Safari users are today reporting an odd issue causing Apple's web browser app to crash on both Macs and iOS devices. Safari Crashing for Both iOS and Mac Users, Fixes Identified [Update: Fixed. Unfortunately, Apple does not allow downgrading of Safari. The only official way to get back older versions is to perform a restore of your entire Mac from an older backup that contains Safari 9. Another but unofficial option is to try an extracting program like Pacifist and similar, extracting Safari 9 from an older Mac OS X.pkg file.
It’s inexplicably annoying to find your Safari browser on Mac running slow, freezing up, not working properly, or crashing. Luckily, there are a few things you can try to make it run smoothly, from optimizing the browser itself to using some straightforward third-party software.
Most Common Issues with Safari
Being the default browser on all Macs and one of the most popular browsers in the world, Safari is well-optimized for everything you might throw at it. That said, sometimes it might let you down by unexpectedly crashing or consuming all available memory. And if it does — worry not — just follow our easy guide to resolving Safari’s widely known problems.
Safari running slow
Depending on your machine, your might experience Safari performing slower from time to time. This could be rather normal or hint at a deeper problem. Here are the steps to find out.
1. Close all extra tabs
If you have a gazillion tabs open, it’s really no surprise that Safari starts to struggle. Some sites use more resources than others, and having a lot of open tabs can slow down Safari performance by as much as 90%. So if you open Activity Monitor or iStat Menus and then start closing tabs in Safari, you’ll see the CPU and memory resources devoted to Safari quickly decreasing.
Keep in mind you can use Safari’s own Reading List feature to save articles for later — that way you can close tabs without “losing your place.” Your Reading List items sync to Safari on every Mac, iPhone, and iPad linked to your iCloud account. Clipboard apps like Paste are great options too. Quickly copy all your links and put them in a safe spot, ready for you when you need them.
2. Clear caches, cookies, and website data
Your browser hangs onto cached files and cookies for every website you visit, but you don’t need to keep that forever, and clearing them out once in a while can help speed up a pokey browsing experience. In Safari, you can select Safari > Preferences > Privacy and click the Manage Website Data button. Then Remove All in the popup window to delete everything.
For easy regular cleaning, open Safari > Preferences > Advanced and check the box to “Show Develop menu in menu bar.” That enables the Develop menu, inside of which you’ll find an Empty Cache command with the Command-Option-E shortcut.
A cleaner like CleanMyMac X can do this too, but in a more convenient way. In the app, click Privacy in the sidebar, press Scan, and then select Safari. Click the Remove button, allowing CleanMyMac X to clear Safari’s cookies, browsing history, saved tabs from the last session, downloads history, autofill values, char data, and HTML5 local storage. All of this is completely safe to remove.
3. Disable search suggestions
A quick but reliable remedy for speeding up your Safari is turning off search suggestions. To do so, go to Safari > Preferences > Search and uncheck the box for “Include search engine suggestions.” Now your browser just got a little faster.
4. Check all extensions
Safari extensions are written by third-party software developers, not by Apple itself. So when Apple applies security patches and fixes bugs in Safari, it could cause an extension that used to work just fine to suddenly start acting up.
The best way to determine which extension is causing the problem is to turn them all off, and then turn them back on one by one. You can do this in Safari > Preferences > Extensions. Just uncheck the box by each extension you want to disable. While you’re here, check the box to “Automatically update extensions from the Safari Extensions Gallery,” so your extensions stay up to date.
4. Test other Safari plugins and add-ons
The extensions are a lot easier to find and manage than the other plugins and add-ons you might have in Safari. But those hidden plugins could cause problems too. So if checking your extensions didn’t make a difference, it’s worthwhile to check what the plugins are up to:
Go to Safari > Preferences.
Click on the Websites tab.
Select the plugins in the bottom left corner and disable them for specific websites.
You can also remove plugins altogether and see whether it fixes the problem:
Go to Finder.
Select Go > Go to Folder.
Enter /Library/Internet Plug-ins.
Move the active plugins you’ll find in this folder to trash.
If doing this fixes the problem, you can quit Safari, open the Trash, then right-click a plugin and choose Put Back. That will restore everything to the exact place it was before. Launch Safari again and, if there’s no issue, quit Safari and put back another plugin. Repeat this process until you’ve identified which plugin is causing the issue, and delete that one for good.
