Speed Up Safari

Here are few simple tips to increase Safari performance.

Disable Add-ons

Add-ons, such as PithHelmet or Saft, whilst extremely useful, can be the source of performance or stability issues. Fortunately, most utilities like these have an option to disable their functionality to allow you to troubleshoot. You could also choose to remove them from your computer altogether. To do this, follow the instructions on Apple’s Safari add-ons technote.

Adjust the “Render Before Display” Timer

Safari uses a technique to decrease loading times by pausing for 1 second before displaying content so far received. When information is first downloaded from a website, Safari uses this time to commit maximum resources to rendering the HTML code before displaying on screen. It is possible to adjust this timer to force Safari to display a page earlier. Note that this will actually increase load time as Safari is not able to render as quickly if it is also updating the display at the same time, but it can be considered as a perceived performance increase. To change the timer, follow these steps:

Quit Safari
Open a new Terminal window.
Type the following:

defaults write com.apple.Safari WebKitInitialTimedLayoutDelay 0.25

You can substitute 0.25 for any numerical value from 0 to 1 seconds (e.g 0.5 or 0.75.) 1 is the default.
Press enter to save.
Close the Terminal application and re-launch Safari.
Test for changes

Your mileage may vary, and if you find little difference you might wish to reset the timer to its default settings by performing the above steps again and entering 1 as the numerical value.

There are few more tips at Mac Rumors Guide which includes: Deleting Cache, Resting Safari, Removing Favicons and Preferences file.

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