Web Process + Safari now hogging 50-75% more memory than Safari 5.0.5 did

5.1.1 has NOT solved the problem. Safari still eats too much RAM and drastically slows the whole computer down. This Safari issue has highlighted another problem with OS X Snow Leopard that Apple never seems to have fixed - Snow Leopard will start writing to disk when free memory runs low inspite of having over 500 MB of Inactive Memory available. When free memory runs low the OS should ideally free up inactive memory or allocate it to other processes that need it, but it doesn't seem to be doing this at all, at least not very efficiently.

I'm not sure whether to move to firefox permanently or add more RAM to my mac - I miss Steve!! 😟

Stop the snapshots by setting the TM off.

Which internet plugins do you have (/Library/Internet Plugins/)?

Stop indexing of Spotlight.

I learned about the Sunspider benchmark from around these communities, and running it it very quickly and clearly demonstrates that there is some major problem with extensions.

And I don't think it is the extensions' fault. How could it be if running a completely unrelated set of javascript tests (Sunspider) causes memory to be devoured?

With extensions turned off, Sunspider runs in seconds and Safari's memory usage is nominal.

I think the problem is in Safari's extension implementation and not in the extensions themselves. I also do not have Flash installed, and perhaps there are problems in plugins as well.

With sadness, I switched to Chrome. I miss Safari's Reader feature most.

CFnyc, you're right! Thanks for the tip.

Turning off extensions completely from Safari (5.1.1) preferences seems to have solved the problem. Safari as a whole (including WebProcess) rarely, if ever, uses over 400 MB of RAM. I've had extensions turned off for about a week now and the sluggish performance issues have disappeared. Turn extensions back on and Safari returns to its old behaviour.

I do miss certain extensions though - especially, AdBlock.

If you want to have something like Adblock, you could use Glimmerblocker instead. This is NOT a Safari plugin but a sort of filtering proxy (after install it sits in System Preferences) and it uses the same blocklists and some more.

It's ridiculous that we must disable all extensions just to have it run somewhat ok! I sure wish Apple simply FIXED Safari, so that it works, and can make use of the extensions always touted by Apple as a means to "customize" our experience!

I'm still using 5.0.5 after going thru an awful month of 5.1, and will not try again until I am certain they've de-bugged it, and get Autofill back to working the way it should. Yes 5.0.5 still will creep up to even 2GB of RAM usage, but I have dozens of windows/tabs open at a time, so I expect higher numbers, but with 5.1 it was a total mess, higher usage, slowing things to a crawl, glitches & crashes, & well, it was horrible.

I do not know if somebody as already mentioned this posibility:

http://osxdaily.com/2011/09/20/stop-safari-auto-refreshing-web-pages-in-mac-os-x -lion/

but for me it has worrked. Only problem is that automatic filling of Lastpass is disabled, but you can stil copy and paste passwords. And Safari works much better.

Hope it helps.

Mencu

All I can do is confirm the problem. If I enable extensions I get severe keystroke lag, if I disable it the problem improves. Of course a reboot fixes it.

I wonder if it's worse in SL than Lion.

I'd like to use Feedly, but it requires extensions. For now I'll switch to Chrome.

Safari's fall has forced me to genuinely evaluate both Chrome and Firefox. There is simply no comparison. Firefox is more 'akin' to Safari. Firefox looks like Safari. Firefox is stable. Firefox is insanely fast at loading pages. In Firefox, pages don't flicker as they are loaded or switched to. Firefox handles large number of tabs like a champ. I am so pleasantly surprised by its capabilities that I finally don't even feel the need to look back. I wrote a review of Chrome earlier in this thread. As a Safari user, I was simply dissatisfied with my Chrome experience. Hope this is helpful.

Sadly, I have this issue now. My MacBook Pro is 1 1/2 years old. I upgraded to Lion last fall. About a week ago Safari started running very slowly, and my MacBook was heating up. Running top -o cpu showed that WebProcess is consuming up to 100% of Ram. Don't really want to use Chrome, but Safari is now unusable. I'm shocked that this problem was reported a year ago and disappointed that Apple still hasn't fixed it yet.

I was using safari to devel with mamp till last update that all goes fast...now I suspect safari has get a regression, because I'm having the exact issues that people was facing a year ago, except RBbechbum that as the same problem now.

Sadly to say now I'm opening chrome more often because of this. Any workarround?

Regards,

Based on the information you all provided, I have been doing some additional testing and discovered that if you disable Javascript in Safari, the problem goes away. Give it a try.

I have switched to Chrome a few months ago, but came back to Safari because Chrome has serious memory leaks.

In Safari's case, it seems to release to the system all the memory it used whenever you close it.

Also, this Javascript problem doesn't happen on all websites. No problems in the MacRumors site, but if you go to the Forums of XDA Developers, you will notice how Safari Web Content grows out of proportion; and when you close Safari, it shrinks back to a reasonable size.

So the word is: Disable Javascript ion the meantime while Apple figures this out.

As a side note, I am noticing that my MBP runs much cooler (133 ºF vs 156ºF) now that I have disabled Javascript in Safari.

I also compared memory usage with DNS Prefetch enabled and disabled, and there is a small difference (eats about 300MB more when enabled, but it doesn't increase the size of Safari Web Content that much).

Wow, I look at the age of this thread and see that nothing has changed... Safari is using almost the entire procession power of my iMac. I've got 16GB of ram and my iMac is a year old. Time to dump Safari.

Its almost as crappy as Apple Mail has become.

I hear ya, it's pathetic, and quite sad.... I just tried using Safari again yesterday, and got so frustrated, it's back to Chrome, which I'm not in love with, but at least works better & for longer, than Safari!

Apple's really fallen down when it comes to Safari, and iTunes as well. What kind of problems are you having with Apple Mail? What do you use as an alternative? I'm not wild about using web-based mail programs as my main one...