Safari crashing on M1 iMac after updating to Monterey

I appear to have the same problem. When I click the icon on my Dock, Safari crashes every time. I tried removing extensions, etc, and nothing worked. Here's how I've worked around it...

1. Click Safari in your dock while holding down the SHIFT key on the keyboard
2. Safari launches with no windows (but in my case at least it doesn't crash) -- this is critical
3. In the Safari menu, go to History --> Reopen All Windows from Last Session

Safari should hopefully now be up and running for you with all your previous windows showing as usual.

Unfortunately these steps have to be followed every time you start Safari.

Hope it works for you, and I hope Apple fixes Safari on Monterey in the next patch.

My Safari crash-on-launch problem continued even under Monterey 12.1 update today.

Launching with SHIFT did not prevent the crash either.

I removed ALL the Library/Extensions/Preferences related to Safari (the free demo version of CleanMyMac X can help discovering what and where they are).

I also deleted the "Save to Pocket" extension I had downloaded from Safari Extensions section in App Store.

And then it worked again!

Reinstalled Save to Pocket from App Store after the first successful launch, now it works correctly.

In case anyone is still having this problem.... After upgrading to the latest macOS 12.1 release, the Safari crash-on-launch problem has gone away for me.

Perhaps Apple read the dozens of crash reports I submitted and fixed the bug in the latest release. :)