Safari Web Content high CPU usage

this got nothing to do with extensions, I got none ans it still happens. only thing that helps is to quit process of safari web content via activity monitor in utilities. but it helps only till it gets overloaded again. hope apple will fix this somehow soon, cause its really not comfortable now

After reading this post, I also disconnected all extensions, but it didn't really work. What I noticed after a while, is that I when I opened too many tabs, after quiting and restarting Safari, many of them were apparently closed or lost. I just didn't see them, but Safari kept consuming high amounts of memory. I started looking for these suposedly closed tabs (they were there, opened somewhere), and after closing one or two (or opening a new Safari window), they suddenly reappeared. So I just closed them all, and then Safari started to behave. Safari doesn't heat my computer anymore, unless I have too many tabs opened and some of them have flash. It reduced considerably the amount of memory used.

Although it happened, in the end, that the battery and the graphic card were both damaged. So my computer does overheat sometimes, especially when doing backups or using graphics, but that's because there was a hardware problem after all.

Guys 'n gals, I've just bought a mac for the first time last month....why did I wait so long?! I'm seeing and looking at this problem from a slightly different angle. My OS is super clean as it's out of the box. I've not installed any extensions to Safari. What I notice is that Safari Web Content is continually using at least 5% of the cpu. (Note: I have not experienced the huge resource consumption that is being described above.....so far anyway). The mac I bought was the Air. While I realise battery life is not it's forte I do care about maximising what I have. 5% CPU can shorten the battery by up to 45mins. That's no good. I want that process stopping it's work when I am not active in Safari. Or at I want the option to configure it that way if there is good reason to allow it to work should I be connected to a power source. Anyone else seeing this?

I have installed and am using Firefox as it is behaving itself when I am not actively using it. I would prefer to go back to Safari.

This has become a HUGE problem for me and is driving me to Firefox and Chrome more and more.

Im running a 2Ghz i7 MBP with 8GB of RAM with click to flash installed so there is NO excuse for this.

Come on Apple, you are better than this.

Guys at apple need to seriously look their crappy impl;ementation of Safari instead blaming extensions, flash. thrid party and so on. Safari is broken. there is a memory leak in safari web content and maybe even thread starvation issues.

The numbnuts at apple have always written the most horrible apps including iphoto, itunes, mail, ical -- you name it. It is a beautiful OS and Hardware and still the best platform. I have been a devoted apple user for years and am so close to switching to linux if they don't get their act together.

I finally gave up on Safari and switched to Chrome and FireFox, no more trouble and my system is stable as a rock again without the drag that accompanies Safari and the web content fiasco. Amazing how much difference a stable browser can make and just how bad the current version of Safari has be implemented.

17" MBP with 8GB. I keep Activity Monitor open in the background. When the fans start roaring I check the Activity Monitor and force quit Safari Web Content which is usually taking up 2+ gigs of ram.

Safari Web Content resarts in the background and reverts back to the normal 400 MB of memory. Safari does not restart so you don't lose anything. Takes seconds to do. Not a fix but a good workaround to the problem.

Apple needs to fix this problem.

Peace.

Force quitting Safari Web Content works, is easy to do, but it's only a temporary "fix" since it has to be done manually on a regular basis. What I'd also like to understand is how Activity Monitor showed Safari Web Content as using 102.1% (not a typo!) of CPU usage. How could that even be possible?

Amazing how many folks are still struggling with Safari, I threw in the towel six months ago and switched to Chrome and life is good again. I can have three windows each with 20 tabs open for days and never experience a slow down or need to restart chrome. Try that with Safari, rather dissappointing that Apple seems to have dropped the ball on what used to be an excellent browser but has lost its focus in the past two years and become more trouble than it is worth. 😉

Horrible probelm for me. Safari (web content) uses anywhere between 30-80% CPU and 5GB real memory and 6GB of virtual memory. My i7 27" iMac crawls to a stop.

Will try to lose Flash, but I think it's a bigger problem than that!

I have had the same problem and did looking today. Found the suggested solution of shutting off extensions to see if that works, and it did. So I went one by one. For me I had the same result as another poster back in JAN 2012. My extension culprit was ultimate status bar. With it on and activity monitor open I would watch safari web content climb and climb till it would psuh 2 gb. Once it was off safari opened at 368.3 mb and holds. This is with two open running sveral pages one of which is an online game lord of ultima.

New macbook air 1.7 ghz i5, 4gb 1333 mhz DDR3 ram, MAC OS X 10.7.3 LION

Hi,

I just posted to the overall thread. Just a thought. I didn't have the flash problem, mine was an exstenion "ultimate status bar." Once I disabled and restarted safari the web content opened at 386 MB and held there and did not climb.

Bit of a bummer if you need to keep an eye on your GMail account like I do 😟 but not convinced it is that because it happens to me most on my Mac Mini and I don't have Google even open. Oddly it happens far less on my Macbook despite both being Core2Duo's running Snow Leopard so wonder if it is hardware related. Hope it goes away when I upgrade to one of the new Macbook Pro's.....when they are released

Good Catch! I have had a long standing suspicion that JavaScript had somthing to do with it, and Google developers love the horrible Javascript for some unknown reason.. The Safari guys should be able to build a robust enough implementation od javascript though.. so it shouldn't be an excuse..

I have an old 2008 Macbook (black model) and got rid of the old Tiger operating system replaced with Snow Leopard. I notice the same issue that the fan will run too high, keyboard becomes too hot and it often becomes impossible to type. However, upon taking a lot of advice on here, namely Activity Monitor, I notice that its the Safari Plug in flash player - whenever I'm watching You Tube or Facebook games like Angry Birds, the Macbook suddenly becomes very noisy due to the fan running at high speed. Game play is fine but thereafter, once Ive left the game, signed out of Facebook or stop watching videos, the Flash plug-in seems to hang the system on running high. Only quick solution is to open up Activity Monitor and force quit on the Safari Flash Plug in web content.

Even when using Firefox, same problem occurs - it's obviously Flash Plug-in and web content.