You can make a difference in the Apple Support Community!

When you sign up with your Apple Account, you can provide valuable feedback to other community members by upvoting helpful replies and User Tips.

Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply ask a new question.

Safari running slow in Yosemite

I have 2013 13" rMBP 8gb ram. Ever since I upgraded to Yosemite Safari has been running slow and lagging. When I type text into address bar it takes a while to catch up and for the text to appear. Also, scrolling on webpages is delayed. Would appreciate any help on how to fix this.

MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X Yosemite (10.10)

Posted on Oct 17, 2014 12:57 PM

Reply
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Oct 17, 2014 1:01 PM

Hi ...


Might be a cookies, cache, or extensions, issue.



From your Safari menu bar click Safari > Preferences then select the Privacy tab.


Click: Remove All Website Data


Then delete the cache.


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.


If that doesn't help, troubleshoot Safari extensions.


From the Safari menu bar click Safari > Preferences then select the Extensions tab. Turn that OFF, quit and relaunch Safari to test.


If that helped, turn one extension on then quit and relaunch Safari to test until you find the incompatible extension then click uninstall.

114 replies

Dec 23, 2014 12:32 PM in response to Macairviv

My MacBook Pro took to Yosemite without many issues but my elderly (early 2008) iMac choked. Searching the web I stopped the eye candy, cleared my desktop, etc but it was still agonizingly slow until.....I uninstalled Flash Player. Now responsiveness appears to be on par with Mavericks or close enough that I've not been tempted to kick the screen and run from the room screaming....

Dec 23, 2014 4:50 PM in response to Macairviv

I have a late 2013 MBA, and the trouble with safari happened as soon as I upgraded to Yosemite. Loading of web pages get stalled in the middle, and nothing happens even if I leave it for a long time. While this is happening, those exact same pages load just fine on Chrome.


I tried removing the extensions, clearing the history, and etc. that was suggested in various pages. The first time I tired, I had an impression that that took care of the problem, but the problem is back soon afterwards. I saw somewhere that turning off wi-fi and back on could be used as a workaround. Yes, that sometimes does take care of the problem, but as you can imagine I get tired of doing that for normal browsing... Just switched to chrome...


That's until I found that I had to update the Adobe Flash player. While updating the flash player, the progress bar would stop in the middle - at 34%, somethings 35%, etc. I didn't think this was connected to the problem with Safari. When I tried turning wi-fi off and back on the download progressed -- this is while executing already downloaded Adobe Flash player installer, so has nothing to do with Safari itself. Apparently, there's a problem in a network component more fundamental than Safari. Some though it had to do with ipv6, but I have no idea. Hope this helps anyone.


Too bad that Apple isn't acknowledging the problem -- They must already have an idea that this is a problem at a lower level than Safari, and probably either they haven't found the root cause yet or what they found was at too fundamental a level? Come one, Apple!

Dec 25, 2014 12:32 PM in response to sethok45

Sorry in advance for my english but hoping however that it could be understandable.

I have a mid 2010 iMac and problems happened as soon as I upgraded to Yosemite that I never met in the past upgrading regularly the OS of my computer.

Reading articles in support forum, I thought at the beginning that it was due to Wifi concerns. Then I tried to apply advices that was given without any results. At least, I bought CPL network devices and I connected directly my iMac using the Ethernet port via Time Capsule. No more results. Then, I deleted my web history and the cache.db file (as explained in this topic), I thought a short moment that it was the solution but a few hours later, I met again and again the same issue:

- safari frozen between 10 and 30 seconds (about 30% of the page loaded) without the understanding in term of actions of what could leave to this issue (sometimes, it follows continue browsing, sometimes after minutes reading articles on the Internet).

