Submit Hint Search The Forums LinksStatsPollsHeadlinesRSS
14,000 hints and counting!

Speed up a slow Safari under 10.4.2 Web Browsers
I know that there have been a number of hints about Safari slowdowns under various updates of OS X. I got hit this time, after applying the 10.4.2 update. When clicking on a link, there would be a *long* pause before anything would happen. I shut off the firewall, quit all my other apps, restarted, etc., but all to no avail. I already have entered my DNS server numbers in my Network location setting, so I knew that wasn't the problem.

The solution in my case, was deleting ~/Library/Safari/history.plist. I did so, and then my Safari was back to loading pages faster than my 2.4 GHz P4 PC (IE or Firefox), thank you very much.

Here's how I tracked it down. In the Terminal, I ran this command:
$ sudo fs_usage -f filesys
I noted a number of hits to the history file, and decided to delete it. You could, of course, use sudo fs_usage for a broader monitoring of what is going on behind the scenes. From man fs_usage: "fs_usage -- report system calls and page faults related to filesystem activity in real-time."

[robg adds: I don't think this is necessarily specific to 10.4.2, and I haven't noticed any slowdowns here despite a full history file. Still, perhaps this will help someone else, so here it is...]
    •    
  • Currently 3.40 / 5
  You rated: 4 / 5 (5 votes cast)
 
[44,567 views]  

Speed up a slow Safari under 10.4.2 | 7 comments | Create New Account
Click here to return to the 'Speed up a slow Safari under 10.4.2' hint
The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. This site is not responsible for what they say.
Speed up a slow Safari under 10.4.2
Authored by: angusm on Jul 28, '05 10:10:42AM

As an alternative, consider using the "Reset Safari" option under the "Safari" menu. This will blow away all of your history entries, your cookies, and your AutoFill texts, so use only if you're sure that that's what you want to do. Less drastically, "Clear History" on the "History" menu should also tame an oversize history file, without requiring you to go to the Terminal.

One thing I've noticed is that if you fill in a lot of forms - for example, if you use a database tool such as 'phpMyAdmin' frequently - Safari will become slow when displaying any page with a form on it. I attribute this to Safari storing a large number of AutoFill texts. Resetting Safari clears the stored texts, and produces noticeably faster page loads on forms pages.

You can also fine-tune AutoFill through the AutoFill tab in Preferences, which lets you delete AutoFill information for specific servers, or to choose not to have Safari remember previously-filled in information from forms at all (which would presumably prevent the problem arising).



[ Reply to This | # ]
Speed up a slow Safari under 10.4.2
Authored by: richard_k_smith on Jul 28, '05 12:07:43PM

I was experiencing a dramatic slowdown with Safari, too, but only on *some* sites. I tried a few of these hints (including resetting the history and removing some of the autofill entries for those sites) but to no avail. Then, before removing *all* the entries and doing the "reset," I tried emptying the cache. Wahoo - things are back to normal. I suspect a corrupt cached version of some of the images on the page might be responsible. Whatever, it has my Safari running full speed again.



[ Reply to This | # ]
Speed up a slow Safari under 10.4.2
Authored by: BrettTaylor on Jul 28, '05 01:30:58PM
Wouldn't it be just as easy to use
History -> Clear History
rather than delete the file? I'd had a slowdown on Panther at one point and noticed my history file was huge and doing this cleared it up just fine.

[ Reply to This | # ]
Sloppy programming
Authored by: gerti on Jul 28, '05 01:43:08PM

This is an rather alarming trend showing in many OS X applications: Caches that speed up an application under certain situations, but cause grief down the road or when the environment is different than that of the programmer.

First of all Caches should NOT be in the home directory, as that can be network mounted. This appears to have been completely overlooked by Apple's engineers. For example the latest Mail.app is near useless if a user has large IMAP mailboxes and a home that lives on an NFS share.

Then there apparently are many caches where no limits are applied. They are allowed to grow in the wild, eventually slowing down an application instead of speeding it up. And fault tolerance appears to be poor: A corrupted cache (for example due to an application crash) are not recognized as such, causing any number of unwanted results.

The number of applications affected by this is growing rapidly: Safari, Mail, Dock, Finder, SystemUIServer, iPhoto, Spotlight, SystemPreferences. Just to mention a few where caches have given me (and many other users) grief in the recent past.

All of this is a clear sign to me that the majority of the developers at Apple are bright young kids with limited experience. They may get quick results, but lack the experience of seasoned developers to see the 'big picture'.

OS X is on the fast track to become like Windows: To keep it running smooth, you'll have to do a clean install every now and then, which mainly has the effect of getting rid of old or unmanageable caches. And you better keep it simple, and only use it in very common types of environments. Anything a bit more complex apparently is not been tested at Apple, and the developers lack the foresight to account for those conditions.

Sad really...



[ Reply to This | # ]
Sloppy programming
Authored by: henryhbk on Jul 28, '05 04:36:14PM

You could use Cocktail to handle cache cleanup. It does a really nice job of cleaning all the caches (as well as running system maintenance off hours).

---
Henry Feldman, MD
Medical Informatics
NYU School of Medicine



[ Reply to This | # ]
Sloppy programming
Authored by: thejester on Jul 28, '05 05:05:12PM

I am not an expert, relying on graphical interface tools to try and solve Mac problems (one day I'll try to learn Unix!!). I have helped friends whose Macs have slowed down in numerous ways by clearing all caches using Onyx. It seems to clear out anything that may be troublesome when too bloated or somehow corrupted. I have had excellent results getting these (mainly G4) machines back up to speed.



[ Reply to This | # ]
Sloppy programming
Authored by: FenrisUlf on Jul 28, '05 11:54:26PM

I think we're way off from becoming Windows-like in that regard. There is no mysterious, corruptible, bloated, unresponsive registry in OS X. I've got a G4 running panther that has never been reinstalled. It runs snappy as the day I put panther on it. (And had the DeathStar drive not died on me, it'd have been an "upgrade" install...)

Flush your cache periodically, and you'll never have to reinstall. You can never say that about Windows. And most of the time, it's Windows' fault. :)


---
---
Who are you that walk across the graves of giants at this late hour?



[ Reply to This | # ]