Troubleshoot Safari Freezes & Crashing in Mac OS X
Some Mac users have discovered the Safari web browser has become significantly less stable after updating to some versions of Mac OS X system software including OS X El Capitan, OS X Yosemite, and MacOS Sierra. This can range from periodic crashes of Safari that never happened before, to Safari freezing up entirely, to Safari outright refusing to open as it crashes immediately upon launch.
Troubleshooting app crashes can be frustrating, but there are some tricks specific to Safari that may help to resolve instability with the Safari browser. If you’re experiencing Safari crashing or freezing on a regular basis under Mac OS X whether in Yosemite or newer and you’ve already reset Safari to no relief, follow each of the steps below. If all fails to resolve the problem, we’ll offer a reasonable workaround too.
1: Update to the Latest Versions of Software
Often simply updating to the newest version of Safari and OS X is enough to remedy random crashes, particularly if the cause is due to a known bug that has since been fixed. Many users fall behind on software updates, which makes this an easy first recommendation.
As usual, you should do a quick backup before updating system software.
- Go to Apple menu > App Store > Updates and install any version of MacOS X and/or Safari that are available
This alone can often fix a problem with Safari crashing of freezing out. For example, if you’re on Mac OS X 10.10, updating to 10.10.1 or later with Safari 8.0.2 may be sufficient to fix the freezing or crashing issues.
Some beta users have reported that Safari has become more stable under the latest beta versions, which typically are a few weeks behind a wider release. This further suggests that updating to the latest version when it is available is a good idea.
When you relaunch Safari, immediately clear the recent web data and try to visit the website(s) that were causing issues. Things just may be working fine now, though sometimes resetting Safari will do the trick too.
2: Ditch Safari Caches Manually
You can manually remove all caches pertaining to Safari by going into the User Library folder and making some targeted moves. We’re going to recommend doing this in Safe Mode because booting into OS X Safe Mode dumps some system caches as well.
- Reboot the Mac into safe mode by restarting and immediately holding down the “Shift” key
- From Finder, hit Command+Shift+G and enter the following path:
- Remove Safari caches manually by placing them into the Trash
- Restart the Mac again, this time normally
- Open Safari as usual
~/Library/Caches/com.apple.Safari/
If Safari works fine at this point, you shouldn’t need to do anything else. If problems persist, carry on with the next steps.
3: Disable Third Party Extensions & Plugins
Flash is notorious for causing problems, and many other video and animation plugins can be problematic as well. The Adobe Acrobat reader plugin has also been known to cause issues with Safari in Yosemite. Either disabling or removing these extensions and plugins can often remedy a problem specific to a plugin, like if Safari only crashes when a Flash video or Silverlight animation is loaded.
- Quit Safari (if it’s open and hasn’t crashed yet)
- From the Finder, hit Command+Shift+G and enter the following path:
- Create a new folder on the desktop called something like “Plugin Backups”, and drag suspect third party plugins into that folder – you’re placing these into an accessible folder so you can easily undo the change by moving the plugin back to the origin if necessary
- Relaunch Safari
/Library/Internet Plug-ins/
This is a bit more advanced, so you should have some familiarity with what third party plugins you installed yourself and what comes native. Focus exclusively on third party plugins, do not remove plugins if you aren’t sure what they are or if you have no idea what you’re doing.
Similarly, getting a new version of Java can also be helpful if the difficulties only occur with sites that make prodigious usage of Java.
4: Safari Still Crashing? Chrome or Firefox to the Rescue
If Safari is still experiencing persistent issues, your best bet may be to use Chrome or Firefox for the time being. Both are free and excellent web browsers, my personal preference is for Chrome but many users adore Firefox. Try out both and going with what you prefer:
Using another browser is obviously more of a workaround than a solution. This may be the only option left until another system update to OS X or a bug fix release for Safari is made available, which could remedy a specific problem you’re experiencing.
Have you experienced problems with Safari crashing in OS X 10.11, 10.11.5, 10.10, OS X 10.10.1, or OS X 10.10.2? Did you resolve the issue, and how? Let us know in the comments!
I am, I bet, much older than you. And my story, with the free Apple classes by the Columbus Ohio school system was my first computer contact. I am crying, for I too, miss Steve and his dedication to perfection FOR those of us who purchased his dream. His picture is in full color on my desktop MAC. Sometimes, quality only comes around once.
Your comments put you right up there with Steve. Real
people still care. Some others do not.
P.S. I’ve been looking at new computers ( my Mac os is 14 1/2 years old!!) Honestly , do not know what to do.
