Safari Web Content taking 3/4 my RAM?

I think it has definitely improved with Mavericks, though still not 100% fixed. Not sure, but I suspect that when I have a problem now it's more likely the fault of Flash or some other plugin rather than Safari. It does occasionally crash.

I learned that (1) web pages are getting more complex and therefore challenging the existing browsers, (2) I upgraded my computer following advice in this user group. I increased memory, and finally moved from 10.5.8 to 10.6.8. My older hardware would not benefit from moving farther up. I have not gone to Mavericks because it really takes a year or so for some bugs to show up; it happens it is causing problems with a third-party music production program that I use so I'm waiting until they fix it. My memory situation is much better now. Half of my 4G is always available, and nothing crashes any more; before the window would crunch down to nothing and shut down my applications. Apple techs helped me work through my upgrades, and it turned out that a "Little Snitch" application that had gotten on my computer was causing most of my RAM problems by constantly screening anything and everything. Adblocks and another tracking type program were also mentioned as RAM-hogging problems, neither of which I had (I had dropped Adblocks without results because I still had the Little Snitch). We could not even uninstall "Little Snitch"; we avoided restoring it from my data back-up (on my external hard drive) after my computer was wiped clean and we started from scratch with the higher OS. I am very happy with the results now. I am still avoiding Flash Player because there are issues with it that I haven't finished investigating yet; I don't want to invite malware leaks. I hope this helps.

P.S. Just adding to what I posted earlier today that the 3rd application I was told by Apple causes memory problems is called, I think, "Do Not Track Me". I had never heard of it, but it makes sense that anything operating in surveillance mode on your system is going to draw.

I'm sure everything has some form of memory pressure.

But I don't have ANY of these extra add ons at all and still get the issue.

Yes, I've got Mavericks and now 8Gb RAM, and it has certainly eased the problem. But I still get massive memory creep through Safari. And specifically websites such as FaceAche.

I can still clog up nearly all of my Ram (currently running at 7.88gb).

This will ineviatbly wash out your RAM and start to clog it up.

Until they combat the root cause of this, then you will just have to periodically close that tab, or shut down Safari and re-start it.

I also get QTKitServer processes related to Safari that stop responding. They don't take up much RAM, but they continually appear.

Just to illustrate the point.

I've just force quit Safari and opened it again (with exactly the same tabs).

The memory usage is now down to 4.80gb, from 7.88gb

That's a 3GB creep in Safari alone.

I don't deny there's a problem. There is. Even with the changes I made, and having 4GB instead of 1 which worked for 5 years without a problem!), there is "creep" taking place... if I do not shut down my computer for several days, and just let it "sleep", gradually the 2GB in use expands, but at least I get several days' respite before having to shut it down, and I don't have to keep watching my activity monitor before engaging in projects that I don't want to lose (e.g. before, if I was working on Garageband, a track I'd recorded live would suddenly be "not found"). There's no way that Apple is not aware of the problem, and in time a solution will come, but no developer can stay ahead of all the apps and web pages being launched out there which they do not control and mostly can't even anticipate. It's not fun, but on the user's side it is a choice, on what's most important to use our computers for. By the way, Apple does watch these user support sites, so they take note of discussion subjects and problems. 🙂

Thanks for your responses, everybody. It's clear there is no fix once you're afflicted with this.

I've been reading through this thread in hopes of finding a solution to my simliar issue - a huge log jam in memory (8GB, Mid 2011 MBP running Mavericks). To sum: Safari *****. My Activity Monitor reads as below still with one window open:

uninstall you third-pary extensions. this is the answer.

uninstall you third-pary extensions

Yes!! That is EXACTLY what the problem is!!!!

I have two simultaneous "safari web content" processes in activity monitor showing up to 17+GB!!!! When my machine wakes from sleep I will have multiple dialog boxes saying that my system is out of space. My hard drive will get down below 50MB. When I force quit the two safari processes my hard drive space will return to around 17GB free which is what it should be. Basically these processes run until the system is out of all space.

Also, makes fans run constantly. 2012 Macbook Pro Retina, 16GB RAM. Fans are usually super quite and indiscernible under normal use.

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