Resetting Browsers on OS X (Safari, Chrome, Firefox)
If you’re one of those people who like browsing through the Internet, communicate with friends using social media or watch funny videos online, you might have faced one of such problems one or more times:
- Redirects to unknown pages
- Unresponsive browsers tabs
- Partial loading of certain webpages
- Ads and popups etc.
These problems can occur while using any browser, so I guess it would be good to know what to do in case you have troubles with Safari, Chrome and Firefox.
Here’s what you need to do to reset Safari:
Open Safari - Preferences - Privacy - Remove All Website Data.
Go to the Safari menu (At the very top right side of your screen next to Apple icon), choose "Quit Safari", press "Shift" button and while holding this button on your keyboard single click on the Safari icon on your Dock.
Open the Go menu with Option (Alt) key pressed - Library - locate Safari folder and delete it. Restart your Mac.
Here’s what you need to do to reset Google Chrome:
Launch Chrome and open its Settings menu by clicking on the button in the top right-hand corner of the window.
Scroll down to the bottom of the page and hit ‘Show advanced settings…’. Scroll down the window once again and locate the ‘Reset settings’ menu. Confirm the process by hitting the ‘Reset’ button in the dialog box you will see.
Here’s what you need to do to reset Firefox:
Open Firefox and hit the Preferences button.
Select Privacy to clear all current history. In the dialog window, check all the boxes and click on the ‘Clear Now’ button.
After that, open Firefox once again and visit this webpage. There you should press the ‘Refresh Firefox’ button.
Below you will find some additional reading on the topic:
If Safari doesn‘t load a page or webpage items are missing
Safari 8 (Yosemite): Clear your browsing history
Refresh Firefox - reset add-ons and settings
Feel free to edit this user tip and let me know if it was helpful.