What is Safari Web Content and why is it taking up so much memory?

Emptied the Safari cache lately?

Command + Option + E

Quit and relaunch Safari to test.

If that doesn't help, turn off extensions: Safari > Preferences > Extensions

If that didn't help ...

Open a Finder window. From the Finder menu bar click Go > Go to Folder

Type or copy paste the following:

~/Library/Caches/com.apple.Safari/Cache.db

Click Go then move the Cache.db file to the Trash.

Quit and relaunch Safari to test.

And try restarting your Mac.

make sure your default page is NOT google. It require a lot of RAM

I'm having the same problem. I saw how much memory it was eating up so I upgraded to 8G RAM. That didin't help. In fact if anything it seems to be worse. For a while I've been getting the blanked-out webpages and "force reload" dialog; now with the new RAM, it just crashes my whole computer. It's happened a couple of times this week when I was watching a video on the web. I've looked around on these support discussions but don't see a definitive answer. I un-installed 4 out of 5 of my extensions (who knows where they came from to begin with).

Any solutions?

Just to keep this disscussion going. I just brought home my brand new macbook pro. Safari is eating through my memory, not extentions no cache. I'll probably just swap out to chrome but I do like have a unified apple experience. Unless anyones got any ideas?

I see it too. I just bought my new mid-range Mac Book Pro with 8GB of RAM and anytime I start using Safari, it eats it all up. It's worse with flash-enabled sites, which I suspect is the culprit. Once I close it, I get back down around to 4GB with the rest of my apps open. I am trying Chrome too and it does a lot better with Flash sites. I usually hover around 6GB. Coming from windows, where I barely touched 4GB with lots of apps open and lots of Tabs open, I thought 8GB would be enough!! Maybe I should have gotten 16GB. Having said that, I think it's a memory leak in Safari with Flash or Flash is having the memory leak. I too, want to have the unified Apple experience and not use Chrome. I don't mind using Chrome but more of a backup. No way, with e-mail, internet browsing, Skype open but idle, MS remote desktop, iMessages all open, no way i should be filling up 8GB of RAM. should be around 5GB/6GB, tops and should be around 4-5GB.

Currently have the following open:

Outlook

iMessage

Skype - idle

Safari - 3 tabs, 1 tab watching just a training slide show

7GB used!!! and it's been fluctuating in-between 7 & 7.5GB

yes, i empty out my internet cache regularly and recently. If I close it, it will go down to 4.5GB.

Update - The following day, clean boot. Had Skype, idle, mail and just safari. It sat at 5.23GB of total used spaced. Closed Safari and back down to 3.56GB. Open Safari to type this, back up to 5GB. All of this with one tab open!!! That's just crazy. No extensions. Only thing that is installed is Flash but it's obviously not being used for this site.

I wish I can just edit my posts. 🙂 I think I have found the culprit, which I had a leading suspicion all along, Adobe Flash. I downloaded the plug-in so i can view flash content in Safari but all it did was suck up resources. Right now with Outlook, Mail, iMessages, Safari (1 tab) and I'm sitting at a healthy 4.79GB, which has been the norm on a few tests. Then when I close out, it frees up about 500mb, which is still a lot but a lot better than before. Chrome handles flash a lot better because it's built-in and doesn't suck up the resources when I have other stuff open. It still creeps up there but not as bad as in Safari. Going forward, when I need to see a site in Flash, I'll use Chrome. It's a bummer though but it is what it is and Adobe Flash has always been problematic on the Windows Platform. Having said that, Mail seems like it can take up some resources as well but I suspect that's due to the amount of e-mail downloaded? Either way, I'm a bit happier now.

Well, I jumped the gun there. Although I still think it is better, once I closed out of this session, it went down to 3.85GB. Open it back up and at 4.46GB. All of this with one tab. I'd understand with 10 or more but not 1. It's still better though. I'd be pushing 5GB easily right now and that's before getting to the flash sites.

Closed it again and went down to 3.85 ish again. Opened it up, back up to 4.47GB again.

In conclusion, it's Flash and once removed, performs better and eats up less. Safari still a memory hog but not as bad as before with Flash.