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How to Speed Up Safari on Mac: A Detailed Guide

Updated on Tuesday, December 3, 2024

iBoysoft author Rivers Wong

Written by

Rivers Wong
Professional tech editor

Approved by

Jessica Shee

English

Summary: This article will tell you how to speed up Safari on Mac, and help you make Safari back to normal in no time. Also, you can use iBoysoft DiskGeeker to clean junk files on your Mac, thus speeding up Safari.

How to speed up Safari on Mac

As the default and built-in web browser, Safari was highly praised by Mac users over the years because of its high performance and reliability. But as with any other web browser, like Google Chrome, or Mozilla Firefox, Safari is not immune from slowdowns and other issues.

For those who stick to using Safari, and don't know what to do when finding Safari is running much slower than before, you come to the right place. This article tells you how to speed up Safari on Mac with nine feasible ways. Without further ado, let's get started!

Possible causes lead to Safari running slow on Mac

To speed up Safari on Mac, it's beneficial to start with the possible reasons that may lead to Safari running slow on Mac issue. Let's check some of the possible reasons out.

  • Bad network connection 
  • Too many open apps and resource-intensive programs 
  • Overmuch tabs in Safari 
  • Bad extensions 
  • Overworked Cache 
  • Outdated Version of Safari
  • Too many junk files on your Mac

It is worth mentioning that there are various causes that may result in this problem, and the above list is just part of them. Now you learn some possible reasons that may cause the slowdown of Safari, to speed up Safari on Mac is next on the agenda. Read on for more details.

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How to speed up Safari on Mac?

Here, we provide you with 9 feasible solutions to help you speed up Safari on Mac, thus fixing the Safari running slow on Mac problem. You can perform the following solutions one by one to check if any of them will work.

Check for network connection problems

If you find the website you open in Safari takes too long to load, or even fails to load, it's a good idea to check the network connection, and see if the culprit is not inside Safari itself. Sometimes, a bad network connection will lead to the unstable performance of Safari. So, whenever you feel Safari is slower than usual, check your network first.

check network connection on Mac

Shut down unneeded apps and resource-intensive programs

Safari will run much slower than normal when you have countless applications or resource-intensive programs opened on your Mac. In this situation, those apps and programs take up the most CPU usage, and thus there's not much left for Safari. So, to speed up Safari on Mac, you can quit or force-quit those apps not actively used on the Mac Dock.

Also, if you want to sort apps and find those consume too much processing power and memory, use the Activity Monitor to help you, here's how:

  1. Go to Mac Launchpad > Others, find Activity Monitor, and launch it.
  2. In the Activity Monitor window, click on the CPU tab or Memory tab in the top menu.
  3. Select the process or app that uses a great amount of CPU or lots of RAM, then shut it down. 
    shut down unneeded apps using Activity Monitor

Close unnecessary tabs in Safari

When you are searching for information or just browsing interesting websites in Safari, you may open a lot of tabs without realizing it. Too many tabs open in Safari will get Safari running slow on Mac. Because this Apple's default browser keeps many of those tabs active in the background, even when you are not using them.

close unnecessary tabs in Safari

So, you can speed up Safari on Mac by simply closing those unnecessary tabs. Remember to bookmark those websites you actively used in case of accidentally closing.

Optimize your Mac

Too many junk files on your Mac disk can have devastating consequences for your Mac's overall performance. A Mac with limited free space on the startup disk is likely to freeze, clutter, and crash, thus making Safari run slow. In this case, you can free up space on Mac to speed up Safari with iBoysoft DiskGeeker.

iBoysoft DiskGeeker is one of the leading macOS optimizers in the market. It is able to remove useless clutters from hard drives on your Mac. The Clean Junk feature of it can help users to find and remove junk files from the startup disk, thus boosting your Mac's performance. And the Clean Drive feature can scan all files on a volume, so that you can sort out those unneeded files and remove them easily.