Sierra 10.12.1. Safari 10.0.1
Safari crashes the moment I open preferences. Seems Safari trying to connect with Apple payment service (!!?) as I see this in the stackdump and it can’t handle a no-go.
-[PrivacyPreferences _updateApplePayPreferenceVisibility] +30
+[FeatureAvailability isApplePayAvailable] + 38
+[PKPaymentAuthorizationViewController canMakePayments] + 18 (PassKit + 27840)
PKHasRemoteDevices + 60 (PassKitCore + 747565)
-[PKContinuityPaymentService hasRemoteDevices] + 315 (PassKitCore + 629271)
Came in here looking to see if I could get Safari working again, I been a Chrome and before that firefox user for 6 years. I just hate having software that doesn’t work.
Looks like it can stay stuffed.
Long live Google and all its wonderful apps.
OS X 10.11.4 – Safari 9.1 – Macbook Air i7 (2011). Safari hangs. A lot. I check my activity monitor and it’s because the Flash plugin has stopped responding. I kill the process and all is well. For a minute or two. Then the whole process has to be repeated.
The curious thing is I also have an iMac i7 (2011), same level of OS X and Safari and it never crashes.
I put up with this for months. I could go days w/o a hang, now it’s almost constant. Finally changed my default browser to Chrome. Are they even supporting Mozilla anymore? I have not liked to use FF for years.
Periodically, I go looking for a fix. Try any number of “this worked for me” fixes, that didn’t work for me. Maybe it can be figured out one day.
iMac, 20.5 late 2009
3.06, 8 GB 1067 MHz DDR3
ATI Radeon HD 4470 256 MB
Yosemite 10.10.5
I upgraded to Yosemite (from Snow Leopard) quite a while back. In the last couple of weeks or so, Safari has started freezing and no sequence of keys will unfreeze it. This happens too often to my wife. After I do a Restart, I can go to the same exact site; and it generally does not freeze again. I use Firefox most of the time, but my wife only uses Safari.
You may find OS X El Capitan to perform better than Yosemite, it usually does on most Macs. As long as you backup with Time Machine first, you can always reverse course if you decide to later. Always backup before system upgrades.
Chrome also performs quite well typically too.
Something to consider, anyway.
no one knows
none of this worked safari still crashes
Update OS X, it works. If you have junked up the Safari browser with weird plugins and cruddy extensions then you have mucked it up yourself so you need to remove all that crud and don’t install it again.
Otherwise use Google Chrome, the CHrome browser is reliable alternative. Do not install browser extensions, anywhere.
I just need to tell you how much you helped me with this article. THANKS. In fact, whether or not Safari continues to crash, which only happens occasionally (and i only did Steps 1 and 2), you’ve shown me how to free up over 9G of space on my hard drive. I’m so impressed!
On my Mac it says safari cannot run as it is being updated (or something like that) but it is saying that since 2 weeks, pls can someone tell me why of how I can fix it
Safari was running fine for me until I upgraded to 10.11
Same here. I’ve been having constant issues ever since the update.
RIDICULOUS! My business runs software on the web and it cannot be accessed with a 2000$ computer. Safari freezes, chrome freezes, firefox freezes and yes, opera freezes the software i need to run my business.
F YOU APPLE!
All, my safari crashed continuously after I upgraded to OS X Yosemite. Thought that was the cause. After lots of reading and trying different things, the solution for me was to remove Genieo, a malware
Hope it may help others to.
Hi I have yosemite and i had also the same problems with safari especially with Facebook. Tt didn’t run, always freezing. i have done all the steps but the problem was still happening.
when i uninstalled the AdBlock i noticed when i clicked on a link a window of Mackeeper opens, i searched and it was a malware. I followed the steps to scan. After restarting safari seems to run normally especially with Facebook.
hope that may help.
The Apple I used to love is ROTTEN!
Upgrading to Yosemite (mac mini) and OS-8 (iPad 2) has been the worst experience I’ve ever had since the launching of Windows Vista. ESPECIALLY with Safari. In both devices I cannot run multiple pages, and opening anything is a matter of luck. No wonder I just pulled out from the drawer again my very old Dell-PC with Windows 7, which is incredibly more stable than that Apple crap that has become close to useless! I just hate the dictatorial way Apple has to block users from downgrading. It costs you an arm and a leg for an equipment that you can’t even call yours.
I don’t think the issue is the OS. I bet the OS works perfect on a new Mac. I think the issue is Apple doing something with each update so you have to buy a new mac every 2-3 years.
OS X Yosemite is just a terrible software update, it runs poorly on everything. OS X El Capitan is much better, and so is OS X Mavericks. Use either of those, do not use OS X Yosemite, it’s a piece of garbage on any hardware. I do not recommend it to anyone.
