1. Reset Safari
Safari downloads and stores frequently accessed information on your local computer as your browse the internet. The prevailing rationale behind this is that browsers can retrieve web elements faster from your local computer than they can from across the internet.
So… Safari blithely tells itself:
Hey, I’ll cache passwords, cookies and form autofills to make the world happy
And this is fine until an inordinate amount of stuff like saved website data, location warnings, thumbnail images and history starts to accrue on your computer. Ineluctably, these bits and pieces of data stack up and will burden your browser.
To flush your settings and start anew, make sure the Safari application is in the foreground of your screen, then click Safari in the upper left corner of the menu bar and choose Reset Safari…
Safari warns you that you’re about to nuke your settings. Read it and leave everything checked. To get the maximum performance increase, I recommend leaving everything checked and clickingReset.
2. Disable Extensions
Extensions are like mini-programs that alter the behavior of the browser. Usually they provide enhancements such as by blocking ads or revealing your displaying unread gmail messages but sometimes they’ll clog the browser and will need your attention.
Press Command + , (comma) choose the Extensions tab and then select the plugin you wish todisable or uninstall from the left pane.
3. Empty Cache
This doesn’t always do the trick, but sometimes emptying the cache really boosts browser performance. The cache can become corrupt or too large. When that happens, it can take longer to search the cache than it does to find the same content on the internet.
To clear the cache press Command + , (comma) to open the Safari Preferences. Next, pick the last tab called Advanced and put a check mark in the little box on the bottom that says Show develop menu in menu bar.
Astute geeks will notice a new menu option called Develop between Bookmarks and Window. Go to Develop and then click Empty Caches to dump your cache.
You might not get any warnings after you do this so it might feel like nothing happened. But give it a quick test by browsing a few web pages to see if they load faster.
4. Delete your Preferences File
All the preferences for your applications are stored in a preferences folder usually as files with a.plist extension (short for Property List). Sometimes for reasons only known to Steven Hawking, these files get damaged and need to be rebuilt.
If you’re noticing a lot of page timeouts you should zap this file to get your Safari browser back to its happy place.
First close Safari (Command + q) then open the Finder (Command + n) and hold down the Optionkey while clicking Go in the menu bar to reveal the Library option.
Now in the search bar in the upper right corner of the window, type:
com.apple.Safari.plist
If you don’t see any results, make sure you have Preferences selected and not This Mac.
Keep in mind after you delete the preference file any saved preferences such as, for example, your default home page, will get irrevocably expunged. So make sure you really want to do this. Everything else will be fine but your browser preferences will get go away.
5. Delete Favicons
Website icons shown in your favorites are known as favicons. These are the little bookmark logos that decorate the left side of your tabs.
These little guys are benign in seclusion; however, if enough of them band together they can collectively slow your browsing experience. Everytime you load your favorite page Safari has to find the icon and display it. Yes, I know favicons are small. Most are only 16×16 pixels or 32×32 pixels; however, if you’ve had your computer for a long time or used it a lot then the aggregate size of these icons can start to goober things up.
It never hurts to flush your favicons to wake Safari up and give it a fresh kick in the pants.
To get started open the Finder and press Command + Shift + g to open the Go to the folderwindow.
Now depending on how old your Safari version is you should type one of two commands:
Newer users should use this command
~/Library/Safari
While old schoolers should use the second one here:
~/Library/Safari/Icons
By the way, that little tilde character that starts the command is just a shortcut for your user account name.
Now in the Finder, select the file called WebpageIcons.db and press Command + i to view the file size. If this file is larger than 2MBs then you should delete it; anything less than that might not yield any substantive improvements
The Bottom Line
When Safari takes as long as a three-toed sloth to open webpages it’s time to break out a few tricks to make it fast again. Resetting Safari, disabling extensions, emptying the cache, deleting your preferences file and purging favicons will undoubtedly result in a significant speed improvement.
If you really want to find out why specific web pages are super slow and have a knack for web development, trying adding Yahoo’s ySlow extension to Safari. This little extension analyses web pages and displays statistics showing you web components and reasons why they could be taking so long to load. It’s mainly geared for web developers; however, laypeople can benefit too.
