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PookJP · Jun 30, 2004, 09:07 PM

Am I the only one who experiences lengthy and infuriating lags when using Safari and Preview? In Safari, sometimes when I close a tab, the hard drive will start searching (making that "hard drive is working" noise) for about 3 minutes, bog down my entire system, and then finally get rid of the tab. In Preview, if I open multiple pictures and rotate some of them, when I close the window, the computer thinks about it for around 45 seconds per picture, then asks if I want to save the changes, and then when I say yes, thinks for about another 35 seconds per picture.

Does anyone else have these problems?

For the record:

Powerbook G4 867 Mhz
768 RAM

jokell82 · Jul 1, 2004, 12:30 AM

I get Safari stalls ALL THE FRIGGIN TIME.

Kinda pisses me off.

PookJP · Jul 1, 2004, 11:08 AM

Originally posted by jokell82:
I get Safari stalls ALL THE FRIGGIN TIME.

Kinda pisses me off.

Freeflyer · Jul 1, 2004, 06:36 PM

Yeah, I've been getting endless beachballs lately. Change tabs, scroll, etc and up comes the beachball. I'm trying to figure out what I'm running that's causing the problem, as it doesn't happen in a test user account just running safari.

Guess there's a conflict.

J.

PookJP · Jul 2, 2004, 08:11 PM

Originally posted by Freeflyer:
Yeah, I've been getting endless beachballs lately. Change tabs, scroll, etc and up comes the beachball. I'm trying to figure out what I'm running that's causing the problem, as it doesn't happen in a test user account just running safari.

Guess there's a conflict.

J.

Yeah, I've been trying to figure it out as well. I haven't found anything too definitive, thus far. If I have only Preview open, it still does the lag thing when saving. Grrr.

wataru · Jul 2, 2004, 08:44 PM

I haven't noticed that in Preview, but I've found that PithHelmet slows Safari down significantly.

drive-thru · Jul 22, 2004, 01:59 PM

Decided to bump this thread as the same thing started happening to me a few days ago. Closing a tab, clicking a link etc in Safari occasionally (every 5-10 minutes) gives me a beachball for about 15 seconds. I hadn't changed anything in the past few days but now Safari is giving me beachballs, tried trashing prefs - no use.

Freeflyer · Jul 22, 2004, 07:16 PM

I'm at my wits end with this. I've tried going through everything that's running and shutting it down manually, one by one, and nothing seems to make a difference. It's crazy. I thought it might be something like meteorologist, or netnewswirelite but no, shut them all down, and it just keeps doing it.

I don't get it, but it makes doing anything with safari very, very annoying.

J.

pliny · Jul 23, 2004, 06:25 AM

I've noticed safari slowdown ever since the upgrade to 10.3.4. it's definitely gotten less responsive which is a shame because it used to be pretty quick.

Mike S. · Jul 23, 2004, 11:25 AM

Have any of you tried cleaning out the icons folder?

~/Library/Safari/Icons

If this gets too full it can cause slow launches and degrade performance. I've set the permissions on mine to read only so the icons only get stored for the current session and never written to disk.

jasong · Jul 23, 2004, 04:55 PM

I did the same thing as Mike S. and it has helped, but not completely solved the issue. I was about to purge my user account, but I guess I will just deal with it for a while longer and see if someone comes up with a great idea.

-- Jason

justinp · Jul 24, 2004, 12:20 AM

1.3 Dev beta cleared up quite a few problems for me (constantly beachballing for no reason, beachballing for minutes at a time occasionally). There are still a few problems (like the fact that it is laggy when replying to a post here at MacNN -- I can type faster than the characters can be displayed).

So, here's hoping that 1.3 will be released soon.

jokell82 · Jul 24, 2004, 03:05 PM

Originally posted by Mike S.:
Have any of you tried cleaning out the icons folder?

~/Library/Safari/Icons

If this gets too full it can cause slow launches and degrade performance. I've set the permissions on mine to read only so the icons only get stored for the current session and never written to disk.

I've actually changed permissions on that folder so nothing can be written to it. It did help a little, but I still get major stalls...

Freeflyer · Jul 24, 2004, 08:33 PM

Originally posted by justinp:
1.3 Dev beta cleared up quite a few problems for me (constantly beachballing for no reason, beachballing for minutes at a time occasionally). There are still a few problems (like the fact that it is laggy when replying to a post here at MacNN -- I can type faster than the characters can be displayed).

So, here's hoping that 1.3 will be released soon.

That's interesting, thanks for the heads up. Hope it gets released soon. Just to save my sanity.

J.

