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Since 10.5.6, Safari can't maintain session at Gmail, Facebook, others

Since I installed 10.5.6, Safari can't maintain its login session with certain websites. Examples are Gmail and Facebook. I can log in, but within a short time (often a minute or less), I am informed (in different terminology depending on the website) that my session has expired.

I have used the "Reset Safari" menu item, but no improvement.

I have no trouble if I use Firefox on the aforementioned websites.

Any pointers?

Quad-Core Mac Pro, Mac OS X (10.5.6)

Posted on Dec 16, 2008 11:57 AM

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Posted on Dec 16, 2008 12:15 PM

I'm having the exact same issue after updating to 10.5.6. It looks like Safari just doesn't accept cookies properly.

If I delete the cookies from Safari, quit Safari, open Safari, the cookies are all still there. Maybe its a permissions issue? I'm going to try a repair permissions and see if that helps.
212 replies

Dec 16, 2008 12:38 PM in response to knight777

I may have resolved the issue, though I hesitate to declare victory too soon.

I noticed that my ~/Library/Cookies/Cookies.plist file was back to 2.5MB (its size before I deleted it). So I quit all running programs, deleted the file again, and restarted Safari.

So far so good. I believe that the Cookies.plist file is used by multiple applications, so maybe another one of those rewrote the original one.

Dec 16, 2008 1:14 PM in response to Jonathan Hurshman

Thanks for sharing. I think I may have resolved it as well, though I took a different approach.

I...

1. Repaired Permissions with Disk Utility (there were 3 errors)
2. Reboot
3. Deleting cookies from Safari still didn't work so I Reset Safari instead from the File Menu.
4. Restart Safari, cookies gone.

Facebook and a few other apps appear to be behaving again... so far. I'll update again if I encounter further issues.

Message was edited by: knight777

Dec 18, 2008 5:03 AM in response to Udinpetot

I don't think it's actually working for me, either. Things seemed to improve after deleting the cookies, but Facebook has started constantly "forgetting" me.

For instance, I will log into Facebook, enter status, click Post and be told "You must be logged in to do that." And indeed, if I refresh the page, I see that I am not logged in.

Dec 18, 2008 5:05 PM in response to Jonathan Hurshman

I was having the same issue described in this thread, I couldn't stay logged into Facebook, My XBOX, Banking Sites, any thing that required a login. I applied all solutions provided in this thread and they did not resolve the issue for me.

What did resolve the issue for me was a reinstall of Safari. I just downloaded it from apple.com and installed it. Presto! Everything is working fine now.

Just thought I would throw that out there 🙂

Dec 18, 2008 8:05 PM in response to Jonathan Hurshman

I thought I was the only person having this issue...and I am new to Mac so I don't even know where to begin to fix this. I noticed the problem began with 10.5.6 - as with the rest of you. To those who know Macs better than me, please don't give up on trying to fix the issue. Also, I am planning on calling Apple Care in the morning. If that turns up a definitive answer, I'll gladly post their response. Perhaps enough people have already brought this to their attention so they know it's not an isolated incident, and that maybe only they can fix this. Thanks!

Dec 19, 2008 12:18 AM in response to BMBell1919

Same here!! This is incredibly frustrating!

Facebook requires constant relogins (get maybe 30 seconds of use out of it!) and gmail stops loading completely (with an error 400) after a bit. Clearing cookies for gmail allows me to log in again until it stops working a few minutes later.

Just deleted my whole cookies.plist file and restarted safari. It didn't help 😟.

When I use Firefox from this same machine and for the same sites and logins, it works perfectly. What's the deal? Safari worked perfectly before the 10.5.6 upgrade.

Any ideas?? Apple??

Since 10.5.6, Safari can't maintain session at Gmail, Facebook, others

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