High Sierra 10.13.6 SLOW to close Safari 12.0.2 tab(s)

TidBITS Talk
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The OS seems to stop communication for some seconds when closing some Safari tabs: the clock in the menu bar freezes, sometimes for up to 15 seconds.

I habitually run my MacBook Pro [16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3] with multiple Safari windows plus more tabs open.

Is this something buggy (software/hardware)?
Is High Sierra being extra diligent in cleaning up background files?

Thanks,
Ron

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And you’ve checked your Mac for adware?

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hmm, that did not occur to me…

Is there a standard way to check for uninvited ‘adware’…?

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I personally know and support the following anti-malware developers, which are either free or have free trials that will take care of all known Mac malware (including adware) and are low impact.

Malwarebytes for Mac
DetectX
ClamXAV

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Great suggestion from Al; it sounds like to me you’re getting something akin to bitcoin miner malware, running background from your spare CPU.

You might also try an adblocker, such as uBlock ( search this forum for instructions on how to not get the useless ripoff of the same name) or 1Blocker X or even Adblock or Ghostery long enough to see if you’ve getting roughed around.

It would also be worth trying Safari under a fresh temp user account going to only trusted, dissimilar pages; if it’s happy there, you may just need to nuke your caches, and possibly history.

Repeat a fresh test in your environment to be sure before you nuke ( if you care).

If you don’t want to lose your current session(s), save them as tab sets and try starting with a single trusted page in your own user space.

Also, be sure to try turning off all your extensions and plugins temporarily.

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Addendum: if you’re loathe to nuke your cookies, you can temporarily drag both history and cookies out and reopen a known-problematic tab set for testing.

Finally, I assume you’ve tried just restarting the Mac? One might also try Safe boot and Safe User modes to make certain it’s not an app, utility, etc., in background.

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Thanks for your replies!
I downloaded ClamXav and ran it — no hits, nothing quarantined…;

I closed everything and shutdown (after 11 days of uptime); after rebooting the problem seems to have disappeared (a mystery).

Cheers,
Ron