5. Disable DNS prefetching
With Safari 5.0.1 and later, Apple included a new feature called DNS prefetching. It’s a great addition, basically allowing to load the links on any given page before you click them. The downside is that prefetching can occasionally be the cause of “slow performance, partially-loaded pages, or webpage ‘cannot be found’ messages.”
So if you experience slow Safari performance, try to disable DNS prefetching altogether. To do that:
Open Terminal
Type defaults write com.apple.safari WebKitDNSPrefetchingEnabled -boolean false
Quit and relaunch Safari
Now DNS prefetching should no longer be active, which will give a boost to your browsing speed.
Alternatively, you can try to resolve the prefetching problem by changing your DNS network provider. For instance, instead of DNS settings provided by your ISP, you can switch to a public DNS server like Google DNS. To make a quick transition, open Network in the System Preferences, select your current network and click Advanced. Then, go to the DNS tab, hit the plus button in the bottom left corner, and add the new DNS server.
6. Update to the latest version of Safari
Some Safari problems are caused by plain bugs, and Apple regularly issues security patches to deal with them. So if Safari is acting strangely, first make sure you don’t have a bunch of updates waiting.
Launch the App Store on your Mac by clicking the Apple icon on the far left of your Mac’s menu bar and selecting App Store, and check the Updates tab.
Safari updates are rolled into updates for the operating system you’re running (e.g. macOS Mojave). If you’re not running the most recent version of macOS, you don’t necessarily have to upgrade, but be sure to grab any supplemental updates that are available for the macOS version you have now.
7. Inspect your network
From time to time, slow speed can be the result of your network performing poorly. Try restarting your router. If that didn’t help, check the state of your network using a solid WiFi analyzer, such as NetSpot or WiFi Explorer. Both are simple to use (just launch and hit Scan) and give you all the information you need to troubleshoot a poor connection. You can use them to find the perfect location for your router, detect a hardware issue, or gather all the necessary information to call your internet service provider.
Safari troubleshooting tools
Download Setapp and get a pack of apps for fix Safari issues. Best utilities in one pack, give it a try!
Safari not responding
Sometimes you can encounter a situation where Safari doesn’t seem to respond to your clicks and your mouse cursor turns into a never-ending loading circle. In most cases, it’s an easy fix, and there are a few things you can do.
1. Quit and relaunch Safari
Try pressing Cmd + Q to quit the app and open it back up. If Safari didn’t respond to that either, right-click on the Safari icon in your Dock and choose Force Quit or use a shortcut Cmd + Option + Esc. This works in nearly all frozen browser cases. For the minority of outliers, read on.
2. Fine-tune Safari preferences
Go to Safari > Preferences and navigate to the Security tab. Check “Enable JavaScript” and “Warn when visiting a fraudulent website,” since they regulate how pages in Safari are loaded and displayed. If you already have them turned on, try the opposite to see if it makes any difference.
3. Clear cache and manage extensions
With time, your browser might get so overloaded with extra scripts and website data that it ceases to respond. Check our guides above for keeping caches, extensions, and plugins tidy and go through each of them.
4. Reset applications
Although Apple has removed the Reset Safari option, you can still reach the performance of a brand-new browser if you clean it up the right way. While doing all of the above will bring your Safari to near-default state, if you are still experiencing issues, you might want to reset applications as well. CleanMyMac X helps you easily revert apps to their original state just in a few clicks: Open the app, click Uninstaller and pick the apps – you can either choose to reset an application or uninstall it completely.
Safari is crashing
When Safari crashes on you unexpectedly or at every launch, you should try a mix of our suggestions from above to resolve the situation. If Safari crashes some time after launch, try to browse with fewer tabs open. Using a system monitor like iStat Menus here will also tell you what’s consuming all the CPU on your computer.
You can also try using Safari incognito by going File > New Private Window, as it could be cookies or website data that are weighing you down.
Then, follow our guide to disable search suggestions to decrease memory usage, clean up extensions, plugins and website data, and reset applications completely if none of that seemed to work.
Other common Safari issues
While Safari being slow, unresponsive, or unstable are the top problems to worry about, there are some other less frequent issues might need to be fixed.
