Safari reloading pages when going back

I think that this is due to a memory bug in safari. If you monitor your RAM usage you'll see that Safari will hang a substantial fraction of your RAM after a few hours of use. The folks at Apple have fixed this problem by deciding *not* to fix it: the workaround seems to be - clear cache, purge wired ram, reload page.

This is an incredibly dumb problem to have.

Firstly, Safari should not be using as much ram as it does.

Secondly, the supposed workaround is a real productivity killer.

So I am not all that savvy with this stuff but it seems that the old shortcut to empty the cache no longer applies to Mt Lion, or am I missing something? There is no option in the drop down for it either. Not sure how to purge or empty cache without a restart. If this is the official "fix" i will be trying to restore back to Lion. I love Apple stuff and how it has been serving me for the last several years without issue but this is stoopid.

Had the same problem but apple has decided to hide this option. You have to go to safari preferences>advanced>then choose the option to show the develop menu on the bottom. Mark it and you'll see the menu on the top menu bar. You'll see empty cache option there.

THANK YOU! why I couldn't find that info elsewhere is beyond me but thank you very much for the pointer. I will be excited to use this again and keep things running a bit faster and tidier. I'll report back how it helps tomorrow.

This is an absolute catastrophe! Disabling the extensions doesn't help and neither does the trick with altering the gestures. Two or three finger sweep doesn't matter.

I mean, this is a really serious bug! What are apple doing about it????????????

I had the same issues as everyone else. Reddit would reload the entire page when I swiped to go back, then promptly go entirely white unless I did a pinch to zoom gesture and even then it would misbehave. I'm running 10.8.2. The issue has appeared and dissappeared rather sporadically for the past few months.

This time I found a very strange fix. It seems like a caching issues to me. So I clicked on a link to a thread and then very slowly did a two finger swipe to go back to front page. I thought maybe I would give Safari more time to access the cached data or something. Strangely enough it worked. It sounds stupid and maybe it was coincidence but I have not had the issue since.

this has been driving me bonkers for months, i wish apple would give you an option whether you want to reload the page everytime you swipe (i see sometime sit does NOT reload if i actually click the back button, i don't get why this behavior is different depending on if you use the button or swipe, aren't they supposed to be the same?!)

I've been having the same problem, primarily on Reddit, where I was often getting a blank white page that wouldn't load.

What worked for me was to disable "Swipe between pages" in the trackpad preferences, and then use Better Touch Tool to recreate them using the same gesture, paired with the keyboard shorcuts command-[ and command-]. This seems to be working perfectly so far.

This is obviously a bug, a serious bug. My solution is to use Chrome instead until Apple has a new version of Safari.

What has happened with Apple? Why, this is exactly the kind of hassle that you want to come away from when, switching to mac from pc...

I've been a PC user for my entire life. Now that I decide to finally give in and buy a brand new MBP this starts happening! Unnaceptable Apple!

I don't know what kind of updates they've been doing but not only Safari is slow, everything else is!

I'm having the same problem. Although it disappears if you disable the adblock extension but that's not really an option for me. So, I'm kind of torn between Firefox with vimperator, which is awesome. And Safari, just because I like bookmark and tab sync.

For me, the issue of a reload/update (rather than a refresh from cache) when pressing the "Show the previous page" back button only occurred when I had the Safari Extension "LinkThing" installed and enabled. If I disable it, then it works (i.e. refreshes from cache); if I enable it, then it doesn't (i.e. it reloads/updates from the actual website).

I wanted some of the functionality from LinkThing such as removing the URL redirection from Google links and wanted the invisible (show only when hovering) status bar to show link addresses. I now get this functionality from the Safari extensions "Detox" and "Invisible Status Bar". I also have "SafariRestore" and "Open in Internet Explorer 1.0" (the latter from Parallels) and none of these have a problem.

So only certain extensions trigger the problem from Apple where going back reloads/updates the page. There was some reply in this thread that gave a technical reason for this.

I had a similar problem in that when I quit Safari (6.0.2, 10.8.2), Safari would not open to the Home page. The Home page WOULD load if I closed the current Window without quitting Safari and then loaded a NEW window via File - Safari would then set the new window to the Home page! I solved the problem. I had to check the "Close windows when quitting an application" button in SystemPreferences/General. That solved the problem for me.

Problem continues...

With or without cache, with or without extensions, with gesture or button click, doing it slowly or fast, doing it with two or three fingers. It reload every time.

MBA, 10.8.2, Safari V. 6.0.2

I've tried the tip about enabling debug mode options and unchecking the multiprocess window option. That works but then I lost ability to swipe. Can't be without that, so I'm back to being frustrated by this 'feature'.