Safari won't load specific websites

Question

Level 1

8 points

Safari won't load specific websites

Quite frequently, often after returning from sleep or very long into a browsing session, Safari will stop loading certain websites (such as www.abc.net.au, www.facebook.com or www.twitter.com). Its loading bar will stick on 25% with a blank browser window. This will happen on any load of the site across multiple attempts for at least five minutes. Chrome will load such pages instantly without issue. I add the site to be excluded from content blockers but to no avail. It's really annoying. Interestingly it only happens on one or two sites at a time - other sites load fine and I can't recall it ever happening on www.google.com or www.amazon.com.au. There is no network activity evident in Developer Tools - this issue happens before anything loads.

I always type my URLs and am behind carrier-grade NAT but otherwise I can't think of anything unusual about my set-up. It often happens after trying to load the same site several times, sometimes in quick succession. Sounds a bit like https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250796642. I'm tempted to go back to Chrome but hear Safari has better battery life.

MacBook Pro

Posted on Jun 28, 2020 4:26 AM

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Answer 1

markwithamac Author

Level 1

8 points

Jun 28, 2020 2:11 PM in response to Eric Root

Quitting and restarting Safari always works.
No parental controls.
No extensions.
Unlikely to be prefetching as it happens before content is loaded - think I'm using Google DNS but will double check.
No VPN/proxy.
Will try website Privacy settings next time but it's still a bit disappointing to do it every time.
No virus checker.

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Answer 2

markwithamac Author

Level 1

8 points

Jun 29, 2020 3:56 PM in response to Eric Root

Quitting Safari does work - so switching to another account and launching it there fixes the problem. As the problem generally only appears after prolonged use and idleness, it's difficult to do a whole session on another account. I suppose another approach is to throw away all my Safari data and start again but still disappointing.

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Answer 3

Eric Root

Level 10

685,191 points

Jun 28, 2020 6:24 PM in response to markwithamac

Did you try in another admin user account and the Safe Mode?

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Answer 4

markwithamac Author

Level 1

8 points

Jun 29, 2020 4:00 PM in response to markwithamac

I might try launching a Private Window next time I see it.

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Answer 5

markwithamac Author

Level 1

8 points

Jul 1, 2020 8:54 PM in response to markwithamac

Yes there appear to be two ways to work-around the problem:

Quit and restart Safari
Launch a Private Browsing window

I shall keep investigating. It's still very disappointing.

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Answer 6

markwithamac Author

Level 1

8 points

Jun 28, 2020 3:36 PM in response to markwithamac

Just happened again on www.abc.net.au - again Chrome works flawlessly. The developer console couldn't actually be displayed because you can't "Show JavaScript Console" on the Favourites page. I am using Google DNS now and the Privacy changes (point 6 above) made no difference. Strangely once I could get the JavaScript console up, the page loaded without issue. One thing I might try if I can find Ethernet adapter I can see if Ethernet works better. Perhaps Safari is getting stunned by temperamental network conditions where as Chrome just retries and powers through. The most disturbing thing is a new tab to the same site does not resolve the issue as though Safari won't try again while still trying in another tab.

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Answer 7

markwithamac Author

Level 1

8 points

Jul 1, 2020 7:31 PM in response to markwithamac

I cleared all site data and saw the issue again just then on www.abc.net.au. I was too slow but will try the Private Window thing again next time. The issue can correct after about three minutes.

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