Well, here is the miracle cure that worked for me. I was having trouble with Safari not launching, not opening dialogs, sluggish Finder, mail, system prefs — EVERYTHING was snail-paced. I tried resetting Safari, deleting files, repowering many times, alternate browsers(functional but also slow). Then I did GetInfo on Safari.app. In the permissions it showed 2 entries for everyone. One was set to read-only, the other to read-write. I had not seen 2 settings for everyone before, so I set the second one to read-only. Bingo – instantly everything was full speed again. I rebooted to be sure, and all is wonderful again. Good luck.
Weird indeed… in the info under Sharing & Permissions there are two entries for Everyone?! One was set to ‘custom’.
After changing the ‘custom’ to ‘Read only’ things started to get a bit more responsive again. No crash yet… :)
I had given up on Safari after the release of Yosemite. Slow performance, hangs, freezing, etc. Safari had become non-functional. I tried all of the remedies listed above, as well as others, but after brief period of nominal performance, Safari reverted to the unusable state described above.
With the release of OS X 10.10.3 and Safari 8.0.5, I decided to give it another whirl. To my amazement, Safari is now working like a charm. I have made it my default browser again, and will use it unless and until the old Safari problems return.
The only change I have made was to upgrade my MacBook Pro with an SSD drive.
Do you suppose Apple finally fixed it? And why did they have to pretend that there was nothing wrong for the last four months? It’s like dealing with North Korea!
Can Apple be held legally responsible for the effects of Yosemite?
If seems that everyone who updated to Yosemite, now has a problem with their computer. I can’t believe that Apple didn’t know of the effects this would have on older macbooks! With the salaries they are on, surely they must have tested this program before releasing?? I’m afraid Yosemite is a virus which damages your programs and Apple should provide compensation!!
Yosemite has damaged my computer and I am furious with Apple. Why was this program not tested before being released!? After many many years with Apple, I have finally decided to go back to a PC. Apple has messed up big time and I’m not going to be ripped off any more!
I think its funny how the Apple Keynote boasts its head off, about Safari, but that safari is almost deprecated on most modern multimedia websites, and is getting worse and worse. I call it ‘Netscape 2’
They even brag ‘more powerful’ which means ‘we switch off all plugins, flash, ajax, json and java, to give you a dead web page experience with loads of non functional aspects of the page. This is all in order to allow our weak piece of a browser to pretend its ‘more powerful’
They are so busy bragging their heads off about how good they are, that they don’t even realise that their OS is getting worse and worse, instead of better. Me, I’m still on iOS 8.1 and OSX Mavericks because of it. I tested Yosemite Beta and saw immediately how the messages and mail app and iCloud went ‘boom’ and stopped working, and when i saw they were going to take away my favourite slideshow movie maker (iPhoto) with the new ‘Photos App’ – well, that was it for me.
As for youtube and Safari.. all i can say is that safari is almost completely deprecated, and not worth using for Youtube or any other similar websites with Video or Flash, Json or AJAX based scripts.
The moment I installed Yosemite, Safari stopped working.
It freezes and will not open (pinwheel of death)
Force Quit is not an option, whether from the Safari icon in the dock or from the Apple menu bar (whole Mac is frozen)
No other programs are usable (whole Mac is frozen)
I have to power-button-shut the Mac down and reboot.
I use Chrome now mostly, and Opera a bit (I used to love Firefox but it uses over 1 GB of RAM now). I use “Choose Wisely) which allows me to select which browser to use for everyone out-of-browser link, but every now and then something will try to an OS system-initiated auto-open using Safari and I’m screwed.
Really angry with Apple about this one.
Bill,
I have the exact same problem, having to hard restart since nothing is usable once Safari locks up. I even took my mac to the Apple Store to no avail. They told me to clear the cache and plugins and it should work ok. This problem has been going on for some time. I think since 10.6. I’m running iMac 27, late 2009, with i7. I have a Macbook Pro early 2011; never happens on the Macbook.
My problem with safari in OS X 10.10.2 is when I navigate in Youtube: My macbook pro completely hangs. But when I navigate in others websites (not youtube) all is fine, responsive and never hangs.
3 days without navigate in youtube and all works fine, 1 day using youtube 1 time hangs all.
