Q: Safari Web Content high CPU usage

The latest version of Chrome is slow as **** and not very useful...

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.

Well, not exactly the answer I hoped for, but I will give it a try. It's a pitty that Apple didn't manage to solve the problem for over one year...

Thanks anyways!

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.

Go back a page or two in the discussion and you'll see that many of us solved the problem by not remaining logged into our Google accounts.  I did that, and Safari now works fine for me.

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.

BTW, it's back now after disabling Java.  Safari is unusable after about 15 seconds of being open.

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.

Given what andrewfrommoleseyposted above, one other thing comes to mind: corrupt or stuck local storage data.. that AFAIK is also handled by 'Web Content'. What banking sites call 'downloading web apps' (that run in your browser). They store stuff in browsers, and buggy ones can become 'stuck'.

So one thing you might (also) want to try that works for me is an app that blows all browsers' (as in plural) cache, or cache that might not be easily accessible from within the browser itself.

My personal favorite is Cookie: http://sweetpproductions.com (click on the 'download arrow' to get the non-MAS demo version).

This is just the global menu. For geeks it also has a nice main window that shows all the details of the cookies & cache that you're zapping. If the issue is a stuck database or cache, this might help.

As to WC also 'force quitting' Safari, this makes sense. Sorry for the geek logic, but why have Safari in an older memory state when you restart web content?

Again, this is something to try. If it does work for you (as it does for me) consider dropping some coin to the Dev.

-Leo

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?