Web pages crash all the time in Safari on iPhone

sypoltsystems Said:

"Web pages crash *all the tine* in Safari: I do this pretty much every day. This isn’t a misbehaving app. It’s something systematic with Safari, and unfortunately, closing apps and restarting don’t work.”

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Troubleshooting iOS Safari:

Safari is a builtin app that comes with the iOS. So, check your iPhone for updates.

As a last resort…

Set Up your iPhone Anew:

Set this up anew, as if you were to sell it. Perform as instructed here, including the iCloud logout and backup creation:  What to do Before you Sell, Give Away, or Trade in your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch - Apple Support. Backup what need be, prior to performing this. All would go to default, and the bugs and glitches would be expected to go away.

This really tells me it's a software issue on Apple's part then because I see it on nearly every single web page I go to. It's been going on for about 9 months and is beyond frustrating. I’m to the point of downloading a new browser on my iPhone and not using Safari anymore.

First, that's not the norm - tens of millions of people use Safari on their iPhones daily without any crashing issues whatsoever.

Second, the APIs used by Safari, known as WebKit, are the basis of all web browsers on iOS.

Other web browsers are just different graphical shells and handle bookmarks and cookies differently but still use the underlying WebKit APIs.

WebKit | Apple Developer Documentation

If you still see regular crashes using Safari, I highly recommend you make an appointment to have your phone examined, it's most likely a hardware memory issue with your device:

Genius Bar Reservation and Apple Support Options - Apple

First of all, if you haven't yet, upgrade to iOS 17.4.

If you still experience issues, you should make an appointment to have your phone examined:

Genius Bar Reservation and Apple Support Options - Apple

as I've never seen that issue on my 15 Pro Max or my 10.5" iPad Pro, let alone any of my Macs.

My safari was crashing and up-scrolling while I was mid-read in a news articles and resetting webpages repeatedly until I got the message about “safari has encountered repeated errors”…..the way I finally stopped it was to turn off “Privacy Preserving Ad Measurement” in Safari advanced settings. All the glitching nonsense was gone instantly and completely. I don’t know enough about software and coding to be able to say what is wrong, but my best logical guess is that the error is on Apple’s end not the phone or the websites fault.

And off topic: I was a Samsung user for a decade and I switch to iPhone for my kids and I have regretted every single moment. I feel like the iPhone is stepping back to the days of dial up internet service where every program glitched, and each machine was incompatible with all other machines and any task took forever. While Samsungs are fast, efficient and compatible with any and all other devices except iPhones.

THAT IS SIMPLY MY OPINION.

Not just a problem with Safari. As others have noted, all WebKit browsers have this problem.

On Safari, I read articles from The Guardian. Any sufficiently long article (e.g. restaurant review with comments) is guaranteed to crash multiple times, and then to reload at the top of the article, forcing me to re-open the comments each time, and scroll down to where I was marooned.

I have been reading The Atlantic on the Google browser (no tabs, single document only) until recently, had to bail when a single (rather long) article crashed every 15s or so. (At least that reloaded near where I left off.)

Switching from Google to Firefox a couple days ago did not help, not as crashy as the original long article, but crashes continue.

Gotta Point the finger of blame squarely at WebKit.

I have been struggling with this problem for YEARS on so many of the sites I visit regularly (ESPECIALLY pcgamer, tomshardware, and ign - yes I’m a bit of a geek).

After trying every troubleshooting suggestion I could find on the issue I’d accepted I would just have to live with this pain for life.. But after hitting it like 10 times today I thought I’d try again to find a resolution. AND HERE IT IS! FINALLY! Disabling “privacy preserving ad measurement” seems to have solved the problem.

Thank you!

• Restart the device. That's it.
• Still not solved --> Force restart iPhone - Apple Support

No idea; I personally don't come across them all that often.

Frankly, YouTube seems to trigger the issue more often than most.

I installed Google Chrome and use it instead of Safari, it solved the problem.

Make sure you update to iOS 18.1.

I've not seen Safari crash at all on iOS 18, and the main use of my iPhone and iPad are for web browsing via Safari.