I gave up using Safari on several sites. When I getting login window and starting to type my username Safari shows the running rainbow wheel and freezing. The rainbow wheel disappears and the mouse pointer as well. Killing the Safari helps to get the mouse pointer back. I have tried cleaning up cache, history and all kind of solutions from different forums. Nothing helps. The only one solution what was working is install Firefox. Firefox just doing what it needs to be done; starting up, getting to my site after typing URL, giving me the proper window to be able to login. And all of it already for many weeks without cleaning up the cache, history, reboot etc.. I have no any idea why Safari has problems with it but I just gave up, good bye Safari, hello Firefox! ;)
I think after 10 years i will be going back to a pc problems with the iPhone 6 my iMac shotty customer service, i have had enough with apple. I knew this would happen when Steve Jobs died
i have same problem and finally i decide to reinstall Os after this my problem is solved
I suspect when the final history of the Mac (and Apple) is written, 10.6 Snow Leopard will be regarded as the “High Water Mark” of the Mac’s sweeping evolution.
I have been a loyal Mac user for DECADES, going all the way back to the 512k “fAT mAC” that I first booted up as a high school student. I have been more or less a fan ever since. I even held on through the last few painful iterations of OS 9, which essentially collapsed under its own weight. Enter (er, re-enter) Steve Jobs, Next OS, cum OSX, and all of that pain – we were led to believe – was history.
Now, it seems, history is repeating itself.
The last few iterations of Mac OSX – 10.7 through 10.10, have all in various ways offered headaches that (IMHO) more than offset the marginal benefits of any improvements they provided. The iPad was (and is) an incredible product. But in their efforts to turn our Macs into an extension, and in some ways a clone, of our iPads, Cook and Co. are destroying the Mac and the future of the Mac ecosystem.
My G4 Powerbook would run for months – nay, years! – on 10.4 without need for a reboot. Just put it to sleep, and it would wait patiently until you are ready to work again. The system was solid as a rock and bulletproof. And it would cold boot – if you wanted to – in less time than it took you to take a sip of coffee.
10.5 was the first sign that Apple could mess up OS-X if it set its mind to, but happily 10.6 / Snow Leopard provided a return to the streamlined code and architecture that OSX Macs, prior to 10.5, were becoming famous for.
I hear my detractors telling me that – well Yosemite can do all these things like dial your iPhone and take calls!!! Am I the only one that remembers 10.4 offered BT connectivity to just about any bt-enabled cell phone and it would dial your calls for you also, until Apple decided to strip that function out of the OS?
When Apple was running “Im a mac and I’m a PC” and they told you just to plug it in and it “worked”, did you see whole forums like this one devoted to error trapping in Safari and what caches to delete in order to be able to use the Internet?
Against my better judgment I recently upgraded to Yosemite from 10.9. It has gone from bad to worse. My most modern MacbookPro, which is about a year old, is current and crashes at least once a day. Sometimes 4-5 times a day. Meanwhile, my 2009 Macbook Pro, which I intentionally never updated past 10.6, runs for weeks at a time, like a tank, just like my old G4 Powerbook (which is still running, by the way!).
And the even sadder truth is it is not just OSX – look at the recent evisceration of Pages and Numbers. Fairly great – but not miraculous – software that has now – in the new iterations – been rendered nearly worthless and (again, IMHO) completely unusable for the professional user. And what about what Apple has just done to it’s loyal Aperture use base? Don’t even get me started on that one….
The fact is Apple made fun of the “crap-lets” that used to come pre-installed on most Windoze PCs, but the App Store (another hallmark of iOS that was migrated over to the Mac) has for the Mac (again, IMHO) generally degraded the overall quality of software in the Mac ecosystem — to include OSX, what remains of Apple’s application software offerings, and even – sadly – the stuff from third party developers. It appears that, in the software marketplace, the end user may have benefited from certain barriers to entry for producers that the App store seems to have eroded, if not eliminated. An astonishingly high proportion of the software in the App store is just crap. Including, even more astonishingly, a lot of the stuff that has Apple’s name on it.
I miss Steve Jobs. I miss the Apple I remember circa 2004. I am starting to look around for the “next” solution that I will embrace. I would not buy a Mac today with Yosemite on it.
Wow, thanks for letting me rant. I feel better!
yes, right. Mostly cache/memory is the culprit to freeze and crash Safari. Moreover, I open many tabs simultaneously to see that Safari works well or not.
I wouldn’t currently recommend Firefox as an alternative. Since Yosemite Firefox, my default browser for many years, is constantly freezing and crashing. Erratic performance and slow speeds have pushed me towards Safari and I have (yet) to experience any issues with it.
I have been experiencing this issue for quite a while. For the most part I would say, it’s the flash content that is been causing the sluggishness and the spinning beach ball.
I have used the latest versions of OS X for the past 5 years without any issues on my late 2009 iMac. Yosemite changes all that. This release is a disgrace for Apple. My system fails and automatically reboots 2-4 times a day; takes more than a minute to reboot; locks up at times. I constantly send reports to Apple and have done most every suggested action to fix the problems. Nothing works.