Avenir · Aug 12, 2004, 04:11 PM

The new version of Safari didn't seem to help me out (10.3.5 Update)... did it fix the stalling for anyone else?

icibaqu · Oct 3, 2004, 01:03 AM

i'm having the same problem...did a search

anyone solved the beachball of death yet? does it have to do with java?

Love Calm Quiet · Oct 3, 2004, 05:07 AM

I only *occasionally* get a beachball get a safari slowdown on a 667MHz Tibook 768 MB RAM, but not usually. I just tried "Opening in Tabs" a large folder of bookmarked pages from Favorites menubar and had NO delays selecting/closing/etc. selections from them.

I did used to have a lot of delays BEFORE locking the ICONS folder. I think that needs to be an option in the safari PREFERENCES panel - so that average home users won't get bogged down.

tuqqer · Oct 3, 2004, 11:59 AM

I'm surprised no one has mentioned Onyx yet, a freeware that cleans out Safari as well as a variety of other things. Get it at VersionTracker.

gregpins · Oct 4, 2004, 04:52 PM

Try a recent nightly build of Camino. It is dramatically faster than Safari and does not cause nearly as many spinning beach balls. I do think Safari's performance seems to have degraded somewhat in recent builds.

PubGuy · Oct 6, 2004, 09:01 AM

Wow -- yeah -- I'm having the same problem and it's getting very frustrating.

Safari keeps stalling with a spinning beach ball and the activity monitor bar stays pinned until whatever it's doing is cleared. I have no idea why -- tried deleting all icon files, clearing caches, etc. nothing seems to resolve it.

I'm running OS X 10.3.5 (build 7M34). The machine has 1.5G memory. Tried all the suggestions here and yet it still stalls...(no, Camino is not the answer...I want Safari fixed).

PubGuy · Nov 10, 2004, 05:11 PM

FYI - safari still stalling and beach balling with 10.3.6 (Safari v125.11)

zl9600 · Nov 13, 2004, 01:52 PM

i'm tired of this. i'm ready to switch back to firefox, which i found ugly and not much better about a year ago, but i cannot handle the problems and slowness with safari. it was okay until 10.3.6, and the ms office 2004 upgrade. ever since those two things were put on my Ti 667, i get constant crashes of applications, not to mention the safari slowness.

what do people think of omniweb. i don't want to spend $30 if it's never updated or if it stinks.

El Magnificante · Nov 30, 2004, 06:56 PM

Anybody figure this out???

I get the *&*^ beachball (beach ball) whenever I have eBay open + any other site. Switching between either tabs or windows is ridiculously frustrating.

17PB 1.33, 1GB RAM (single stick), 80GB 5400rpm HD etc etc

zl9600 · Nov 30, 2004, 07:49 PM

i ran to firefox, and it lasted for a few days. it started to lag as well, and i just didn't like the interface enough. so i'm back on safari. i've run cocktail several times, and i was running this program called 2remember, and killing that seems to make things move a little faster.

a little. i've reset the pmu a time or two, i've switched users and surfed using that user, and i had heard once that setting up a new account and playing on it for a while actually helps. could be a wives tale...

i'm considering a full re-install of everything and starting over again. it feels like a good time for a disk clean.

surprisingly, my fan is off right now.

El Magnificante · Nov 30, 2004, 09:07 PM

Yea I'm considering a format: c:/

too. Sad really considering this install is less than one month young.

drive-thru · Dec 1, 2004, 02:51 AM

Originally posted by El Magnificante:
Anybody figure this out???

I get the *&*^ beachball (beach ball) whenever I have eBay open + any other site. Switching between either tabs or windows is ridiculously frustrating.

Same here, it went away in the previous version(s) after I made the icons folder read-only, but now it's back witht the latest version (and the folder is still set to read only).
I only notice it when eBay is open.

Groovy · Dec 1, 2004, 03:09 PM

Originally posted by drive-thru:
Same here, it went away in the previous version(s) after I made the icons folder read-only, but now it's back witht the latest version (and the folder is still set to read only).
I only notice it when eBay is open.

what happens when you turn off javascript and/or java in the prefs?

also what is in the logs (look in the debug menu)

bluevertical · Dec 1, 2004, 04:05 PM

just ran across this thread and wanted to give a few tips i tried a while back and they really worked. they might work for you too.

� i removed any large folders of bookmarks on the bookmarks bar
� i shortened the titles of a ton of links (i know this seems crazy but i read it somewhere and it did work out a TON on my speed issues) as i add bookmarks now i shorten the titles...
� cleared all caches (favicon etc etc)

give it a shot and let me know if this helps you as much as me.

hope it helps...

peace.
bv.