Safari memory leaks / consumption

I am running OSX 10.9.5 on a 2.93GHz Intel Core 2 Duo iMac with 8GB RAM and a 1TB SSD. When I run Safari 7.1.3 it will start to consume massive amounts of memory. I tend to keep about 5-8 windows open with an average of 7 tabs each. I have a memory monitor showing used and free memory on my screen, along with a CPU consumption meter. What is strange is that occasionally Safari will start to max out the CPUs and the apparent installed memory on the machine will drop to below 4GB. At this point the iMac is pretty much useless for any activity. If I wait the CPU usage will usually drop off but the memory remains missing. I have run diagnostics on the RAM several times and there are no problems detected.

If I quit and then restart Safari the missing memory reappears. Any ideas?

Thanks!

35 - 49 page instances open.. that may take a tax on memory usage How often are you having to restart Safari and how long does it take to get to this condition?

Holy cow, I guess so. I was taxing 4 GB memory with Safari running 8-10 tabs open in a single window. Had to use a free memory app in 10.9 to deal with it or restart Safari 3-4 times a day.

Without an adblocker & probably a flashblocker - don't see any way you're going to run that many open tabs without a problem.

I know the count of tabs seem pretty high but I have a lot going on and need them pretty often. I find lately that I usually Quit (or force quit) Safari daily, and sometimes a couple times per day to clear the problem. Stopping and immediately restarting Safari is usually enough to temporarily fix the problem. It usually takes a couple minutes for all the tabs to reopen and refresh.

I also now make it a habit to quit Safari each night before going to bed as otherwise my machine sometimes won't wake up in the morning and I have to hard crash it.

I really can't comment on your workflow, because I totally sympathize. I just don't think you have enough RAM available to run that many instances. Even in an ideal world, without a memory leak. I'd actually suggest quitting Safari every time you take a break... Ideally upgrading RAM, but I don't recall what you can fully populate that box to. You're really asking a lot from that application

That may be the best "solution" to the problem. I think I maxed out my RAM as I recall.

Thanks for the input!

You may want to try a memory manager. I used FreeMemory Pro from the App Store in OS X 10.8 and 10.9. 10.9 was the worst and FMP allowed me to go from quitting Safari multiple times a day and restarting the machine every other day, to being able to go a week or more at a time. Clicking on it to free memory twice at a time and 3-4 times a day is a lot faster than a force quit and reload of all your tabs.

You may also want to consider the upgrade to OS X 10.10. It doesn't take that long to get use to the bland interface and it manages memory so much better that I no longer need the memory manager.

Time for a memory upgrade.

It sounds like you are taxing the system to far you need at least 8 gig's or better for great performance with that many tabs.

Honestly though.

If you need that many tabs try firefox chrome or other browsers for mac theres 30 of them to choose from.

A simple answer here is to use a different browser. Safari is notorious for using a lot of memory and while a different browser isn't going to solve your problem, it's an easy way to alleviate the problem in the meantime. Another "solution" would be to rethink your workflow. That's a lot of tabs to have open at any one time and I imagine that you don't need to have al of those open at all times.

There are some sites where I have to use Firefox already. Before I switch everything over I think I will try the FreeMemory Manager approach to see how that works out.

Thanks!!!

Well, FreeMemory Pro didn't help (or at least not enough). I guess it is time to finally give up on Safari and use another browser.

For my job, I have to keep Safari open all day (and by that I mean 12 hours). I usually have about 10 to 20 tabs open at any given time. I have no memory leak, Safari performs great all day, and I have no idea what the heck you people are talking about.

I'm running Safari Version 7.1.3 (9537.85.12.18). What version are you running? I had similar problems with some earlier versions but nothing like I am encountering now. It has reached the point where Safari needs to be quit and restarted a couple times per day or else I run out of application memory, even when freeing memory using FreeMemory Pro.

chas_m said:

For my job, I have to keep Safari open all day (and by that I mean 12 hours). I usually have about 10 to 20 tabs open at any given time. I have no memory leak, Safari performs great all day, and I have no idea what the heck you people are talking about.

Click to expand...

It's also going to depend a lot on the type of media on each of those tabs. The more interactive, the more it's going to just suck up RAM. Or processor...