Safari for iPad (and iPhone and iPod touch) will routinely auto-refresh web pages when the user leaves the browser then returns to it. This can prove undesirable, as it may mean losing your place on a page, attempting to reload a page when no network connection is present, or forced loading over a slow connection.
This is expected behavior, and it occurs because the iPad runs low on memory. When Safari for iPad can no longer store a page in its RAM cache, it instead stores only a preview of the page, then refreshes the page when the user attempts to access it again.
To reduce occurrence of the aut0-refresh, simply close unwanted pages, limiting the number of concurrent open windows to three or four. Although this won’t guarantee that the pages will remain accessible in Safari’s cache, it will increase the chances that any given page is accessible when you come back to the browser.
When you have a lot of unwanted pages opened on your Safari browser on your iPad, things can become slow and your browser may simply freeze or crash. The article below helps you with identifying the various issues that can slow down or crash  Safari on your iPad.
This also depends on the number of new tabs that you have opened on your Safari browser. Often times, many users keep opening up multiple web pages on Safari without going back and closing them.
Here is a list of Safari Tabs related tips and tricks that will help you deal with these issues and keep your Safari optimized.
Also note that you can use a utility such as Offline Pages to store web pages locally, ensuring that they won’t suffer auto-refresh in the absence of a network connection.
Obsessed with tech since the early arrival of A/UX on Apple, Sudz (SK) is responsible for the editorial direction of AppleToolBox. He is based out of Los Angeles, CA.
Sudz specializes in covering all things macOS, having reviewed dozens of OS X and macOS developments over the years.
In a former life, Sudz worked helping Fortune 100 companies with their technology and business transformation aspirations.
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It’s now August 2017 and there is still no fix to this B/S. The new CEO, post Steve Jobs, appearantly doesn’t take this seriously or just doesn’t have the knowledge base to fix this !! Moving on to an alternate Ipad product. Apple is sliding on performance.
Wow denpick, seems you are referring to storage space there. Ram on the iPad hasn’t quite got to 16gb yet. Maybe on the iPad 2020 or something 😉
Exactly right that this is unacceptable browser behavior and that the ram thing is a “made up” explanation. It’s easy to check ram (settings>general>usage). In my case 11.6GB (our of 16) available. It may well be a cache thing but not RAM. Either way, it’s not apples business to manage my RAM by thowing away data which is still current and displayble. This is bogus behavior, extrememly unacceptable in any business setting, and needs to be addressed. To not provide a way to stop it is even a worse position for Apple to take. To not fix it is worse than that. And worst of all is that previous OSs allowed it to be changed and got removed! If that’s not just Microsoft-think, I don’t know what is. Very sad to see our last friend join the dark side.
denpick it sounds that you have some strong opinions but you don’t understand the basics. RAM and storage space is not the same thing. While safari can use lots of improvements making incorrect assumptions is not doing you any good nor making sound any smarter…
They are spreading such explanation to force you to buy new iPad or iPhone as soon as they are in the market. It is not the matter of RAM. They turned that on intentionally and provided such lame explanation…
I am turning to Android, because I can’t use iPad any more with such behaviour.
I have been testing this with a new mobile application. The only browser that seems to have no problems is Mercury Web Browser Plus….
No, Atomic Browser does the exact same thing if you leave the app and then come back to it later. However, Atomic Browser is still a great web browser for all its other features.
Use Atomic browser, it doesn’t do that.
That’s crap… Such a poor user experience
Hogwash. I have a 64 GB iPad and only have two pages loaded and it will auto refresh. Safari is an utter disappointment and ruins the Internet experience on the iPad.
So there is no way to disable the auto refresh? Even on the iphone 3gs with the 4OS? The old OS let you disable it…
Thank you!
This was driving me crazy, and I had no clue that the constant refreshing of Safari could be due to a lack of sufficient ram. Duh!
After rebooting the iPad, and restricting the open web pages to 3 or less, I’m seeing NO page refreshing – good show!
Hopefully the next iPad version will come with 1 Gb ram – it’s gonna need it once the iPad OS supports multitasking (this fall).
From my iPad