Safari Web Content high CPU usage

It's really, really depressing to see all these comments by people that have a genuine problem with new MBP's. Noisy fans and crashing Safari is a total pain.

Apple Tech 2 Support in Ireland couldn't permanently fix this known problem of high CPU/racing fans and eventual crashing of Safari. I had it from day one when I was "upgraded" from a Powerbook (it had fatal issues) to a 2006 Macbook "Amateur." The problem was so bad that I installed Parallels and used Windows XP Internet Explorer without any issue. The problem seemed to go away years later with an update only to come back with another update a year or so after that (2011).

To date they still haven't honoured the original service plan warranty with a permanent fix and given me any kind of explanation, except most people know now that this is an issue with how Safari handles Macromedia Flash. Hence clicktoflash....

That Apple continue to charge a high price and yet their computers are no better than Windows based PC's says a lot about the the fact that Apples are based on style and feel more than performance. Watching a youtube vid involves having to listen to noisy fans or suffer glitching or eventual freezing/browser and restarts. In these posts however I note there is a work around involving Automator.

If these comments seem to imply the feeling that I have a problem with Apple please note: I have had 3 replacement laptops from Apple. Every single one had a combination of all these problems: Hard Drive fatal crashes/Hardware failures/Battery issues/Screen faults/Motherboard failure/DVD drive replacements etc. Continual unreliability. Over 20,000 business emails in Apple Mail is the only reason I still use Apple and unfortunately will have to continue with them.

Because Apples business model only works on having products that have relatively short lifespans and getting their customers to shell out over and over again because they make their computers vintage after 5 years (finally resulting in no parts/no support) and continually upgrading causing conflicts with older hardware/software, probably explains why they're sitting on $90BN of cash offshore that they haven't repatriated because the US tax authorities will take approx 30% of it. Foxconn worker suicides and the signing of worker non suicide agreements (to mitigate higher compensation payouts in the event of suicides) are another blight on Apples once excellent reputation.

Actually it has nothing to do with MacOSX. It has everything to do with Google.. if you are in Google Docs, it is the file listings IO that is causing grief...To get around, just open the document and close the file listing. It seems it is the AJAX in the Google Web Toolkit (which generates the codes) that is causing the high CPU load. Any listing action eg Reader etc.. will cause Safari Web Content to go to 90% usage.. So close them if you don't need to use it.

WebGL enabled / disabled won't change either.

Can you explain this any simpler? I don't know how to tell if I'm in Google Docs, or what you mean by "listing action". As for Reader, I see on some pages the little box in the address window that says Reader, but am not sure what that means, or if that's Google or Safari that's putting it there. My Safari has been rapidly reaching 2.5 Gigs of RAM, at which point it slows, freezes or crashes. Lately this has been occurring 3 or 4 times a day. I am hardly using any extensions, mainly Click to Flash, which if I didn't would run up the usage even faster. This has been an ongoing issue for far too long.

I didn't understand that message either from Godwin Chuck. I don't use Google docs -- I just use Safari or Firefox as my browsers as normal Mac owners would. I do a lot of research online and half the time if I'm visiting a website that includes a flashing, changing advert window, that's when the Flash player kicks in/Shockwave plug-in begins. To avoid the increase of the fan starting up, I open up Activity Monitor and Force quit the plug-ins. This then brings the fan down, keeping everything the way it should. However, it reiterates that the Macbook is not one for gaming - the Shockwave plug-ins are required for these games and as such, you have to allow the fan to increase because of them.

Hey There!

Is there now any solution for the Safari web content overflow issue? I do not use any extensions
I have a Mac with 4 GB ram and my safari web content goes up over 1 GB RAM which is pretty much if i am also doing other things on my mac. it starts working slow and the fans ramp up. then i have to stop the safari web content process and can work for another half hour until it arrives the same state again...

What could the problem be?

Cheers and thanks for any hints in advance!

No problem with chrome here, using latest Version 20.0.1132.57 (do not use beta releases here) and it is fast and stable as a rock. I run half a dozen windows each with ten or more open tabs and it runs for weeks with no trouble in that configuration on a MacPro with 16GB of RAM. Safari used to suck up five GB or more of my memory in just a day or two.

Have been 'solving' this issue by force quitting Safari Web Process whenever the RAM usage got too much and ground the system to a halt (MacPro 6-core with 16 Gb). That worked, at least, if not ideal. Today, together with the release of Mountain Lion, I updated my Safari under Lion to Safari 6.0, in the hope that Apple had fixed this issue.

WHAT A MISTAKE ! DO NOT UPGRADE IF YOU SUFFER FROM THE HIGH CPU RAM USAGE ISSUE !

Now, Safari still lags as before and gobbles up RAM as if there is no tomorrow, including slowing this supposed 'supercomputer' to a crawl unworthy of the Apple experience. Except that quitting Safari Web Process force quits the entire browser, so I have no choice but to let this monstrosity dominate my life.