1. YouTube videos not working
Safari users worldwide have reported a rare bug of not being able to play YouTube videos in some cases. And it seems like there are a few different problems at play.
If you get a “Your browser does not currently recognize any of the video formats available” message, it’s likely that there is an issue between YouTube and one of your browser extensions. To fix this, clear all cache and cookies from your browser and check all your extensions too. Then enable JavaScript. If that didn’t work, update your Safari.
In case when YouTube isn’t working after the macOS upgrade in Safari specifically, but working in other browsers, try restarting Safari – clear cache and cookies, check extensions, remove plugins, and reset applications – before running videos on YouTube. Also, if you happen to be in the YouTube HTML5 trial, look for ways to opt out, as there are still some incompatibilities between HTML5 and Safari that might affect your experience.
In some rare cases, you might get the issue of YouTube showing a black or green screen with the sound working. To fix that, check your connection speed, clear cache and cookies, turn JavaScript on, and update your Adobe Flash Player to the latest version. Alternatively, get a YouTube downloader and player app like Elmedia Player and watch your video right from your Desktop.
When you are in the reverse situation, with video but no sound, check the sound settings first and then repeat the steps in the paragraph above.
Lastly, try optimizing your Mac with CleanMyMac X maintenance features, which are time-tested ways to get rid of bugs that might prevent you from running YouTube properly. Just launch CleanMyMac X and use Smart Scan or Maintenance utilities to check for any inconsistencies in your setup.
2. See or hide full website URLs
You might’ve noticed that all recent versions of Safari hide the full website address, displaying just the root of it. But showing the full URL is still an option. Just go Safari > Preferences > Advanced and check “Show full website address” and it will go back to normal.
3. Stop website push notifications
With the proliferation of web apps, came web-based push notifications that now seem to be present on every website you visit. If push notifications start to annoy you, there is a quick fix. Go to Safari > Preferences > Websites > Notifications and switch anything you don’t like to Deny to stop being notified.
More essential Safari troubleshooting tips
It’s rather normal for Safari to run slow on certain “heavy” websites that are loaded with flash or video ads. Make sure to close those pages when you finish reading the content. Avoiding excessive multitasking in any browser is a good way to keep things at top speed.
Regularly clean your browser’s cache to keep it operating lean by using maintenance utilities and optimization apps, which also help you ensure you haven’t picked up anything unwanted while browsing the web that could affect Safari’s performance.
Following all of the procedures outlined above should rid you of 99% of the problems that cause Safari to malfunction. You always have the option to perform these checks manually from time to time, or automate the whole process with powerful apps, all of which are available on the Setapp, along with 100 other best-in-class Mac apps for your daily tasks.
If you own a high performance car that can only drive in the slow lane, you might as well have bought a bicycle. The same rings true if your Mac and high speed internet connection is hobbled by poor performance from Safari. Your experience on the information superhighway is dependent on the reliability of your browser of choice.
If you find that Safari crashes or is slow, we’re going to show you how to eliminate these problems and get back in the fast lane.
Put the va va voom back in your web browsing today!
How to fix Safari crashing and other common browser problems
Surfing (the net) is great until you fall. When Safari starts crashing, it’s clear that something is broken. Let’s do something about those common Safari crashes.
Clear browser cache to speed up slow Safari
Temporary data or browser cache is designed to make your web experience a faster one but it can, under some circumstances, hamstring your browser speed to a glacial crawl.
Browser cache can become corrupted, and apart from privacy issues (more on that later) it can cause Safari to crash altogether. If you get a Safari crash, it’s important to take note of when and how it crashes. Does Safari crash on launch or does it crash when you visit a specific site?
If you have a problem with one particular site, this is easy to fix. All you need to do is remove the site history of that site from Safari.
Go to the Privacy section of Safari’s preferences
Click the Details button that appears under the 'Remove All Website Data' button
Find the site and remove it from the list
If you are experiencing problems on a variety of sites, then you should try to clear all Safari browser cache.
To manually clear Safari cache files:
Navigate to Preferences in Safari
Click the Advanced tab
Enable Show Develop menu
Click on Develop in menu bar
Select Empty caches
If you have any concerns about doing this safely, use CleanMyMac X System Junk module - a Mac cleaning utility that will reliably clear your Safari in just three clicks:
Open CleanMyMac
Select System Junk tab
Click Scan and click Clean
Easy peasy lemon squeezy.