Model Name: iMac
Model Identifier: iMac10,1
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 3.06 GHz
Number of Processors: 1
Total Number of Cores: 2
L2 Cache: 3 MB
Memory: 12 GB
Bus Speed: 1.07 GHz
Boot ROM Version: IM101.00CC.B00
SMC Version (system): 1.52f9
I have had no issues with safari except for a random “This page is not responding” which ends up it is working just fine. Mac Mini mid 2011
I had issues from upgrading to Yosemite – the first website visited would always take around 30 seconds to render, even the Google search page. It also did this in Firefox.
A lot of searching and trying the usual fixes never worked, but my bank had pushed security software on me last year, called Rapport. I was never happy about this, so in the end, I uninstalled it completely.
All my problems vanished, Safari works perfectly now.
And…I can still access my bank without Rapport, so why did I need it?
It seems this is used by a lot of banks, so worth checking.
Just check the title of the posts here. Lately, most are fixes and repairs more than how-tos and enhancements. Shows well how Apple has been releasing defective stuff lately.
Excellent, thank you! I wish that had been explained correctly on the other sites that suggested the Library. Which file would be my history preference file, the history.plist?
Amanda, there is an entire article that tells you exactly what to do to troubleshoot Safari freezes and crashes, including what cache files to remove and where to do it. You should start by reading that article, the link is here:
https://osxdaily.com/2015/01/18/troubleshoot-safari-freezes-crashes-mac-os-x/
This begs the question, how did you possibly end up here in the comments without reading the article about fixing Safari?
The above tutorial explains what cache files to remove, the history data can be removed from the Safari menu. This explains clearing history and other data from Safari.
https://osxdaily.com/2014/11/28/clear-recent-web-history-safari-mac-os-x/
Both should be helpful as you troubleshoot whatever issue you’re experiencing with Safari
What on earth do I do if I have no Safari folder in my library? At all. Nothing.
I’m guessing that’s strange? I certainly find it strange.
If you use Safari you have a Safari cache folder. Make sure you’re in the proper user ~/Library folder and not /Library, they are different.
After upgrading to Yosemite, Safari was the only “problem app” I had. It crashed, immediately, upon launching (i.e. went unresponsive), necessitating a force quit. Deleting the cache didn’t fix the problem.
After hours of troubleshooting, it turns out the issue, for me, was my browsing history. I removed the history preference file from the Safari folder in the user Library, relaunched Safari, and it was working fine. I was able to replicate the problem by removing the newly generated history files and restoring the history files from my back-up. I relaunched Safari, my old history was back, and it completely locked up, again. Getting rid of the “old” history files and returning the “new” ones back in place fixed things, again.
I didn’t want to nix my history, but it was the only way for me to turn Safari from a paperweight back into a web browser that was capable of…you know…web browsing.
Other than that unfortunate problem, Yosemite has worked great on my 2010 MacBook Pro.
Really? So the random reboots during usage, and having to wait through 2-3 reboots during a cold start don’t bother you? How about when you tell the system to Shut Down and it starts back up, that isn’t something you consider a problem?
It used to be that when I was done using Windows at work, it was a relief to get back to my Mac. Now ever since I installed Yosemite it’s been completely the opposite. I’m really concerned about where Apple is going these days – it would be nice if they would confirm that Yosemite has all these problems and outline a roadmap on how/when it will all be fixed.
I haven’t tried it, but good detective work. Why can’t they do that in Cupertino?
Here in rural urban Southern Central Africa we have NO problems with the new OS 10.10.1 (waiting for .2 we do) and know how to stop the Black Screen Boot that was a problem on my MacPro Retina 15′ machine of recent purchase and ALL the available upgrades. Our ‘broad band’ is not as fat and wide as it should be but hey man, we have all the time in the tropics to chill and just enjoy this magic AMERICAN YOSEMITE OS … well until the next crazy OS10 is conceived and ‘C’ sectioned under much pressure from all of us ‘wanna up grade to fixing som’ting whats not busted’ mass gathering thingies
…:-)
I’m glad things are going well in Africa. Visiting Africa is on my bucket list. You make an important point. Maybe we do expect too much. But that’s how we work in the the Apple culture. Steve Jobs (whom I miss as a human being as much a the head of apple) said “we will not put out crap the way other companies do.” I had my first run-in with the Safari issue yesterday. I re-installed the OS (no, it doesn’t erase your data), and felt extremely let down. I was going to a beta tester for El Capitan, but after this debacle, thank you, but no. I pay more for Apple because I expect more of Apple. If anybody thinks this is a problem, I have one word to say. Microsoft. Version 8 will make you laugh if you’re not crying. Apple will go to hell if we don’t keep our expectations high.
