Three-fingered swiping gesture causes web page(s) RAM to increase

Jerbear

So, on Mac, using the three-fingered swiping gesture allows you to switch from desktop to desktop, that's a known fact. I personally use Orion in fullscreen and when I'm swiping from one desktop to Orion (e.g., full screen Music or just main desktop to fullscreen Orion) I've found the tab I'm on in Orion increases its RAM intake. Using Stats or Activity Monitor, I can see that each tab takes its own space on RAM (which is done by Safari and is pretty cool) so when I'm on Low Power Mode (which I'm on practically all the time because of the auto tab suspension) or when I suspend a tab I can see real time the effect that has on the tab and how much RAM it takes up. But with the desktop switching (three-fingered swipe gesture) I see that one tab (when I'm on one tab consistently like ChatGPT or when I'm ~~pirating~~ downloading music from Spotify) or a couple tabs (haven't actually seen this in practice) start to increase in RAM usage.

So to recreate, I guess you could try switching from Music on a Desktop, wait for 30 seconds, then switch back to Orion in fullscreen on one tab and repeat like 10 times and see the RAM increase. I think the tab actually has to hold a webpage, so maybe like a favorite website or something else (NOT YouTube, because YouTube notoriously uses soo much RAM it's not even funny (I don't think that's Orion's fault tho, just YouTube)). I have iCloud Passwords as a Google Extension and Bonjourr as a Google Extension asw.

IDK if it happens in Safari...

I want to be able to swipe to and from full-screen Orion and other desktops without tabs taking more and more RAM once I switch back to Orion, cuz I only have 8GB of RAM so it's a commodity atp lol. But yea, love Orion, switched from Arc cuz of the tab suspension and lower RAM and better battery life for me 10/10 experience.

Orion Version 0.99.134-beta (WebKit 622.1.9.19.2), Build date: June 10, 2025, macOS Sequoia 15.5 build 24F74)

Sequoia (15)

Jerbear

And yes that entire tree of tabs is suspended, the tab with around 141 MB of RAM in the first pic is just the largest suspended tab which could be Discord or Medium, one of the two. And in the second picture the fresh webpage could also be the 139 MB one, again not a clear-cut method of determining which tabs are which, I just know that 'Orion Web Content' is a tab/webpage.

Dustin

I'm going to see if I can recreate this on my machine and record a video of the RAM usage to add to this post.

Edit: So I was able to observe this behaviour with Activity Monitor but I noticed that when swiping back to another workspace, the ram usage went back down to a normal level. For example, if I was sitting on a space away from Orion and I went over to Orion playing a YouTube video, that process would go from 500 to 700 MB RAM. When I swiped back away, it would go back down to 500.

Jerbear

Dustin

I'll see if this holds tru on my system, thanks for trying!!

Yeah, this seems very weird.

Okay upon further investigation with just "https://spotidownloader.com/en" I've found that it's RAM usage is literally all over the place. Lows of 120MB I saw with my own two eyes but couldn't grab a screenshot of because it would shoot up to 140-150MB, then 200MB, then hover around 190-170MB. As of typing it is 259MB, even though it is in the background and focus is on this text field in orionfeedback.org ...

Very confusing, sorry for using your time on something that seems to be much farther rooted and a one-off case...Though the website always verifies with a cloudfare ReCaptcha. Additionally reloading it at 259MB made it shoot up to 357MB --scratch that 370-something MB, it keeps changing. Ay caramba.

Welp, idk just spewing info and observations atp. Could just use a different website (though this one is stable and reliable, just RAM usage is crazy) I'll find one eventually. Thanks Dustin! for all your help and pfp looks fire!

(In chronological order from bottom (first screenshot) to top (last screenshot))

nrudnyk

Hey @Jerbear, would you be able to check how Safari behaves, so we can isolate whether it's WebKit related or no.
Moreower - it would be great if you could record your screen either nativelly or with other device, so we can clearly see how to reproduce this behaviour.

Thanks!