Still having problems with Safari

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Level 1

4 points

Still having problems with Safari

Some time ago I posted at Safari stopped working overnight - Apple Community, which talked about issues I was having with Safari. It basically locks up soon after I start it up. Trying to force kill it can be a very frustrating experience. So I had switched to using Firefox.

The other night I couldn't fall asleep so I tried the last step suggested in that other thread, which was to reinstall MacOS. I first tried Safari, and of course it locked up and I had to fight to kill it. So then I downloaded Catalina and reinstalled the OS onto the hard drive. That all went fine. It immediately wanted to have a security update installed, so I did that too. Once done, everything seemed fine.

So I tried Safari once again. And once again it locked up. Just now I set up a second user on my iMac, logged out as me, and logged in as the second user. And lo and behold Safari worked fine! I even went to my gmail account and logged in there, and that was fine.

So that would seem to indicate that there is something in my home account that causes Safari no end of grief. I was able to export my bookmarks from Safari into a file before it locked up, so I have those saved away. How can I clean up any personal Safari stuff to see if that will fix things? I am pretty sure I cleared out the history, but if there is a list of files to delete that could cure my Safari problems, I'd like to try that. Thanks!

MacOS Catalina 10.15.7

Safari 15.4

Posted on May 15, 2022 8:17 PM

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Answer 1

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bruce_fc Author

Level 1

4 points

May 16, 2022 5:50 PM in response to MichaelB2019

I downloaded MalwareBytes and ran it. It did claim to find two instances of malware and two potentially unfriendly programs (pup). I first quarantined the two malwares, then tried to run Safari. It did not run, but at least it was killable without having to force quit it. Then I did the same for the two pups. Safari was in the same state. But then I noticed that I couldn't run System Preferences -> Security & Privacy. That made me extremely nervous, so I looked into how to remove MalwareBytes. I found the uninstall download.

Right then I was notified that there was a MacOS software and security update and a Safari update (15.5). So I first got those and downloaded then and installed them. And what do you know I think Safari is finally working again! Now I don't know if it was the one or both of the Apple updates, having run MalwareBytes, or a combination of those two is what did the trick. But it doesn't lock up anymore and I can scroll down and click on links successfully. I will slowly close my Firefox windows and replace them with Safari over time.

PS I did run the MalwareBytes uninstall and removed it.

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Answer 2

May 16, 2022 2:37 PM in response to bruce_fc

Hi bruce_fc,

Thanks for coming back to Apple Support Communities for help today.

One possible explanation is malware. You can try running the free version of MalwareBytes.

If that doesn't resolve the issue and with all the steps you have taken, we'd advise reaching out to Get Support for a deeper dive.

Have a fantastic day!

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Answer 3

jeffd55

Community Specialist

May 16, 2022 7:27 PM in response to bruce_fc

bruce_fc,

Thank you for the update. Glad to hear Safari is working again. We would venture to say that it was probably a combination of all of these things. MalwareBytes did seem to find something and updating the macOS and Safari corrected some others.

Regards.

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