I have never ever seen Safari Leak memory like this . . Any Help . . .

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As i said, i have never seen Safari leak memory like i have in the last 4 weeks, but then this morning. Within 4 hrs, Safari Web Content reached 5.89GB in activity monitor.
I had over all maybe 10 tabs open all morning, but 4 main, this forum, another forum, a camera warehouse page and the other has been a mix.

What in the world is causing Safari to leak memory at this rate ?? I have the latest 6.0.5 and i have Adblock, Click2Flash, Duplicate Tab, Franker, Ultimate Status Bar, 1Password, 1Password (Beta), Pocket, NoMoreiTunes, SocialFixer and nvlt as my Safari Extension. Is it possible at all, that one of these Ext could be causing this leak ?? I mean in real life, can this happen ??
I have Repaired Permissions, reset SMC and so on, all the normal stuff we would try. Even trashed a .plist or 2, but im totally bewildered by this leak.

I could usually open Safari in the morning, work all day with it, close my lid at night, wake in the morning and continue to use Safari then i get the SBOD so i immediately Force Quit Safari and go about my days business, but this morning in 4 hrs, it reached 5.89GB ??

Whats the go with that, and yea, i dont need to hear "This is why i use FF, GC, Opera" because i have tried them and i dont use them . . . . . Full Stop ;P
 
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Could it be in one of your extensions, perhaps? Have you installed any plugins lately? I'm running the same setup as you and just opened 9 pages, but Safari + Web content stays stable at just over 1.1 gigs, barely making the CPU % monitor blip. Like you, I prefer Safari over everything else, but I have very few plugins. AdBlock and SaveFrom.net is about it...
 
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I use Safari for work all day, every day. It's now been open continuously for seven hours, 38 minutes, and according to Activity Monitor, Safari Web Content is using 1GB of virtual RAM about about the same in real RAM.

So my guess would be that something in the content of some of your open tabs (I'd look at Flash first, of course) is the actual culprit here.
 

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Well, I don't have that much memory in my machine - older MBA with only 4 GB non-upgradeable - which seemed reasonable when I bought it over 2 yrs ago.

Clean boot gives me ~2.2 GB free memory and I can be under 100 MB in 1-2 hrs going no where with Safari but this forum and StopForumSpam with up to 8 tabs open.

Only fix I've found is FreeMemory - free version and a $1 Pro version in the app store.
Stays in the menu bar for quick access - you can hit it 2-3 times in succession to free up more memory.
And wouldn't do you a whole lot of good switching - FF and Chrome do the same - haven't tried Opera recently.
 

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Welcome to Safari - the application that leaks memory quicker than a bucket with a head sized hole in it.

Start disabling the extensions. I don't know how memory is managed with Safari extensions but that's an easy place to start.

Whats the go with that, and yea, i dont need to hear "This is why i use FF, GC, Opera" because i have tried them and i dont use them . . . . . Full Stop ;P
If you want to continue enjoying such leakage (honestly, Apple makes some great software but they must have had the interns develop the memory management features for Safari), stick with it. If you want a modern browser that doesn't decimate your memory store, consider switching to FF or Chrome. Both have higher initial memory usage but do what any application should - cap that usage as the application gets used and more importantly, release it when it's done. I've seen Safari consume memory like it was going out of style only to hold onto it when it was done doing whatever it was struggling through. Thus, feel free to stay committed to Safari without question but then prepare to enjoy the memory costs. ;)
 

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As i said, i have never seen Safari leak memory like i have in the last 4 weeks, but then this morning. Within 4 hrs, Safari Web Content reached 5.89GB in activity monitor.
I had over all maybe 10 tabs open all morning, but 4 main, this forum, another forum, a camera warehouse page and the other has been a mix.

What in the world is causing Safari to leak memory at this rate ??

I have found the same thing happening from time to time. I think what exacerbates the problem are dynamic vs. static web pages:

- static = web page content does not change
- dynamic = web page content that changes:

* pages that have content that changes
* pages that have videos that auto-play
* pages that have "rolling" advertising
* etc.

Add to this having multiple "dynamic" pages/tabs open at once...and the effect is multiplied.