I’ll continue to use Mavericks as well until 10.10.03 emerges. I’ve heard nothing but ‘bad news’ from folks who have updated to Yosemite. For the novice user, especially having to jump through so many hoops to enjoy an average experience on the internet, it seems the logical choice.
Yes, I get crashes, but not too many. I am now on Beta 10.10.2. My ugly issue is Safari, preferences, passwords I cannot delete any line in the password file. This started when I went from Maverick to Yosemite, no help yet, and the Apple store Genius bar said it is software specific. I reported it a few ways, but no help from anyone yet.
I agree, Maverick worked like a charm, did what it said, and how this hassle with Yosemite. I have about 10 things that do not work correctly all attributed to Yosemite. I move from Microsoft to Apple because of things like this, and now I am in the same sinking ship. I hope Apple bails us out SOON. Bill
I am still running Mountain Lion because I would wait a month or so after a new OS X release and would go to the APP store and read the reviews. A lot of them were bad, negative with several different problems so I would stay with what works. I have my iMac for a little over 3 years now and I usually buy a new iMac every 5 years. When i buy my next iMac, I will then be using the operating system that is most recent then. It is a shame that some people are afraid to update because of all the bugs and problems they read about. Apple should be made aware of this and see what this does to how they feel Apple is being run. I Hate to say this but Steve Jobs made Apple better and it is not the same since he passed away. At only 56, Jobs should have lived for another 20 to 30 years.
You should be able to upgrade to mavericks without any serious issues. Don’t go to yosemite yet though.
Good advice. Maverick, from what I read, seems to be fairly stable.
Just listening to all the pain makes me happy with Mavericks.
Actually Mountain Lion worked even better except for not having the multiple display and built in calibration which is a help.
Yes! It does appear Apple has worms in it now, the bite on the side must be oxidizing it rapidly.
My Safari refused my FB page yesterday until a complete reset, including removing Web Content.
The new Firefox works great but not as fast as Chrome.
For the Sea conscious go for Chrome.
For the discreet user, Firefox is a good alternative, but what about your key chain?
I use 16GB Ram BTW.
Yes, but mavericks had it’s problems too that took a few months to work out if you will recall. I know I do, lol. Yeah, mountain lion worked better from the start. Yet again illustrating what most of us are saying here, which is apple is getting sloppier as time goes on. Or as I say, the longer tim cook is CEO, the worse things get.
As far as keychain, the problem with it is that apple doesn’t allow you to export password info. On purpose of course, that way you won’t use anything else. As far as web browsers, I’ve been online since 1993. I started out with windows until about 6 years ago when I got sick of that mess and changed to apple.
One thing that has been consistent for those 22 years is that web browsers on windows and mac are ALWAYS give and take. One will do certain things that others won’t and vice versa. There has never been and most likely never will be the one perfect browser.
There are certain sites that I can’t even run a video from their site on safari or firefox with all extensions disabled. Then it will play in chrome though. So often I use all 3 when I wish it could be just one.
I have had absolutely zero issues with Safari since upgrading to Yosemite. I have a few extensions installed along with Flash. I’m also running Java 8 downloaded from Oracle. My only issue with Yosemite has been on my MacBook Pro. There seems to be a bug with discoveryd that causes a problem with DNS after waking from sleep. This problem has persisted from 10.10 to 10.10.2. As of the latest 10.10.2 beta, I have not had this problem. Hopefully, this means that this bug has finally been squashed.
Ok, so you bring me to speak about the third out of many bugs that I have experienced. When yosemite wakes from sleep for me, it usually takes about 3 minutes before I can get control of my mouse and keyboard again. It seems to only happen when it sleeps for 5 or more hours.
Are they wireless? I don’t ever put my Mac mini to sleep, but after a reboot, I often have to click the button on my trackpad and hit some keys on the keyboard to get them to wake up. I can honestly say that I’ve never had a problem with any OS X upgrade that was really severe. They’ve all been easily resolved. It’s this discoveryd bug that I can’t fix, and it’s very annoying. It seems to pop up only when I really need my laptop the most. To make sure that I can get email after waking my MacBook Pro, I edited the hosts file in the etc directory to have the IPs of the email servers that I connect to. If DNS is not working, I will still be able to send and receive email.
Yes it is wireless. It SHOULD not make a difference though. Here again, we are trying to figure out how to fix bugs that apple shouldn’t have put out to start out with.
