Safari: hanging with the beachball.

Hi Garrett

Go to the Safari Menu and select "reset Safari". When the panel opens, select History, Cache and Web Site Icons. Then reset. See if that improves Safari's response time.

Thanks.. this took a while the first time (I got the spinning beachball) then I ran it again with close open windows and it worked.

Ha, silly me. And I thought Safari 4 would change things in this respect, but it's still the same resource-hungry hog it's always been. 😟

I mean, what's the use of faster page loading times if I constantly get bogged down with lags and drags when navigating between open tabs/pages?

I'm be curious to see if Snow Leopard will bring any changes in this respect.

OK folks, I think I may have stumbled on the solution to the elusive spinning beachball issue with Safari 4.xx. First of all, I'm running 10.4.11 on a Mac Mini with maximum RAM, Safari 4.03, all security updates installed. In my case, the problem happened immediately after installing Safari 4 via auto update from 3.x. The problem? The first time I launch Safari following a computer restart, the beachball would spin for roughly 1-2 minutes before finally connecting to my default home page. Force quitting would not help....I still had to wait 1-2 minutes upon launching Safari again, there was no getting around it. Please note that this was the only manifestation of the problem that I had (no crashing, etc). And after enduring that 1-2 minutes of beachball upon the very first launch per restart, Safari worked perfectly and smoothly until the next time I restarted the computer (this includes flawless performance with tabbed browsing, etc). The problem stayed the same through the Safari updates 4.01-4.03.

I tried EVERYTHING!!!! Repairing permissions, safe mode boot then restart, changing my DNS addresses, turning off IPv6, disabling plugins, resetting Safari, disabling Top Sites, emptying caches, etc. etc. I was about to go back to Safari 3 (and all the update, etc. problems that would entail) when I stumbled upon my solution. I noticed in my user/Library/Syndication folder that I had 2 files: "Database3" and Database3.BROKEN". One was 50+mb and the other was 150+mb. Those seemed large for me, given that I don't use the RSS feature in Safari, plus the existence of the "broken Database" file was a red flag (also, the broken file's modification date seemed to coincide with when I upgraded to Safari 4.0). So I deleted both files, restarted the computer, and now Safari opens to my home page IMMEDIATELY!!! No more beach balls! After nearly 2 months of dealing with this problem, it's FINALLY fixed. I assume the RSS Syndication Database file got corrupted during my initial installation of Safari 4. Beyond that, I can't explain it, but like I said, I tried every other "solution" I could find via google, and this is the ONLY one that worked (in fact, the only one that had any effect whatsoever). If this works for you, please post so that others will know....this seems to be a common problem with Safari 4.x, and frankly it was the first thing that's really hacked me off about Macs in years. I really prefer Safari to other browsers, so I'm thrilled to see this resolved in my case. Hope it works for you too.

dmilazzo9...

Thank you! This worked for me. Difference between night and day immediately!

Thanks, mate!

Super!! Many thanks. It really worked for me. I deleted everything in the folder user/Library/Syndication folder. Now Safari is okay again.

excuse my ignorance, but is this a hidden folder? I am plagued with beachballs in Safari but can't find the Syndication folder in my user/library folder.

HI,

What you can do if Safari quits unexpectedly.

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1594






Carolyn 🙂

Hmmm, that's weird....it isn't a hidden folder as far as I know. If you delete the Syndication folder, even with the RSS Article boxes unchecked and set to "Never " update in the RSS preference panel in Safari (thus deactivating the RSS feature), Safari still recreates the Syndication folder and Database3 file upon restarting and/or launching Safari. Have you looked in Hard Drive/Library ???

I checked both Library folders: /user/library and /hard drive/library and don't see a syndication folder. Spotlight also found nothing, FWIT

i was happy with this at first too, but within hours, it starts beachballing again and you have to go through the whole process. even if you turn of RSS updates.

i'm under a lot of stress at work and i keep getting within milliseconds of throwing my beloved macbook pro against the wall. i can't STAND this beachballing.

safari and OSX used to be very stable. it's been getting worse and worse and that disappoints me. i get as frustrated with it now as i used to with windows.

I'm sorry to hear that. Two months later mine is still great....perhaps you have another issue? I assume you did all the other "cleanup" measures after deleting the Syndication database (and turning it off in Safari prefs), correct? Then again you say my solution worked great at first but has since reverted, so who knows. Have you run a program called Onyx? It's a free multi-purpose cleanup and refreshing utility for OS X, wouldn't hurt to try it. It regained like 8gb of space that was hidden in caches or temp directories that had built up over 2 years of use on my Mac Mini.....not a bad gain on an 80gb drive. You can google it, it's a highly recommended and useful tool and may help w your problem. Did you try all the other "solutions" mentioned in this thread and elsewhere? Good luck...

Thanks a lot dmilazzo9.... 🙂

I did try everything I've found and I made sure to precisely follow the steps . Every time I re-delete the database, I get great performance for a day and then it goes south again. i did turn off everything with RSS. somehow, this does positively affect the beachballing situation, but it doesn't last. i wish i knew... i've been trying things for weeks. hopefully i'll get to something.

i'll take a look at Onyx. i'm still pulling my hair out even this morning. thinking of creating a cron job to periodically remove the db. 🙂

just to follow up. i used most of the utilities on onyx and i've gone a record hour or two without a beachball.

so far...so good!!! there must have been one other issue there exacerbating the problem because this is really sweet. also, safari is lightning fast without the lockups--that's just too nice for anyone! 🙂

thanks again!!!! if i somehow find what it was, or still is happening, i'll post here in case someone else needs help.

oh, and a bunch more times: thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you !!! 🙂

Hi

just to follow up. i used most of the utilities on onyx and i've gone a record hour or two without a beachball.

Confirming you used Onyx's Snow Leopard beta version? If not, download it and rerun Onyx.