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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

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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

Feb 7, 2015 12:37 PM in response to Eric Taub1

Sorry: The steps I was referring to were as follows:


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.

Feb 25, 2015 3:55 AM in response to Mlebout

As suggested by others, resetting Safari and clearing any related files does not resolve the issue permanenetly, only for a short period of time.


Putting a mac to sleep seams like one way to reproduce the slowliness. At least by my observation.


Reboot however helps, but only for a limited time.


There was a known issue of degraded OpenGL performance in the past on some mac models after wake from sleep.

I tested the OpenGL performance with CineBench before and after sleep but there's no difference.


However if I disable javascript in Safari, the slowliness is gone > at a cost of videos not being displayed (and therefore cant be started) on websites.


So it seams like there's a degraded performance of executing javascript within Safari that's the issue.

I don't know how to solve this, but perhaps other more experienced users could have a few thought / ideas regarding this.

Feb 28, 2015 12:28 PM in response to Pixel.Partizani

I also have this slow loading in safari. But not always. I've tested the wifi 2.4GHz or 5GHz, but happens on both.

But, connected by wire / ethernet, I don't see the issues.


Is there a wifi issue ?

I'm sure it is not my router. I have windows PC's using the same router and also my /this mac was working fine before. Also the iPhone and iPad doesn't have an issues in laoding pages on safari.

Mar 17, 2015 6:51 AM in response to sethok45

Amateur solution based on experiment!

I have Yosemite on a 2012 iMac and Safari is the glacier to Chromes rabbit.


I was looking at the drop down menus and came across DEVELOP/USER AGENT/SAFARI 7.1.3

Speed of opening pages is what I would expect with the addition that Safari, latest version, has all its functionality.

Apparently it appears to web sites as IE, but appears to you as Safari - did a bit of reading up on User Agent.


Quitting Safari shoves it back to the "Default" but two clicks later and Develop/User Agent/Safari7.1.3 has it humming along.


Tried the cache.db delete in Finder and nothing obvious changes. Develop/Empty cache has a small affect but Chrome still better.


The above works a treat for me.

Any comments welcome.

Hope it help someone else till Apple get Safari working as it should - voooom!

Apr 11, 2015 3:13 AM in response to Ron Hughes

Ron Hughes wrote:


The combination of the part-solution given in the 1st post on this thread, plus your additional info about closing down Safari, Restarting the computer, then emptying Trash seems to have speeded-up my experience. Whether it lasts, is another matter ....


But thanks

Yes, this also appears to be working for me - I've only just done it though. I was trying to stream high quality music and it was impossible but has been playing perfectly now for 20 mins or so, so at least at first this seems to be working.

Jun 20, 2015 1:30 PM in response to sethok45

Hi,


After trawling all of these "fixes" for laggy Safari (and graphics in general on Yosemite) for my 2014 MBPR, I accidentally discovered the real fix, for me at least.


I have FileVault 2 on, usually, always have. I decided to disable it (and have it decrypt the SSD), just for sh!ts 'n' giggles.


Safari is now instantaneous, just like Chrome, and graphics around the system are generally snappier than with FV2 enabled.


I now have created a disk image (dmg) which is encrypted separately, so anything personal can be kept in that, and I'm not too fussed the whole system isn't encrypted now, as it's far more responsive, even on a system as fast as this.


So try disabling FV2, you can always enable it again afterwards if it doesn't fix it for you, but the difference for me is remarkable, and is definitely thee fix for my laggy Safari.

Aug 18, 2015 11:32 PM in response to ScottLA10

I'd been going crazy constantly quitting and restarting Safari, trying all sorts of tricks to get this stalling and lagging...forever sometimes!...to stop. Your suggestion seems to have fixed the problem like a miracle, although I did leave one Smart Search setting checked for now, as it doesn't seem to cause problems and might make things faster; it's Enable Quick Website Search. I will uncheck it if I run into problems again. Thank you for finding this search fix and sharing it, Scott, really...I was hating my computer lately. Now it's back!! 😀

Safari running slow in Yosemite

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