Speed test results very surprising

[derekw]

I am surprised by the result of my speed test, comparing between:

1. Safari with "Adguard for Safari" on pause, i.e. nothing is blocked
2. Safari with "Adguard for Safari" active but all filters switched to OFF, i.e. nothing is blocked

I loaded 7 ad heavy web pages and emptied Safari cache between each test. I was expecting the two setups to load pages at the same or very similar speed. The tests show the 2nd setup is clearly slower. With the first setup, the pages loaded between 1.1 to 2.4 second (I use an M1 Mac on a 1gbps internet). With the second setup, "Adguard for Safari" active but all filters switched to OFF, all pages loaded slower by 1 to 4 seconds. Even with no filters running, merely having the Adguard for Safari engine engaged added 1 to 4 seconds of overhead work to load each page.

Is this expected behaviour or is something wrong? How can I speed things up?

macOS 12.6.5, Safari 16.4.1

 

[jslawler]

Using Speedometer 2.1 which was developed by Apple's WebKit dev team I tested Safari 16.5 with both conditions you set above, these were my results.

1. Safari with AdGuard for Safari paused: 132 ± 2.1
2. Safari with AdGuard for Safari all filters disabled: 133.3 ± 1.3

The difference between the two tests was marginal. I ran both these tests multiple times with the score varying ~1-2 points each time. On my system I can't confirm whether there is any meaningful impact from these two conditions being used on the browser's performance.

When loading a webpage, it is better to use a private window and watch the javascript console's network tab to determine which component of the webpage is running slower. There may be errors in the error log that could assist in determining why this may be the case.

 

[derekw]

Thanks for doing the Speedometer tests. I'll try to run this test myself and report back here.

Last week I tried running Safari mostly with Adguard for Safari on pause. It felt noticeably faster, not just loading pages but also scrolling a page up and down is smoother and more responsive. The downside is the ads are all loaded and are distracting and I had to deal with the pop up annoyances.