CleanMyMac X is free to download and try before you buy.
Disable search suggestions in Safari to improve browsing speed
Search suggestions in Safari can be a great help to speed up the process of finding what we want. But a common crash related to this feature was found to be stopping the search and Safari in its tracks. The Safari search bar crash, as it is known, has been addressed for some in updates.
If you still believe the problem is affecting you, simply disabling Search Suggestions should do the trick:
Go to Safari > Preferences
Click on the Search tab
Under 'Search Engine Selection,' uncheck the 'Include search engine suggestions' box
Close Preferences
When Safari stops responding - force shutdown and restart
When Safari is operating optimally, you’ll hardly ever have to watch Indiana Jones and the Endlessly Rotating Multicolor Wheel of Doom.
However, when Safari is not responding, sometimes you just need to let it take a moment. It could be that a web page is loading a heavy script or your Mac’s resources are currently focused on another task.
Resist the urge to Force Quit Safari
Count to 20
If there is still no response, see if you can be patient for just one minute longer
How to fix Safari slowness and freezing on your Mac
Is Safari still not responding? Patience won’t solve everything. Without regular maintenance, your browsing experience can gradually slow down. Poor maintenance and bad habits can even push your Mac’s resources to the point where slowness becomes a regular part of your browsing experience. If that sounds familiar, it’s time to fix Safari.
Extremely slow internet browsing? Stop to keep multiple tabs open
One of the easiest fixes is to close Safari tabs that you don’t need to use. That’s just common sense, right? It is, but we all know at least one person who seems to be on a mission to set a world record for having the most tabs and windows open. The trick is not to be that person.
Each window and tab compete for resources on your system, so closing what you don’t need is the easiest way to improve Safari performance.
But what if you want to read a site or page later, but you don’t want to bookmark the site? No problem – just add it to your reading list. This will store content that you would want to read offline later.
In Safari and other apps, click the Share menu and choose Add to Reading List. You can also right-click on a link and choose Add Link to Reading List, or hover over the address bar and click the plus '+' icon.
To access your reading list:
Navigate to Safari’s sidebar, then click the 'reading glasses' icon.
Disable DNS Prefetching
The point of all of this is to make sure that Safari’s performance isn’t bogged down by having too many open tabs. If you are someone who efficiently manages their tabs yet Safari still crashes, lags or freezes, you should disable DNS prefetching.
DNS Prefetching is a feature designed to make surfing the web faster by scanning over embedded web page links and querying your DNS server to resolve each link to its actual IP address. Ironically, a feature that is designed to make your browsing experience faster can actually weigh down performance.
If Safari lands on a web page with hundreds, and sometimes thousands of links to resolve, the process could freeze Safari.
If you suspect this could be the issue, disable DNS prefetching using this method:
Open Terminal
Enter the command defaults write com.apple.safariWebKitDNSPrefetchingEnabled –boolean false
Press enter
If you revisit the site that had been giving Safari problems and the performance is improved, then the solution worked. However, if there is no noticeable performance boost, it would be a good idea to enable DNS Prefetching and rather troubleshoot other areas.
To re-enable DNS Prefetching:
Open Terminal
Type defaults write com.apple.safariWebKitDNSPrefetchingEnabled
Press enter, quit Terminal and restart Safari
How to protect your privacy in Safari browser
Data collection on the internet is a scary thing. We’re going to show you how to use Safari privately and securely. From clearing of browser history to the removal of cache and cookies and a whole lot more, follow these easy methods.
Remove cookies and autofill forms
Cookies by themselves are not actively intrusive on your privacy; however, they store data in ways that can be used for user profiling and website tracking among other things. While cookies make the browsing experience faster, and the web experience more dynamic, some users may have privacy concerns.
Similarly, autofill forms can be quite scary. When you’re typing in a field or form on your browser and Safari reveals suggestions that you really wish it didn’t know, it’s time to clear away the autofill data.
To manually remove cookies in Safari browser:
Navigate to Safari > Preferences > Privacy > Manage Website Data
Now you can remove cookies for specific sites or simply Remove All
To manually clean up autofill entries in Safari browser:
Navigate to Safari > Preferences > Autofill
Deselect each option and restart your browser
To clean away all of your Safari tracks, from cookies to browsing history and even autofill, you can turn to CleanMyMac X. Once launched, simply click on the Privacy tab and select Safari. Now you can easily choose what browsing data to delete from your system, all from one convenient window.
