[adagio]

For those using Safari and experiencing slow launching and frequent beachballs, an easy fix has been found.
No need to throw out prefs , Reset Safari or even as I had resorted to many times, re-install.

This is a cut and paste of the solution found by a member of another forum I belong to.

"After much experimenting... The culprit seems to be the favicons (the little icons on bookmarks). I emptied out the Icons folder in Library > Safari and eveything went fast again. (As I visit my bookmarks, each icon returns. But I've gotten rid of the 3.7 MB of favicons for other sites I've been to." I emptied out the Icons folder in Library > Safari > and everything went fast again.

I and a few others have tested this out and indeed it works fantastic. I hope it works for others here as well.

 

[NIMac]

Awesome fix!... It was ticking me off to find that the favicons I had uploaded to two sites I work on, never showed up in Safari. Now both are there! Thanks for this fix!

 

[Urban_Legend]

Hi,

I have a question on this topic. When I click on Library-I have two Safari folders. The first one is Safar-00 and each sub folder is called 01-02-03 etc...up to 15 under each subfolder are cache files. What type of cache files are these ones? I empty out my cache after each use of Safari.

The second Safari folder is down near the bottom of the Library that shows Safari-Icons-00 and then each subfolder holds 00-01-02-03-04 etc up to 15. Now these are empty...each of the subfolders. Are these folders the ones I'm supposed to TRASH? and what about the above folders?

 

[jo42]

Trash all of the numbered folders in the ~/Library/Safari/Icons folder. Safari caches favicons here and doesn't allow you to clear them out in any way through the UI.

One trick I picked up was this:

1) Open up a Terminal window.
2) cd ~/Library/Safari/Icons
3) rm -fr ??
4) cd ..
5) chmod u-w Icons

This will stop Safari from every caching favicons.

 

[Urban_Legend]

Thank you thank you thank you jo42

Wow I had over 300 items in those folders as the Trash Can emptied out

That's so cool....so ummm like anything else we can trash that is useless space?

 

[The Doug]

You can also get rid of the unwanted icons using Cocktail:

>System >Cache ; check the Internet Cache and Include Safari Bookmark buttons

Click Delete and they're gone...

 

[adagio]

No need to go into the terminal and no need for third party fixes. This is something even newbies can apply.

Do a Get Info on the Icons Folder within the Safari Folder. Set the permissions to No Access.

 

[VertiGoGo]

Thanks for the great tip! I was on the verge of going back to IE due to the slow launch speed of Safari.

It was driving me nuts...especially since I am on a G4 800.

 

[adagio]

I sympathize with your frustration. I have a G4/400.

I sent a bug report and hopefully this is something that Apple can address. I've now gone back to loving Safari since I've fixed the problem.