The “Reset” option linked above says there is a reset option available when Safari is clicked, but that has evidently gone away. Where can Safari be reset? Thank You.
“Go to Apple menu > App Store > Updates and install any version of OS X and/or Safari that are available”
I suggest instead:
Go to System Preferences>App Store>Check Now
…if you don’t have automatic updates on. Of course, this is where you can set your Update preferences the way you want, if you haven’t already done so.
What’s stupid about this is that Apple assumes everyone uses automatic updates so they took the “Software Updates” shortcut out of the Apple Menu, so, no matter which way, it takes more than one step to get there.
Also, I am on the public beta and I have to say Safari is slightly better, but will bog up and have same issues. Sometimes, closing and reopening Safari, it clears up on it’s own without resetting. At first Safari 8 is faster than Safari was with Mavericks, and it can return to being fast, but, it does not seem all that stable.
I think there are two factors to the real issues with Safari.
1) Memory…how things are being handled, memory allocation with the OS. I haven’t tried it, but, maybe turning off “Preload Top-Hit in the Background” would help, but, I doubt it because of 2):
2) With Yosemite Apple changed the way it accesses the internet. It’s technical and I don’t know if I can get my head around it, but, there’s an article that describes “as of OS X 10.10, mDNSResponder has been replaced by discoveryd” here: http://arstechnica.com/apple/2015/01/why-dns-in-os-x-10-10-is-broken-and-what-you-can-do-to-fix-it/
For these reasons alone, I suggest, if you have not yet updated to Yosemite OS X 10.10, wait for 10.10.3. I used to wait for 10.x.3 on all previous releases, except Mavericks, because it will typically be more stable by then.
Lol. Yeah…… That brings me to speak of yet ANOTHER yosemite bug. I have mine set for automatic updates, but it doesn’t work. I still have to go in and do it manually.
As I type this, I am looking at my appstore app at the bottom with the same red 1 for the past 5 days. Meaning there is an update that isn’t installing itself. Waiting for me to do it. I am VERY computer knowledgeable and I am definitely not doing anything wrong.
I see a lot of supposed “fixes” on this thread. Most of which don’t work according to you guys. How about a new idea? Like apple getting it right for a change. Like the good ole days. Anyone remember those? Like when Steve Jobs was alive.
This makes me wonder, is the problem Safari? Or is the problem OS X Yosemite? Or is the problem both? Because Apple software is sure sloppy lately.
iOS 7, iOS 8, OS X Yosemite… what a mess. Can’t believe this is the richest company on earth and the software quality is this bad. Remember when things “just worked”? Can we get that again?
Or is it third party software?
Who knows which it is. Probably both. At any rate, yes they are getting VERY sloppy. I have been reminding people lately that the apple pipeline was set up to run pretty much on auto pilot for 3-5 years after Steve Jobs death.
That is to say, he already had things laid out and products designed for the next few years after he died. In other words, tim cook has had to do nothing more than follow through on Steven’s instructions.
Oh… about now, those few years are up. So now we get to REALLY see if tim cook is a good ceo. So far, EPIC fail! I had hope in him, but I’ve almost totally lost faith at this point.
I don’t care about his sexuality one way or another, but I think maybe he needs to turn over the CEO reigns to John Ivy and go do his gay pride parades, and push gay legislation. That’s where his focus seems to be lately. It’s damn sure not on apple!
Now they are talking about coming out with a stylus perhaps. I know that one certainly isn’t steve’s design. I’ll bet he’s cursing tim from his grave at this point.
Funny, but the only people who have to say “I don’t care about his sexuality, but” are people who then go on to say something bigoted. If you were hoping to slide by with the upfront disclaimer, you failed. Big Time.
It’s OS X Yosemite, it crashes and it’s just plain awful.
The new design direction that Apple took is terrible too with these tiny tiny font sizes. Has anyone found a way to increase the size 6 font in the Safari URL bar? Or has anyone found a way to make the light grey size 10 font in the title bar to be BLACK and size 14? Good lord Apple, who do you think uses your software? Can anyone out there read size 6-10 fonts?? Please give us an ability to adjust all fonts like there is in iOS, Bold and Size, this thing gives me a headache to use.
Yes, no doubt yosemite itself is a major problem. But so is safari. It has it’s own problems separate from yosemite.
Yosemite has turned out to be very unstable. Its a beta quality OS. While this doesn’t mean every problem you run across in Safari is due to Yosemite, I can tell you that I never use Safari (I dislike it) but I run into all kinds of problems in other browsers since “upgrading” to Yosemite.
After checking for updates, the first and most effective troubleshooting step is to create a new user account and test Sarai in that.