Keeping your privacy intact is as easy as that.
Private Browsing in Safari
If you’d like to stay off the grid, Jason Bourne, Safari’s Private Browsing option is what you should be using.
When you use a Private Browsing window:
Each tab in the window is isolated, so websites you view in one tab can’t track what you do in other tabs.
Safari doesn’t remember the web pages you visit or your AutoFill information.
Your recent searches aren’t included in the results list when you use the Smart Search field.
Safari doesn’t remember changes to your cookies or other website data.
Plug-ins that support Private Browsing stop storing cookies and other tracking information.
To use Private Browsing with Safari simply choose File > New Private Window. To make Safari open private browsing by default go to Safari > Preferences, click General, click the 'Safari opens with' pop-up menu, then choose 'A new private window.'
Bored of Bing? Change your Safari's default search engine
Did you know there are other search engines besides Bing and Google? With Safari you have four choices for your default search engine - Google, Yahoo, Bing, and DuckDuckGo.
If you’re interested in privacy, we recommend using DuckDuckGo, which doesn’t track or store your personal information.
Whether you want greater search privacy or just to try something new, change your default search engine by following these easy steps:
Go to Safari > Preferences > Search
Select your search engine of choice
Cleanup extensions and plugins
Browser add-ons don’t always add up to good experiences. We’ll show you how to shed them to speed up Safari and eliminate a common cause of Safari issues.
Remove Safari Extensions (Add-Ons) and Plugins
If Safari is still giving you 99 problems (but efficiency ain’t one), misbehaving extensions (also called add-ons) and plugins can cause Safari to be slow, or crash altogether. Safari extensions are developed to enhance your browsing experience, but they can sometimes have the opposite effect. In a worst case scenario, they can even contain nasty malware.
To get a sense of the problem, trying launching Safari in safe mode (launch while holding shift). This will load Safari without any extensions and plugins. Does your experience improve? Then you’ve probably get a troublesome extension.
To remove Safari extensions manually:
Choose Safari > Preferences in the top menu
Open Extensions tab
Remove the extensions you don’t want
Note - The best practice is to turn them all off and then turn each one on, one at a time, to see if you can identify the culprit.
For a clearer view and more control over your Safari extensions, install and launch CleanMyMac X and follow these steps:
Click on the Extensions tab
Click on the Internet Plugins tab or the Safari Extensions tab
Easily remove them for good
Disable or uninstall Flash or other browser plugin
Flash is a browser plugin, but because it is often the cause of problems, we decided that it deserves its own section. Flash is pretty but high maintenance and it chows your browser and system resources. That’s why Flash is almost consigned to the dustbin of tech.
Is Safari not responding? Did Safari crash? Flash is the first suspect that you should remove.
To remove Flash manually:
Download the uninstaller from Adobe.
Choose your OS
Launch the uninstaller from your Downloads folder on your Mac
When the uninstaller runs, click Uninstall
Enter your admin password and close your browser
Other safari problems - try to use custom Safari preferences
Hopefully Safari is now working as it should. But you don’t have to stop there. With some hints and tips you can get even more out of your browser by using Safari preferences to customize the experience.
How to see/hide the entire URL in Safari’s address bar
By default, Safari doesn’t reveal full URLs. If you want to see it all, it’s easy to setup Safari to do just that:
Go to Safari > Preferences > Advanced
Toggle 'Show full website address'
What to do when Safari push notifications aren’t working
When you get a notification of something you wanted to know, it feels great. When you get a notification that you didn’t want to know, it feels annoying. To mute some of the more annoying sites simply turn them off in Safari > Preferences > Notifications.
A Safari to remember
With these fixes to common Safari problems on Mac, your Safari experience should be drastically improved. When Safari is performing at its best, it makes for a great browser experience. We hope you feel empowered enough to know that next time Safari has an issue, you can solve it yourself. Or use a helpful app like CleanMyMac to save the day.
If all else fails, you could always just use CleanMyMac’s Uninstaller to reset Safari and start from scratch.
Not so much 'saving the day' as 'starting a new day.'