Also, it can clear up junk files in Macs, external hard drives, solid-state drives, USB flash drives, SD cards, memory cards, etc.

Here's how to clean junk files on our Mac and speed up Safari:

  1. Download, install, and launch iBoysoft DiskGeeker on your Mac.
  2. Select your Mac's internal disk in the Local drive list, and click the Clean Junk button from the toolbar on the right.clean junk files on your Mac
  3. Select a folder from the left panel, select unwanted files/folders, then click the Clean button.
    clean system junk to speed up Safari
  4. Click Ok to confirm the deletion.
  5. Check if the Safari running slow on Mac issue still exists.

Disable or remove unnecessary Safari extensions

Though some of the Safari extensions are quite useful, they can do more harm than good by affecting the browsing experience and the loading speed. Besides, extensions eat up resources. So, in this situation, you can either turn off or directly remove those unused or not frequently used extensions in Safari.

Here's how to speed up Safari on Mac by disabling and removing Safari extensions:

  1. Launch Safari on your Mac.
  2. Click Safari in the Apple Menu, choose Preferences, then click on the Extensions tab.
  3. To disable an extension, simply untick the checkbox next to it.
  4. To remove an extension you no longer need, select it, and click the Uninstall button.speed up Safari on Mac by deleting extensions

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Clear up Safari cache and cookies

Like Google Chrome or any other browser, Safari will keep a cache of data from websites you visit. This takes up disk space and leads to some performance problems. So, it's always to clear up the Safari cache once in a while if you need to improve the browser's speed, here's how:

  1. Launch Safari on your Mac, and click Safari in the Apple Menu.
  2. Go to Preferences > Advanced.
  3. Tick the checkbox next to Show Develop menu in the menu bar.clear up Safari cache on Mac
  4. Click the Develop tab in the top menu of your screen, and choose Empty Caches.speed up Safari on Mac by clearing up cache

Corrupted and outdated cookies may slow down Safari, and thus affect its performance. So, removing cookies in Safari can also help you speed up Safari on Mac, here's how:

  1. In the Apple Menu, go to Safari > Preferences > Privacy.
  2. Click Manage Website Data, a window appears, then click Remove All.clear Safari cookies
  3. Click Remove Now to clear up Safari cookies.

Disable autofill

Autofill can help you enter passwords automatically in Safari. But the more data you store in autofill, the more resources Safari needs. Disable autofill is another way to fix the Safari running slow on Mac issue.

  1. Launch Safari, click Safari in the Apple Menu, then choose Preferences.
  2. Click the AutoFill tab, and select any of the Edit buttons next to the listed items.disable autofill to speed up Safari on Mac
  3. Remove your autofill data.

Reset Safari to factory defaults

If any of the above solutions fail to fix your problem, you can reset Safari to factory defaults. Do note that resetting Safari will clear up all extensions and browser settings. So, consider it twice before doing it. Here's how:

  1. Quit Safari on your Mac.
  2. Open Mac Finder, press Command + Shift + G together, type "~/Library/Preferences/" in the pop-up window, and click Go.reset Safari to factory defaults
  3. Search for com.apple.Safari.plist file, and move it to Mac Trash.
  4. Press Command + Shift + G together again, type "~/Library/Safari/" in the pop-up window, and delete all items in the folder except the Bookmarks.plist file.
  5. Visit "~/Library/Containers/", search for Safari, then delete all files and folders appear in the found results.

Update macOS to the latest version

Apple releases a new version of macOS every year. Each new macOS version fixes some bugs and improves the performance of Safari such as the Distraction Control feature in macOS Sequoia. So, if your Mac is not running the latest macOS, you can try to update Mac, and see if this Safari running slow on Mac problem still exists.

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Conclusion

In this article, we tell you the possible causes that may lead to the Safari running slow problem. Also, explain to you how to speed up Safari on Mac with nine feasible solutions. Hope you can solve your problem after reading this post!