I've been experiencing them ranging between a coupl'a days apart and daily, but it's happened five times already since 5 AM this morning, and I wasn't even on line for about six of those hours. (Safari Version 5.1.2)

Anybody else?

(You can check in ~/Library/Logs/CrashReporter.)

Yep. In my case, it's almost always RAM-related.

I have two machines--a laptop that's seen better days and a new iMac. The laptop started with 4 GB of RAM, but recently has suffered a spate of failures--the screen backlight has failed, the Bluetooth has failed, the DVD drive has failed, and most recently, one of the RAM slots has failed. I still use it occasionally, and I notice that with only 2 GB of RAM, I see Safari Web Content crashing quite frequently.

On the other hand, the iMac has 12 GB of RAM, and I have yet to see a crash.

Safari Web Content appears to be unable to handle low-memory situations gracefully, and often goes titsup when it runs out of memory.

I'm also experiencing crashes.

I have only 2 MB of RAM, however I have never experienced any kind of Safari crash before this week. I wonder if there is something else happening.

I wonder if I just found the answer to my own query: "I wonder if there is something else happening."

I just noticed that running the 10.6.8 Update V1.1 installs an older version of Safari (V5.0.5). I did have 5.1.2 and my Safari crashes have been post the update.

I've now re-installed Safari 5.1.2 and will keep an eye on things. If my crashes go away, I'll let you know.

Prior to 5.1.2 I experienced Safari Web Content crashes less frequently than with 5.1.2, but the process was a major RAM hog.

(I guess you missed this thread, ryck.)

I believe I'm running the same laptop, an early 2009 MacBook, but with 4Gb RAM, and this is ridiculous.

You've posted your browsing habits, but mine are nothing like yours...very rarely more than 2 windows with a total of maybe 5 tabs open, and I quit Safari at least once or twice a day.

Actually, once you pointed it out, I do recall reading it but I guess I forgot. Perhaps my memory needs more work than my computer's. Time for some B12?

FYI, my Safari habits are not much different than yours (few tabs or windows open) with the biggest difference being that I do more than quit Safari a couple of times per day. At our place we log out between uses.

I find that you don't need to quit Safari to clear the Web Process RAM usage. You simply need to close the Safari windows and usually within a few minutes it'll take care of itself. I leave Safari on all the time operating in this manner without issues.

Running the 10.6.8 Update V1.1, which installed the older Safari (5.0.5), seems to have been the cause of my getting a couple of days with crashes. Installation of 5.1.2 has put me back where I've always been with Safari.

It's working fine, without incident.

I moved 4 replies that are unrelated to the topic of "Safari Web Content crashes" to a separate thread: Browser comparison

   Thanks!

Thanks for the insight, Kevin, but I prefer to quit Safari periodically, because quitting clears the tracking cookies & caches (that Safari "stores" in RAM) that can't be cleared by any other means of which I'm aware.

On top of that, I find quitting plus Safari > History > Reopen All Windows from Last Session to be preferable to manually closing and reopening a bunch of windows.

And, finally, since Safari Web Content's crashes appear to be totally unpredictable (After that run, I've only experienced one crash in the past three days.), how do you consistently manage to close and reopen your windows before they occur?

I usually use webkit nightlies, so when a crash occurs I report it, get it fixed and then go on. Although currently I'm using the 5.2 developer release which doesn't work with the latest nightlies but is still pretty stable. I don't normally have memory related crashes as far as I can tell. They've generally been code-based. I don't need to close and re-open a bunch of windows because I normally just have one open with tabs and try not to keep a bunch of tabs open if I'm not using them. Then when I'm finished, I just close the window. The Web Process quits when a window isn't open after a while leaving on the main Safari process around which doesn't use a lot of memory over time. I'm in and out of Safari all day long and just don't have that many issues.

If you're seeing a lot of crashes, I definitely recommend trying the latest nightly. While it can occassionaly introduce bugs, it's most of the time pretty stable and it's the only way to get crash fixes quicker.

A series of posts starting with Artie's reply to Kevin's post above (#20979) has been detached and made into a separate thread: Tracking cookies in Safari

You may find that your problems are addressed by the latest update to Safari, namely version 5.1.4, which just became available today.

Thanks. I d/l'ed it a coupl'a hours ago, and I'm waiting to see how it works out.

But since Apple's d/l page is headed up "Safari 5.1.2" despite the fact that it links to a 5.1.4 d/l, I'm not certain what issues the update addresses.

Yeah, I noticed that too.
Somebody at Apple isn't minding the store.

This is at least the third time (of which I'm aware that) Apple has screwed up in this manner or similarly in the last year, probably less.

This is the page i came across
^ skip that one.^

Here -->

edit/ and then i googled for: safari 5.1.4 snow leopard

and got: http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1070?viewlocale%3Den_US%26locale%3Den_US

^^^ weird huh?

Same "support.apple.com/kb/DL1070" document as yours,
but the "viewlocale%3Den_US%26locale%3Den_US" part
gets the right page (showing 5.1.4 for both Snowy and Lion).

Note: given that %3D is an equals sign (=), and %26 is an ampersand (&),
that google result could be rewritten (and possibly reduced) to become:

http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1070?viewlocale=en_US

[anyway, yeah... Apple webmasters messing around.]

Yeah, you might say that I'm experiencing a crash or two, and I'm finally thinking about taking your advise and d/l'ing the nightlies, but I'd like to know just what I'm getting myself into beforehand.

If one of them goes bad, am I able to revert, and as far as "[...] when a crash occurs I report it, get it fixed and then go on," how does that work, and do I need to/am I even able to get involved with it.

Edit: Thanks.

To revert, just click All available builds and select a previous one at: http://nightly.webkit.org/

You don't have to get involved with the bug reporting, but if you do you sign up here: https://bugs.webkit.org/

By revert, I meant to my starting point, although I've got absolutely no idea why I'd want to, but your reply sounds like I can only work backwards through the nightlies...acceptable, because the most recent stable nightly is likely to be better than what I started with.

Since I'm taking advantage of the service, I'll report any bugs I encounter...if I can detail them accurately.

I'm now running the latest nightly, and it hasn't crashed in the 30 minutes since I installed it...a good sign.

I'll keep you and everybody posted.

Thanks for your help.

Note that the nighties install in parallel so you can always run the regularly installed Safari version separately than the nightly instead of just reverting to a previous nightly.

Got it; thanks!

I wasn't quite following what was going on, restarted about a million times, and, so, reverted to Safari 5.1.5, after installing the nightly, and still didn't experience any crashes. Got me beat!

More to come.

I've been running the (real) nightlies for 10 days now, and although Safari Web Content still crashes occasionally, it's been pretty stable.

Thanks for the heads-up.

Hmmm... Hoping that it would be stable, I upgraded to Safari 5.1.7, but I'm experiencing crashes again. Back to Webkit.