If it works in a fresh account, you will know that it is something specific to your normal account. If not, then it is a bigger problem.
Glad I’m not the only one with Safari issues. It sometimes runs ok other times I get the ‘pinwheel of death’ when loading a website and I have to do a force quit. When going into the first site after starting Safari I usually have to refresh the page before it’ll load properly. Never had any issues in Mavericks. Just hope they fix it ASAP
If you have the 1Password5 extension installed in Safari, remove it.
It causes Safari 8.0⁄8.02 to crash and baulk.
I’ve had NOTHING but problems out of safari since updating to yosemite. Everything from netflix to youtube acts up. Along with just typical web surfing. It’s been on MAJOR pain. I have been considering the past couple of weeks moving back to firefox. JUST when I had started thinking safari had advanced enough to make it my browser. Which I did about a year ago.
Sidenote: Has anyone noticed the ungodly amount of ram that safari takes? About 5 gigs with just 5 open tabs on my imac. This is pathetic. Come on apple, start fixing stuff before you become the next microsoft.
Well, I do notice the ungodly amt of ram safari took up. but it normally occurs when I have too many facebook tabs opened. it must be something to do with the contents.
Nope. I rarely go on facebook and it is the same regardless. I can clean the cache, etc. Still no change. It’s an INCREDIBLE memory hog.
Yes facebook uses a lot of Json and AJAX. But thats the fault of Safari for not de-deprecating itself. It is not the job of the modern web and its development into the future, to slow down for Safari. it is up to Safari developers, to keep up with the race. Which they are not doing, and it will become a deprecated browser, most certainly.
Been using OSX in beta and continue to. Had a few issues in beta but no issues since it was officially released. Not sure what programs people are running. My guess it’s more likely third party apps not keeping up with updates. OSX has worked as good as any of the other OS Apple has released.
I run OS X 10.10.2 on my Mac and honestly I can’t tell the difference between it and the very first release of Yosemite. Safari freezes up on busy websites frequently but then resumes normal activity after about 10-15 second pauses. I think it’s a memory issue, and I have noticed that OS X Yosemite overall uses a lot more RAM than prior versions of OS X, so there is a lot of virtual memory usage. 8GB of RAM should probably be the lower limit.
Initially Chrome crashed a lot too but the new version seems to fix that, so update Chrome or download the latest version. At least that’s easy to fix.
All in all, OS X Yosemite remains a frustrating piece of software, haven’t experienced something like this on a Mac in many many years, perhaps since System 9. I wonder if it runs any better on brand new Retina iMac? Hard to want to spend $2999 when the experience is this sour on a barely 1.5 year old Mac, though.
I should mention I also tried out these terminal commands which were recommended on another site:
defaults write com.apple.Safari ShowFavoritesUnderSmartSearchField 0
defaults write com.apple.Safari NewWindowBehavior 1
defaults write com.apple.Safari NewTabBehavior 1
They did nothing for me to end the Safari stalling on page load thing, but there could be some success with others.
https://georgegarside.com/blog/how-to-fix-safari-8-crash-since-yosemite-dp4/
The only website I’ve had consistent trouble with is Comedy Central’s Daily Show. I can watch the videos on Firefox, but not Safari.
Otherwise, Safari seems to be working (barring the occasional beach ball).
Yep Yosemightwork reminds me of DOS ,sometimes it works usually it doesn’t .
It’s even brought Firefox down to Safari standards.
Sad end to my customer relationship with Apple after 20 years.
I upgraded to Yosemite on my Early 2011 15″ MBP and it now crashes every two days or so; NEVER HAD A SINGLE CRASH EVER before the Yosemite upgrade. My brand new Early 1015 13″ MBP also crashes randomly. Aside from all the apple apps that came with the new MBP, the only common 3rd party software on both machines is Parallels 10. I believe that I will try to go to Firefox for awhile and see if that solves the issue.
I’m with you G. Been using OS X since 2001, never had it crash before Yosemite but now it happens about once a week on my 2008 MacPro! Not to mention a bunch of other weirdness. IMO, Yosemite is not stable and should still be considered BETA.
Interestingly enough, I am going crazy with that problem too, and was blaming the hardware. Has anyone tried to do a clean reinstall of yosemite?
My machine is a beast iMac core i7 32gig ram and i am still having problems with slight random pauses especially while using safari.
I would use an alternative browser but on the whole think Safari works best with the mac.
This also happens to me on safari since the update, however safari simply pauses for say 2-5 seconds max.
However this is still enough to drive me mad, Before the update my iMac was buttery smooth but its not quite to that standard now even though the machine is very well specced.