I think I have come to the point where I am about to forsake Apple for good. This is such a lousy computing experience by now, such fancy expensive equipment just turning my expensive electricity into heat without much productivity along the way. APPLE, get with it, this ***** !

Faithful to Apple for nearly 30 years, but fed up like you wouldn't believe by now...

Steven

I felt the same way about a year ago until I changed to Chrome and life has been good ever since. My MacPro is once again happy and my 16GB of RAM allows me to run all the windows and tabs I care to using chrome. Safari is a major dissappointment.

So I had this issue after upgrading to ML (Safari Web Content using 100% cpu and Gigabytes of RAM). On a clean install there we no issue. I used Time Machine to bring back all my important stuff and got everything set up last night. I used safari all evening and night, and this morning. It was fine until about an hour ago, when the issue returned. I found another thread saying to go into Preferences and disable Java (just Java, not Javascript), and the cpu/RAM issue immdeiately stopped after a hard quit/restart. Pretty weird stuff going on here, Apple. Please get a fix out for this ASAP! This isn't "just working." I don't want to have to use firefox.

I just did another clean I stall and Safari was busted from the very start. The only thing not stock about my 2010 mini is the 8gb of ram that's been installed since the beginning and an intel 320 160gb ssd. I'm restoring to a 10.7.4 time machine copy and am going back. So much for Mountain Luon, I guess.

Okay, I guess it's time for me to do some community service. I'm NOT having ANY problems with Safari or the walled silo that Apple built for plugins that *ahem* misbehave, 'Web Content'.

To those of you who are using Click to Flash, good. That's a start, but here are my sugggestions:

1/ If you have it, Shut off Java not only in Safari but also in the Java Preferences.app in /Apps/Utilities/JavaPreferences.app "Enable Applet & Web Start Plugin" to UNchecked. It should be already shut off if you didn't touch it & you applied the most recent Java security update.

2/ Instead of running Click to Flash, consider installing the 'Click to Plugin' which also allows you to halt the loading of more than just the Flash plugin. See here:

http://hoyois.github.com/safariextensions/clicktoplugin/

This will stop plugins, even 'hidden web bug' like ones that the authors of the web pages don't want to you see from automatically loading. I just do not buy that 'Web Content' just 'runs up' for no reason. There's something banging around in that silo. It'd be nice to find out what it is.

"Click to" will show placeholders instead of the plugins, then you can find out (at least it's easier) what thte culprit is. Flash, Silverlight, Shockwave, Java, Quicktime will all get placeholders if they 'render' on a web page. Even HTML5 Objects.

3/ Finally, and I'm going to make you power users Google this... You can turn on Safari's 'Debug' menu and run memory samples. And then use Apple's Feedback web form to tell them how and why Safari 6 is sucking for you.

Personally I've expunged Flash (since Lion, actually) as well as Perian from my MoLion MacBook Pro. And more recently, Flip4Mac. And I'm NOT having these problems. But if it *is* the hardware, then Apple needs to know via feedback.

-Leo

Update: So it's Sunday and I didn't have anything to do, so I'm still messing with this. I restored to 10.7.4 and everything worked as normal. I redownloaded a new copy of ML from the app store, upgraded with it, and Safari was immediately junk. Web Content RAM climbed to 6GB used in about a minute. So I started thinking of how my mini was different from a stock one. Two things: intel 320 series 160GB ssd, and 8GB of RAM. The ssd is a b!tch to change, but the RAM is easy to get to, obviously. I reinstalled a clean ML, shut down and removed the RAM, waited a minute and reinstalled it, switching the slots. Safari is now working fine, and I'm reinstalling my most used apps and important data I've been testing it, flying through webpages I normally go to for a while now, and everything is fine now (for the time being). This is weird. I'll keep this thread updated as to what happens next, if anybody cares. Thanks for the suggestions, Leo, I'll check this stuff out. Safari 6.0 is actually pretty fast when it's working properly.

In my case the culprit was rapport security software downloaded from my bank, once I uninstalled that safari stopped hogging the CPU and the fan went off and the laptop can no longer be used to fry eggs!

Tried all you suggested, and no change. Still massive Gb useage by Safari and Safari Web Content. Except that now force quitting Safari Web Content via Activity Monitor, which used to temporarily restore order under Safari 5, no longer works under Safari 6, it force quits Safari also.

Frustrating.

Well, I have to say - unfortuately this fix didn't work for me.

I got rid of loads of cookies I had no idea I had, which is a good thing... But not any real progress.

My 'idle' CPU rate is over 90% and after a morning of idle Safari being open with about 12 tabs open, RAM usage in total is up to about 2GB.

This is actually making my entire system slow.

Any other suggestions anyone? Or is it a case of waiting for apple to produce a fix?