XYMer's Home away from Home

For a long time been trying to figure out Safari hogging so much RAM & VM.

Most things I've read attribute it to Extensions & Add-ons, & that certainly is a big part of the problem, as it seems to multiply them for every tab & window, I disabled wall of them & saved a few 100K, but it would eventually creep up leaving zero free RAM of my precious 6 GB.

Finally took a look at ~/Library/Preferences/com/safari/plist

Holy cow it had entries for I think every site I ever visited.. hundreds of entries like this…


So, I renamed that & let Safari build a new one, on next launch & running days with the same tabs & windows open I was saving 1 GB of Real Memory in Web Processes & a couple 100 K in Safari, didn't keep track of VM, but assume it was less also.

It appears that Safari Web Processes uses all those entries whether you're on those sites or not!???

This is on Mid 2007 iMac, OSX 10.8.5, Safari 6.2.8 (8537.85.17.9.1)

I notice Safari devouring RAM when I use it to watch video. It could just stream it but for some reason it fills the RAM with it. It is kind of like a kleptomanic that has to hang on to all content.

I think the plist hold entries when you allow Flash to run on particular sites.
If you choose Reset Safari, Clear the Downloads window, it will clear those entries in the plist such as the one you have shown in the paste. So maybe the RAM is filled with the viewed content, on the presumption you may want to keep it as a download. Not certain about that though.

10.9.5 Safari 9.1.3

Thanks Roam… been afraid to Reset Safari.

From all the possible Reset choices, if you select only one, namely; Clear the Downloads window, that may effect the same as you forcing Safari to write a new plist. I've tried this and it deletes the web entries under Flash as shown in your pasted extract. Though I'd guess, it would take a restart of Safari, to free the stuff accumulated in RAM.
However I'm not sure if there is a way to moderate Safari's tendency to use RAM. I think if you use Flash, Safari fills RAM with that content.

Hmmm, with a new plist I still have an extensive History… which I use as a "Where'd I see that" Bookmark list when the need arises.

Sorry that didn't help. You may have to explore each one of those resets to see which one is going to best clean up the plist for you. I generally just nuke it (Reset all) after it gorges on RAM.

Roam , it did help my meager understanding of what's going on, thank you.

It does make you wonder who at Apple thought it was a good idea use all available resources for sites you're not even on!