- very very slow downloading and sometimes with a failed issue (more especially at the end of the process). I had to try multiple times to download Yosemite 10.10.1 nor iOS 8.1 !!! (near than 2 GB)


After many years on Mac and Apple devices, I have no more the habit of such issues from Apple. In addition of network issue, I had the problem with the java run time message (even after installing again and again the last version from Oracle) and the last one, the impossibility sometime to start my iMac in sleeping mode.

Hoping a 10.10.2 release as soon as possible that will definitively solve these problems. Thanks in advance.


Olivier

France

Dec 26, 2014 7:53 AM in response to Gofr69

For me on my 2008 iMac, Safari has been getting slower and slower, but this last round of updates brought it to its knees. I couldn't run anything without getting the spinning beachball. I played around with killing off Adobe Flash Player and this greatly improved things in terms of speed, but who can honestly browse the web for any length of time given that all webpage designers are addicted to Flash. I tried Firefox and that helped. The Flash pages were all pretty snappy and I didn't get the spinning beachball every 5 seconds. Now I have moved on to Google Chrome and I don't think I will ever go back. Safari has become bloated and slow on my machine after this last update, and I don't see any reason to continue using it.

Dec 26, 2014 12:18 PM in response to sethok45

it's very sad to see Apple turning deaf to these issues.

When Job's was in charge there was quality in the apple products.

It's declining due to subtle pressure from bosses and no time given to poor developers/engineers.

It's just the numbers and dollars for the top gun at apple nowadays.

Extremely frustrated with the Safari and Yosemite experience.

Jan 6, 2015 8:15 AM in response to sethok45

I don't know if this will help anyone but Safari for me was completely unusable. It would literally take a minute and a half to load after clicking on the Safari icon in the dock bar. I finally figured out that Safari "Preferences", "New windows opens with" was set for "Tabs for favorites". This must have happened after updating to Yosemite. So when I launch Safari, it was opening every single bookmark as a tab. I did see all the bookmarks listed across the top (where the tabs are) but thought that was the "Bookmark Bar". It wasn't. They were separate tabs for everything I had in bookmarks. I changed the preferences "New windows open with" to "Homepage" and now Safari launches as smooth as Firefox or Chrome. And doesn't swill an entire 1.5G of memory when launched. It opened so many tabs when it started, and swilling so much memory, that everything mouse click would take forever. Including closing Safari when I gave up on trying to use it. I don't know if this has already been mentioned yet or if this was unique to me. But it solved all my Safari performance problems so I thought I would share in the hopes it will help someone.

Jan 7, 2015 11:48 PM in response to sethok45

I have the same problem with my safari. It freezes randomly during browsing and I have tried every possible way to fix it as suggested by other, until I tried to disable the JavaScript in the Safari setting. The problem never appeared since. but it's almost impossible to keep the JavaScript turned off for daily web browsing. The same problem did not occur for either Chrome or Firefox, so I figured it must be the Safari thing.


Come on Apple!!

Jan 29, 2015 2:22 PM in response to Marorav

Just chiming in that the same thing happens to me since I upgraded to Yosemite.


I have a late 2009 iMac w/8GB of RAM. The machine runs well as soon as it's started, but putting it to sleep definitely screws things up. When I wake it up I get the beachball for several minutes. Then, Safari is glacially slow; typing is delayed by 1-2 seconds per key stroke. Pages load very, very slowly. The only solution to date has been to restart.


I will try a few of the tips here (switching out Google for Bing, changing the new page opens with, to blank rather than Top sites, and report back.

Feb 6, 2015 3:08 PM in response to sethok45

I had been doing this, with short term success, but problem returns shortly. The following seems to have solved it permanently, particularly if you have multiple user accounts:

1. Do everything described above.

2.Quit Safari

3. Restart Mac. Check: Do not open windows on restart.

4. After restart, do not open Safari, yet.

5. In root account: empty trash

6. switch to user account

7. empty trash

8 Now start Safari


worked for me!

Safari running slow in Yosemite

Welcome to Apple Support Community
A forum where Apple customers help each other with their products. Get started with your Apple Account.