When did Safari start to suck?

[fuzzyearlobes]

After the last update, whenever I use Safari for an extended period of time, the memory it uses just balloons. It used to be that it would max out at maybe 300MB per session. Today was really the first time I actually used Safari for an extended period of time, and realized it was using over 1Gb (Safari and the Web Process thing that seems to be attached to Safari) . I had a few tabs open, but not more than 3. Considering my iMac shipped with 1Gb of RAM ( i have maxed my RAM to 4), this seems excessive. Any word on a fix? If I upgrade to Lion, will this fix itself? For now, Im staying away from Safari.

 

[osxx]

It is Safari 5.1 on some models and who knows and it happens on both 10.7 and 10.6.8.

 

[JUKE179r]

I noticed with Safari 5.1 on OS 10.6.8, when I highlight text and choose the option to "Search with Google", it doesn't work on my '07 MBP.
Maybe it's just me....

 

[baggss]

I noticed it on my PowerMac G5 running 10.5.8 and whatever version of Safari that was. Happens on both my i3 iMac and my C2D MacBook too.

 

[Mac23]

I switched from Safari to Chrome a long time ago. I noticed when .gif images or while doing a photo search on google, that Safari would work overtime it seemed in order to keep up with the images.

I have 0 issues with Chrome.

I've recently began using Aurora as well, it's a pretty solid browser in its own right.

 

[CrimsonRequiem]

Gotta love the memory leaks and the troubles with rendering gif files. >_<"

 

[chas_m]

I use Safari 5.1 for about 12 hours a day and literally have no idea what you people are talking about. As I type this to you, Safari has been open for 13 hours straight. It's still lightning fast and if I'm having trouble with gif files I sure haven't noticed it (maybe you mean animated gif files, aka the scourge of the web? If so, I'm delight to hear that Safari won't render them).

Open up Activity Monitor, Safari is as I type this listed as using 269MB of real RAM and 253.6 of virtual RAM. Safari Web Content (the sandboxed portion) is taking up 168MB real RAM and 119.6 virtual RAM.

I wouldn't know what's "normal" to compare this to, but it's not causing any problems, running my fans or slowing down -- it's not doing ANYTHING to make me think its misbehaving in any way. How does my report compare to yours?

 

[bobtomay]

Safari right now - two tabs - the page you're looking at - and this page - just woke the machine up from sleep. The same two tabs that were open when it went to sleep.

Safari - 814.4 MB Real - 953.4 Virtual
Web Content - 339.4 MB Real - 311.7 Virtual

The thing has been on just over an hour since the reboot after the 10.7.1 update reboot.


While the usage is high, any issue caused seems rare at this point, but there are the occasional spinning beach balls, only solved by quitting and restarting Safari.

 

[Dysfunction]

Wow, two tabs and over a gig of memory used?

FF v5 12 tabs (4 of them smugmug connections) and I'm using a whopping

Firefox 478.6 MB 387.3 virtual

plugin process is sucking up 28.7 real, 117.8 virtual

 

[Mac23]

I use Safari 5.1 for about 12 hours a day and literally have no idea what you people are talking about. As I type this to you, Safari has been open for 13 hours straight. It's still lightning fast and if I'm having trouble with gif files I sure haven't noticed it (maybe you mean animated gif files, aka the scourge of the web? If so, I'm delight to hear that Safari won't render them).

Open up Activity Monitor, Safari is as I type this listed as using 269MB of real RAM and 253.6 of virtual RAM. Safari Web Content (the sandboxed portion) is taking up 168MB real RAM and 119.6 virtual RAM.

I wouldn't know what's "normal" to compare this to, but it's not causing any problems, running my fans or slowing down -- it's not doing ANYTHING to make me think its misbehaving in any way. How does my report compare to yours?

That is extremely awesome, I'm glad you're not having issues with Safari.

However, I did. Safari was a memory hog and I'm much happier with the performance of Google Chrome. In fact, I'm glad Safari began experiencing problems for me, because I much prefer the UI of Chrome as well..

 

[fuzzyearlobes]

Yea, Firefox and Chrome are far superior and much lighter on memory usage. I was shocked when I saw how piggy Safari had gotten