safari is so slow
I have emptied my cache and my safari is still so slow
iMac (21.5-inch Mid 2011)
Try changing your DNS to OpenDNS.
10 replies
What does that do by opening my DNS. Does it open my mac up to hackers?
Hussjan wrote:
What does that do by opening my DNS. Does it open my mac up to hackers?
No, not at all. It is just that many ISPs have really flaky DNS servers. When you say Safari is "slow", that either means it is slow to display web pages or slow to download large files. For most people, "slow" would mean slow to browse the web. The most likely cause of that would be DNS problems and OpenDNS is an easy fix. Google has a similar service.
I tried your solution and it made no difference. Infact it is running slower now as every day passes.
Hussjan wrote:
I have emptied my cache and my safari is still so slow
Have you installed any programs recently? Security or anti-virus? Little Snitch, MacKeeper?
Pete
No not that I am aware of.
How is it running slow, from site to site or page loading? Changing the DNS will not make a page load faster.
What version of Lion are your running and the Safari version too.
Does the Apple web site load slowly? I use Apple's web site to test my browsers.
Safari has some sort of bug that makes it take over the computer from time to time, particularly if it is open for a long time. (This is not related to the general problem that memory management on Lion appears to be a giant leap backwards. Lion reminds me of using a Sun in 1993 or so, only it's prettier.) Recent patch levels appear in my experience to be modestly better, but they still exhibit this problem.
Emptying your cache only works partly. It appears to have to do with a component that Safari uses called WebProcess. If you've been running Safari for any length of time, you can see it. Open a terminal window. Run "top". Press "o", then type "-rsize" (with the minus sign). This orders the output by the resource set size of running programs, and you'll find WebProcess near the top (it's consuming 227M on my machine right now, for instance, on top of the 127M that Safari is using. I have seven tabs open in Safari, and have probably had Safari open for at least several days. I occasionally put this laptop to sleep but almost never log out).
If you kill WebProcess (in top, you can type S and then TERM or even KILL -- yes, all caps in all these cases) you'll find that it reloads all the tabs you have open. In some sense, therefore, this is the same as clearing your cache, but WebProcess must be doing something else as well, or clearing the cache would probably sort things out.
BTW, I personally wouldn't use the OpenDNS trick suggested elsewhere in this thread. I work for a competitor, however, so that might influence my thinking. I don't find they usually actually improve people's experience, though. They move the pain around, however.
If you need to change your DNS... run this app and it will tell you the fastest DNS for your area. NameBench:
http://code.google.com/p/namebench/
If you need to check your router there is a service for that:
safari is so slow