Hawaiian Starman suggests. I noticed safari taking up almost 2 gigs of memory and acting extremely sluggish. I unistalled my most recent extension and noticed an immediate change. Thanks

similar situation. I notice safari is taking somewhere close to 2gig of my memory and causing my entire os to be very sluggish. I have even tried to isolate the problem by resetting safari and disable all my extensions to it. It just seems it's the way how Apple have programmed safari to behave. hope they acknowledge the problem and provide a fix soon.

Hi

The problem you are having with Safari may be related to other 3rd party issues outside the realm of extensions. For example you may not have the most recent version of Adobe Flash installed. Flash ought to be 10.3.181.34. If it is an earlier version, upgrade the plugin, then restart your computer/Safari. After restarting Safari, go to the Safari Menu and select "empty cache".

If problem still persists, then I suggest you start a new thread so your specific problem can be addressed.

I was having the exact same problem. After upgrading to Lion I noticed that Safari was chewing up huge amounts of RAM and processor. I left Safari running all night one night and when I got up in the morning my processor and RAM were maxed out and I could hardly do anything due to the fact that all of my system resources were being allocated to Safari. I went in and dissabled all of my extensions and now it's running perfectly fine. I guess this is just the result of a new product with third party extensions that aren't quite all there yet.

when i first addressed the issue, i uninstalled the light dimmer extension (the one for watching videos). the only other extension i have running is ad blocker. safari has been running fine since my first fix but today i noticed the issue returned. this time i did a restart of the computer and all is well. anybody noticing an issue with other browsers. i stopped using firefox when i upgraded to lion and safari 5.1

now this is weird. I just checked my activity monitor. ive got 16 MB of free memory out of 4 GB. ive got itunes, spotify, safari activily running. 5 tabs open in safari (one is netflix). im noticed an direct lacg in performance. websites still appear to load in a timely manner. streaming video isnt choppy. before i get heckled, im looking for overall sluggish behavior from my computer, i understand my network connection greatly impacts my browser performance.

This just seems very funny considering that on my MacBook Pro, Firefox ate up to 1 GB of RAM and between 50 to 80% of CPU after running for a day or two with 100+ tabs.

Now, after going to about:config and making sure that the background tabs are not loading, it takes up to 500 MB RAM and 2-3 % with 100+ tabs and after running an entire day.

What I'm saying is that you should consider yourself lucky for not using Firefox 🙂 Safari it's a small kid in comparison 🙂

Another user here found the problem on my MacPro with SnowLeopard and only one Safari Extension installed, disabled it and now can run four or five pages each with ten tabs open and web content only using 600 MB as compared to previously using 5 to 6 GB with the 1Password extension enabled. Have posted on the Agile forums and they are working on a fix, lots of trouble for all the third party vendors trying to get stabilized with the new Safari version 5.1. At first I thought it was Apple problem but turns out Safari runs better than previous version once extension is disabled.

Read post over on Agile forums for details:

http://forum.agile.ws/index.php?/topic/6015-high-ram-and-cpu-usage-related-to-1p assword-extension/

Hope this is helpful to a few of you, it had been dragging my system to a crawl, now all is well again.

With Safari 5.1, Apple has changed the API (application programming interface) quite a bit. These changes have porven to be a big challenge for 3rd party developers, including the developers of Glims and 1Password, who have built their products using a now outdated API. To their credit, MacHangOut (Glims) and Agile (1Password) have done quite an amazing task of working through the compatibility and functionality issues triggered by the various API changes. Yet, more work on their part remains.

Anyone experiencing Safari 5.1 performance issues would be wise to disable all extensions in Safari Preferences>Extensions and restart Safari. If Safari is now stable, re-enable one extension at a time, then restart Safari. If stability is OK, reenable the next extension, restart Safari etc.

If performance is compromised, the last extension enabled is problematic. Disable that extension and restart Safari. Continue the enabling process.

For problematic extensions, check the developer's site for any information relative to Safari 5.1 compatibility, and also contact the developer about your findings.

Hi guys - just posted this on a similar thread.

I've been reading this thread with interest. I have a similar issue with RAM guzzling but in Mail. It is using 2.21GB of my 4GB RAM and everythime I quit it (which I try not to do) it takes 15 mins to start up fully.

Today by mistake I used an incorrect SMTP server to send a message. As it kept trying to send the message it increased the RAM usage to 3.99GB!

I know the thread is mainly about Safari - I have not dared to open it, but using Firefox instead. Just wondered if you had any ideas for a Mail fix?