- Nick
 
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MacInWin

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I'm not seeing the problem here, either. I use Safari exclusively, with four Extensions--1Password, AdBlock, Ghostery and ClickToFlash (I want to control my browser, not let it be controlled). After several hours of use with 2-5 tabs open at one time, one of them always this URL, my memory use is sitting at about 280Mb.
 

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After several hours of use with 2-5 tabs open at one time, one of them always this URL, my memory use is sitting at about 280Mb.
Does that include the Web Content process? That seems low for any browser meeting those conditions.
 

vansmith

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I'm confused then since a fresh launch of Safari uses up 130 MB just for the browser itself. It would appear that you've somehow tamed Safari.
 
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Tamed? I think not. Watching it as I open and close tabs it is interesting to see memory usage change. I drove it up to 370Mb by opening lots of tabs, watched it grow quickly. Then I closed each one in turn and the usage very, very slowly dropped. It never got back to 230, is now sitting at about 329 and still dropping about 1 mb/minute. It's almost like Safari Web Content is holding on to memory in a cache, only releasing it reluctantly and then very slowly. Just for grins, I triggered Memory Clean to see if it could accelerate the process but the memory stays engaged. So I can see how if you have 10 tabs open and if there are large, dynamic pages in there, SWC will take a ton of memory. And once it's claimed that memory, it doesn't want to release it. Don't know if it's a true leak, as leaks, in my experience never retreat, but it's certainly something holding onto memory.
 

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Run the SunSpider JS benchmark to see Safari gobble up the memory.

Safari's a decent browser but this issue is one I've never quite understood.
 
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Like MacInWin after two hours use including online gaming sitting at 225MB and yet to see it over 400MB..
 
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Do a Google on:

"Strange memory leak in OS X"

and I think you'll find what you're seeing is the new "normal." By that, I mean I don't think ML handles memory management in a manner that's clear and/or transparent to the end user.
 
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Could it be in one of your extensions, perhaps?

They where my first thought, because i have had Safari problems before with Extensions, and that was FastestTube, so i have disabled that this morning and 5hrs on im getting 404mb Safari Web Content . . . I wont hold my Marbles though just yet.

I use Safari for work all day, every day. It's now been open continuously for seven hours, 38 minutes, and according to Activity Monitor, Safari Web Content is using 1GB of virtual RAM about about the same in real RAM.

So my guess would be that something in the content of some of your open tabs (I'd look at Flash first, of course) is the actual culprit here.

I know you use FastestTube but not sure if you have yours disabled or not . . But i have had it play up with me before :(

Only fix I've found is FreeMemory - free version and a $1 Pro version in the app store.
Stays in the menu bar for quick access - you can hit it 2-3 times in succession to free up more memory.
And wouldn't do you a whole lot of good switching - FF and Chrome do the same - haven't tried Opera recently.

Ill have to have a look at them, and see if they do the job, thanks for the lead on them Tom.

.. . . .and I think you'll find what you're seeing is the new "normal." By that, I mean I don't think ML handles memory management in a manner that's clear and/or transparent to the end user.

This isnt JUST a Mountain Lion thing, as Safari is notorious for Memory Leak, but if might be a little more prolific in ML, but its been around for a long time, and have been aware of it for even longer ?!?! ;)

But as i said above, im doing the Ext way of things, but im really not sure how a few mb Ext, could cause such destruction of a great Browser, but ill able/disable Extensions over the next week and see what the results are. I went straight to fastestTube, because i have had problems with that one before, and i dont believe in coincidences so ill keep working at it.
$ hrs and over 5GB just blew me away. Have a 10.8.5 Supplement update so that might help too . . .
 

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But as i said above, im doing the Ext way of things, but im really not sure how a few mb Ext, could cause such destruction of a great Browser, but ill able/disable Extensions over the next week and see what the results are.
Depending on the extension, if Apple doesn't limit memory access, this is very possible. A simple set of loops doing a repetitive task or calculation could eat away at your memory over a prolonged period of time.

$ hrs and over 5GB just blew me away. Have a 10.8.5 Supplement update so that might help too . . .
i don't know what these cash hours are but I want in.
 

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