I noticed that a tab I didn’t really need open displayed current memory usage of 468 MB in Task Manager, so I decided to close it.
However, when I clicked on the tab (i.e., in the tab bar), Brave displayed memory usage of only 236 MB.
What might explain this rather large discrepancy?
Thanks.
Mac OS 10.15.7 (Catalina)
Brave Beta Version 1.66.90 Chromium: 124.0.6367.82 (Official Build) beta (x86_64)
Ten days ago I reported a memory usage discrepancy between the tab bar display of memory usage and what the Mac’s Task Manager reported.
I can now add that I’ve been finding that suspended tabs are displaying very large memory usage numbers, many times the usage of active tabs.
This is the opposite of what would be expected.
Moreover, if I reload the suspended tab, the memory usage comes inline with the usage numbers normally displayed in most tabs.
Would appreciate some feedback on what is possibly going on here.
Clearly, it make no sense that suspended tabs would be using far more memory than active ones.
Thanks.
@mattches I flipped a coin for who to ping about this. You won.
Not sure why there have been no replies to this, but either Brave isn’t computing the correct memory usage for suspended tabs or something else is causing suspended tabs to report memory usage many times – as much as 8 to 10 times! – that of normal tabs.
What Brave has been reporting can’t be correct – a ‘sleeping’ tab can’t be using 8 or more times the memory that a normal tab is using – the question is what is actually causing the miscalculation?
Is there a way to turn off Brave’s built-in tab suspension? Maybe the fact that I use The Marvellous Suspender extension is confusing Brave’s memory usage calculations?
Thanks.
@mk7z,
Apologies for the late reply.
Can you share some exact numbers and/or screenshots of what you’re seeing? Additionally, to confirm, you’re using the built in memory saver feature in the browser, correct?
On my end (also on macOS), here is what I’m seeing — note that the examples used here are both Brave Help Center articles which should take up a roughly similar amount of resources, but not exactly the same:
Active tab is using ~ 63MB of data. The inactive tab states 33MB freed. When I click on the inactive tab, it now shows its consuming ~88MB of data.
Further, when I look in the browser task manager, suspended tabs don’t even appear in the list.
I am forced to acknowledge that I failed to note that the high numbers in suspended tabs were reporting kilobytes, not megabytes.
My head now hangs in shame.
That said, I don’t know why the same metric isn’t used for both ‘regular’ and ‘suspended’ tabs – e.g., why not 2.05 MB instead of 2,050 KB?
The inactive tab states 33MB freed.
I don’t see any display of how much memory was ‘freed’ in suspended tabs, just the ‘usage’. Maybe the former was added in a more recent release of Brave than the one I’m using (noted below)?
Further, when I look in the browser task manager, suspended tabs don’t even appear in the list.
I see them in Task Manager, but currently without any memory usage figures displayed.
you’re using the built in memory saver feature in the browser, correct?
Yes but I’ve just found where to turn it off (Performance) and will do that to see whether it makes any difference. It doesn’t seem ideal to have two different sources of tab suspension active.
Thanks for your reply (& sorry for the false alarm).
Mac OS 10.15.7 (Catalina)
Brave v. 1.67.90 Chromium: 125.0.6422.60 (Official Build) beta (x86_64)
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