Safari suddenly running very slowly on M3 iMac, Sonoma 14.5, Safari 17.5

Question

Level 1

9 points

Safari suddenly running very slowly on M3 iMac, Sonoma 14.5, Safari 17.5

Machine a few months old, I have not changed anything and I have no Safari extensions. About a week ago(?) it started to be very slow accepting text or clicks, and loading pages, and especially trying to scroll using the scrollbar. I have tried restarting the machine and it makes no difference.

Has there been a recent update (I have auto updates so might not notice) that could have caused this sudden change? It was fine before.

iMac 21.5″, macOS 11.7

Posted on Feb 4, 2025 10:08 AM

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Answer 1

Feb 13, 2025 8:15 AM in response to CUbuffsCSA

After restarting again and let the machine sit, I am watching several of the built in apps like "news" kill the processor. I am not opening the news app, it's just running in the background but killing the processor. 18.3.1 has issues, hopefully someone from Apple is monitoring these posts.

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Answer 2

dialabrain

Level 10

133,835 points

Feb 4, 2025 11:02 AM in response to Theorbo111

You're welcome.

I would check again…

About the security content of Safari 18.2 - Apple Support

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Answer 3

dialabrain

Level 10

133,835 points

Feb 12, 2025 10:34 PM in response to CUbuffsCSA

It's actually time to uninstall Bitdefender. It's not needed and obviously is causing a problem.

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Answer 4

Theorbo111 Author

Level 1

9 points

Feb 4, 2025 10:44 AM in response to dialabrain

I have upgraded Sonoma to 14.7.3 but Safari has only gone up one step to 17.6. I thought Safari would upgrade automatically with the OS; maybe 18.2 is only for Sequoia.

However, on a very quick test things seem to have improved (I'll be back if they haven't!) so thank you for the prompt.

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Answer 5

Feb 12, 2025 9:34 PM in response to Theorbo111

I have the exact same problem on a MBA M3 with 24GB of memory. The processor gets pegged doing anything in Safri or in Chrome.

Update - I disabled bit fender and things improved dramatically. Not sure if bit fender needs an update not but time to fire up the back up machine until this is fixed.

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Answer 6

Theorbo111 Author

Level 1

9 points

Feb 13, 2025 1:45 AM in response to dialabrain

I don't have Bitdefender, as far as I can see, so that's not it. I am now on Safari 18.3 as recommended and the problem has improved considerably but still recurs occasionally; restarting Safari seems to clear it. I can live with it but it ought not to happen on a new machine with up-to-date software.

Incidentally, clearing cookies and history made no difference at all.

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Answer 7

Feb 13, 2025 7:10 AM in response to CUbuffsCSA

Update 2/13/25 - Well disabling bit fender helped a bit, but Safari is back to its slow performance this morning (typing up this txt for example, the browser spun 4-5 times in the process). I have three difference MACs, two M3s and a M1. All three have different software apps on them and I will work with them today to determine if there is a difference in the software configs but at first pass, it looks like both M3s are really struggling. I am guessing the apple dev team knows they have an issue, just hopping it doesn't take months to release an update.

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Answer 8

Theorbo111 Author

Level 1

9 points

Feb 13, 2025 8:04 AM in response to dialabrain

Well, of course, that was the first thing I considered.

I have not installed a single thing in the period during which this problem started. Indeed, I have not installed anything at all since I took the machine out of the box a few months ago, apart from apps copied across from my old Mac right at the beginning (no antivirus, bitdefender or anything of the kind), and one reputable music typesetting app which as it happens I have not used at all for several weeks before and since the problem started.

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Answer 9

Feb 13, 2025 8:59 PM in response to CUbuffsCSA

update. So I pretty much turned off every security, tracking filter in Safari and it has helped a lot. These were enabled in previous versions but these seem to be occupying a lot of cycles. With everything disabled, performance is almost back to to the 18.2 levels.

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