Safari Web Content

[Whitehill]

I'm running Safari 5.1 on 10.6.8. Along with the process Safari, there's another named Safari Web Content. The latter uses 1.7gb (!) of real memory, according to Activity Monitor. If that isn't bad enough, every now and then it takes over one CPU completely, for several seconds, and all activities become noticeably sluggish.

This seems to be a fairly recent change. Does anybody know what's going on?

 

[ElDiabloConCaca]

http://www.macworld.co.uk/macsoftware/news/index.cfm?newsid=3299765&pagtype=allchandate

"Safari Web Content" runs alongside Safari and is responsible for rendering web content, sandboxing plug-ins, and also for any web-related processes that run outside of a Safari window (like desktop web content, etc.).

 

[Whitehill]

Before doing anything more drastic, I restarted Safari and then opened all windows from last session. Both processes started up using about 275mb real memory each. Over the past 30 minutes, Safari has stayed put while Safari Web Content has crawled up to 325mb, with no CPU spikes yet.

Another piece of advice I found: Run Safari in 32-bit mode. Unfortunately, that's how I have run it for several months.

... now 340mb

 

[Whitehill]

Around 16 hours later, most of which was spent idling, Safari is up to 366mb real mem and SWC is 647mb. It sure feels like a memory leak.

 

[DeltaMac]

What is the difference if you now run Safari in 64-bit mode?

 

[Whitehill]

I just restarted Safari in 64-bit mode, opened fewer than half the windows from yesterday, and watched SWC's real mem climb quickly (2 min) to 580mb. I don't remember why I changed to 32-bit mode, but there was a good reason.