Why does Safari randomly dump and reload all my tabs? (1 Viewer)

Why does Safari 5 in Lion randomly dump all my tabs and reload? Very annoying. And has lost me email in process.


I'm about ready to dump Safari. Lately, it's been maybe the worst browser I've used in years. But what to use instead? Chrome is OK, if a bit weird in the UI. It's in my dock, but I don't use it regularly. I gave up on Firefox a year ago.


sigh.

You are probably out of memory. I use chrome tho so hard to say.

Is that a Safari thing? I don't think Chrome runs out of memory.


This is with only five or six tabs open on a 4GB system and a 64bit OS. How does it run out of memory???


Maybe I better switch back to Chrome.

Depends, what other apps are you running simultaneously? Install the iStat Pro free Widget and watch how your memory is mapped.

I don't use Safari, but I use a Safari alternative (on the iPhone), and this is caused by memory leaks, as Sam says. In my browser, there is a menu called Low Memory Conditions where you can turn off tab reloading. Check your options to see if "proper" Safari has that as well. Edit: here's a site with an instant solution, but it'll comes with the down side of disabling Java applets: http://www.webmaster-source.com/2011/10/05/how-to-turn-off-auto-reloading-tabs-in-safari-5-1/ That's from last October, so maybe there's a better solution now?

Jon Siracusa on his podcast Hypercritical commented on this being a known annoyance

Disabled Java. I never use it. We'll see if that helps.


I've also now read Safari 5.2 fixes this problem. We'll see.

Why didn't I use Chrome? Oh, I was using it full-time, but was decided to go for a more integrated system, particularly with bookmarks shared from desktop to iPHone. And I tried going Flash-less, which meant using Safari with the plug-in uninstalled. And Chrome's UI is a touch more odd than Safari's. (I still think Firefox had the best combo of UI with plug-ins.)

Kill flash while you are at it and only run Flash under Chrome.

I did six months ago. I reinstalled it last weekend. It was too much trouble having to juggle browsers. And the web on the desktop isn't usable for without Flash (le sigh)