Is there a memory leak in the browser

lanshanguiyao

macOS 13.3
5.7.2921.53 (Stable channel) (arm64)

Pathduck

@lanshanguiyao Hello and Welcome to the Vivaldi Community

What makes you think there is a memory leak? What are the indicatiors of a memory leak?

lanshanguiyao

After a period of no activity on the lock screen at night, the memory went up from 1GB to over 3GB.

Now as I write my reply, it has gone from 3GB to 4GB+.

lanshanguiyao

Now it's gone up again, and I suspect it has something to do with the new version or the tabs being refreshed regularly.

lanshanguiyao

I turned off the tab timer refresh and the problem has not reappeared for now.

Pathduck

@lanshanguiyao Hi, it does look like a memory "leak". I remember reports that hibernating your OS (or locking it) will increase memory used over time.

I don't know what all those "Vivaldi Helper" processes are. They should be named tabs. Maybe it's a MacOS thing.

I guess for now a workaround is to restart the browser once in a while.

You could report a bug too. Please read:

carefully and report the bug to Vivaldi bugtracker

Make sure to detail everything about your system, the memory usage and what you do to recreate the problem.

OakdaleFTL

@lanshanguiyao I'm trying out a Catalina system (10.15.7) on an 8 Gig i5 machine...primarily to try the newest Vivaldi. (I still prefer El Capitan (10.11.6), which would constrain me to pre-Chromium 105 versions.) And I've been dismayed by this problem:

Screen Shot 2023-02-19 at 8.53.27 AM.png

Vivaldi's memory usage has gone as high as 8 Gigs — which is absurd! Specially when you consider restarting brings it down to less -much less- than a Gig.

Pathduck

@OakdaleFTL Are you also keeping the browser running a long time, and are you using hibernation/locking your system?

Can you see the increase specifically after coming back from hibernation? Or is it a steady increase over hours of use?

I don't know how the MacOS task manager shows processes. Is the "Vivaldi" process (PID 2633) using 5GB alone, or is it a summary of the "child" processes memory usage?

Check the Vivaldi task manager (Shift+Esc), to see more details:

OakdaleFTL

@Pathduck said in Is there a memory leak in the browser:

Is the "Vivaldi" process (PID 2633) using 5GB alone, or is it a summary of the "child" processes memory usage?

Sad to say, it is not a summary... and Vivaldi's task manager agrees with the "Browser" total usage shown in the Mac's Activity Monitor -> Memory.

Indeed, I often leave the browser running, and put the machine to sleep rather than shutting it down. But sometimes it's only a matter of minutes before the "Browser" process doubles and redoubles its usage.
It makes no sense to me...

Pathduck

@OakdaleFTL Well, a 5GB "Browser" process is definitely not nomal

For me currently, this process takes ~140MB. Then again, I don't hibernate my PC, and I'm on Windows so hard to reproduce

I suggest gathering some data. Try to note down the mem usage, then hibernate the machine, start it up again and note any increase in memory. Then repeat a few times until it's definite that it's the hibernation causing the memory increase.

Take some screenshots and name them for instance for each time you test. Then along with all your system info, you'' have enough to make a good bug report. Unfortunately, just going "Vivaldi is using too much memory" is not a good bug report

I suspect this is probably some upstream Chromium issue and has also probably been reported before, someone will have to check.

OakdaleFTL

@Pathduck I'm not trying to "make a bug report" — just commiserating with a fellow user... And fiddling with this and that, hoping for repeatable clues to appear.
When (and if) I'm more familiar with the OS version (this is my 2nd day with it), I'll know whether making a usable bug report is necessary.

@Pathduck said in Is there a memory leak in the browser:

I suspect this is probably some upstream Chromium issue and has also probably been reported before, someone will have to check.

Me too. I'd hoped to avoid a round of "comparison shopping" among the other Chromium browsers just to see how they fare...under the kind of heavy load I routinely put on Vivaldi.

But be assured: I'll keep Vivaldi as my default browser. I have no intention of getting huffy and going away mad!

UPDATE: Memory usage has settled down, since I closed some 200 tabs from my main window...

lanshanguiyao

Based on my experience using Vivaldi on macOS in the past six months, everything was fine and I never used Periodic Reload. Until the new version, I turned on Periodic Reload. Then the memory usage spiked from 1-2GB to 3-4GB in a very short time. When I turned off Periodic Reload, everything returned to normal. If you need logs, I can provide them.

OakdaleFTL

Further update: Still pretty heavy usage (many tabs/windows), but quite acceptable memory usage: Slightly above half a gig — four or five video tabs...

I've not found any connection to sleeping my machine (manually or automatically) as opposed to shutting it down.

Truemotion

@Pathduck said in Is there a memory leak in the browser:

@OakdaleFTL Are you also keeping the browser running a long time, and are you using hibernation/locking your system?

Can you see the increase specifically after coming back from hibernation? Or is it a steady increase over hours of use?

I don't know how the MacOS task manager shows processes. Is the "Vivaldi" process (PID 2633) using 5GB alone, or is it a summary of the "child" processes memory usage?

Check the Vivaldi task manager (Shift+Esc), to see more details:

That part with processes is acting strange on macos. Sometimes when you open Vivaldi it is grouped like it should with parent process. Sometimes it shows just many processes Vivaldi Helper. I usually restart the whole app if I see this kind of behavior, because you can't see how much the app is actually eating ram. This behavior is absolutely random, and it was always so only for Vivaldi. Maybe it is a chrome thingy, I don't know exactly. I don't use much other browsers.

OakdaleFTL

It seems to be a problem that is easily corrected by re-launching Vivaldi whenever its memory usage goes beyond a certain point... I've got into the habit of doing so at 1-to-1.5 Gigs.
Thankfully, I've not had problems with Vivaldi losing or forgetting its tabs and their history! And the process is fairly quick.

For me, the problem is now "Mostly Solved"...

mhowie

Came here to see if others were experiencing the memory leak. I experience it as well with a newish M1 Max Mac Studio w/ 32BG RAM running the latest build of Ventura. I, too, have to close and reopen every couple of days if Vivaldi is left running in the background and the system "Memory Pressure" gets into the yellow range. The primary culprit appears to be the process "Vivaldi Helper (GPU)".

Here's an example of Vivaldi's resource consumption after a couple of days:

muscov

I've noticed if I leave Vivaldi running overnight, I can't type in the address bar at full speed the next day. I'm not so concerned with the exact number of GB the browser is using, but I do want it to be snappy & responsive.

M1 Max, 64GB RAM, Sonoma 14.7
Vivaldi 6.9.3447.55