Safari problems since Sonoma upgrade

jongould1 I'm really unsure as to how to proceed. I am seeing no response from Apple here and when I call it's like a 5-hour stretch of being put on hold from one person to another and no one seems to be able to help (frankly they don't seem to understand what the problem is--do they just not "do" computer support over the phone anymore? I mean they don't actually have any suggestions or instructions for me to follow. I have no transportation. and the nearest apple store is over an hour away so I can't just pop in to see them there. Should I just wait it out until they fix it? It's been almost 6 weeks now and I'm down to trying to get by on my iPad (which works fine). [Edit I see now there is another upgrade, 14.1.1. I went from to 14.1 and that didn't help at all. I don't know if it's worth the risk? Any feedback from others who have tried the 14.1.1? None of the things I host read mentioned any issues with Safari our any fixes in this upgrade]

I upgraded to 14.1.1 last night. No improvement (if anything worse). Pages won't load in Safari. I reboot (shut everyone down, clear caches, restart the computer) about every 5-10 minutes. Where is the fix? Where is Apple Support? It's not my computer (new iMac with M1 chip) it's not my internet connection (works great for the iPad and everything else). It's not on my end.

I upgraded to Sonoma. and am now on version 14.1.1 and the new OS is horrible. Safari continues to not work (I'm doing this on Chrome). Safari can freeze the entire system. Even without Safari, the system continuously reboots itself, freezes and I have to hard boot. Upgrading to Sonoma was the worst decision I ever made. I've been on Macs since OS 7 and this is the worst OS upgrade ever released by Apple. I'm on a brand new M2 Mac Studio with 32 GB of memory.

Same here. I honestly thought it could only get better (how much worse could it get?) so I took that third step and went to 14.1.1 and it did get worse. I don't think in over 35 years with Mac computers I've ever been this frustrated and completely without hope. Ive run into trouble over the years but there was always a fix sooner or later. It's now the middle of November and this is over 6 weeks of a doing battle every day with an unworkable situation. I am relying more and more on my iPad just to get things done. $4k and a new iMac... this is really hard to fathom.

I first identified the same problems you are encountering on Twitter, and started using Chrome when using that site. Now, I'm running in to problems on a bunch of unrelated websites: pages load slowly or improperly, videos won't play, forms won't display corrrectly, etc. Apple has rendered Safari practically unusable with the release of Sonoma. Do they know? Do they care?

If I can add to this (I know I've posted a lot and not any of it has had any answers but): the last time I spoke with Apple and heard the first bit of the "well no problems that we are aware of and no one else seems to be having problems" reply I very politely requested (and I stayed on the line until she went there and had her read out the posts to prove that she was in fact seeing that this was here...) that the representative go to this forum. Might I suggest that all that have spoken here do that? That you all request (and wait until they actually do it) that your rep look at this forum and acknowledge it? Perhaps then they will acknowledge that there are major and continuing problems? For me it's getting worse by the day and I'm up to 14.1.1.

WARNING & Update--I just caught it in time. My iPad (newish, about a year old) was just about to auto-install from 16.7.2 to 17.1.1 (I had it set to auto-install) and I switched off the installation so I will stay at 16.7.2. I don't know if the 17.1.1 would have been as bad on it but not a chance I was willing to take as my new iMac is basically not functional at all and won't be until Apple finally fixes this mess. If you have an iPad check it and circumvent the install...until we know differently. Without the iPad I would be without any device that worked since I have no cellphone. Now When is Apple going to fix the OS that is that is on my iMac (17.1.1.)? Seems a little ridiculous that I have this huge expensive computer on my desk that I can't use...

Hi cyreniac -Any chance you could guide me as to how to correctly input? I've opened the Terminal app and cleared the screen. Just not sure how to correctly input the instructions. I'm clearly not a whiz at this like you. Thanks for any additional support you could provide.

Same issues here since upgrading to Sonoma. Several plugins installed including 1Blocker and 1Password but same affects when disabling all plugins. Don't have "LA Court Connect" installed (UK resident).

Opening links from Mail, Teams, anywhere seems to cause Safari to hang briefly and it's CPU usage to skyrocket.

M1 Max MacBook Pro.

Has anyone heard anything about any upgrades to fix the Safari issues? It's been over a month and a half. I upgraded all the way to 14.1.1. I am not upgrading to Sonoma 14.2 until I hear from someone that these issues are addressed. 14.1.1 was actually worse. 

Why is Apple not addressing these issues? My iMac (les than 2 years old) has been basically unusable for over a month. I honestly don't know what to do next. Calls to Apple are endless and frustrating--I keep getting put on hold and passed around for hours and still no answers.

I’m having same problem with Safari not opening ever since down loading recent Safari upgrade. My Mac is running on MontereyOS 12.7.2. I did the OS upgrade just befoe the Safari upgrade. The Safari upgrade took forever to download and install and hasnt opened since. I’m using DuckduckGo.

Edward Devlin1

Yes! And it's been happening since Sonoma 14 and still through to 14.1.1 And that's closing in on two full months of lost use of my computer. I stopped at 14.1.1. I have zero assurance that there is any improvement with macOS Sonoma 14.2.1.

Apple solved my Safari problem in Sonoma today. I do have a few suspect add-ons in my system, particularly Windscribe VPN, Little Snitch and Control D apps, so there is some question about where some specific resources were being affected in my OS. Ultimately though, throwing out a few files in some buried system folders helped my situation.

First, backup your Safari bookmarks if you don’t have one, then Quit Safari. Next, use Go to Folder (Go menu at Finder level), then type:

~/Library/Containers/Safari/Data/Library/Preferences/

and then hit Enter. Now, move these files to trash from that directory:

com.apple.safari.plist

com.apple.SafariBookmarksSyncAgent.plist

Now run Safari and see if that solved your issue. Mine is solved, let me know if this helped anyone or if I can answer any questions!

Hello,

trying this solution - I find two Folders ~/Library/Containers/Safari/ !!! Contents similar but not equal. Dates of change nearly no difference. Not knowing, which one is best, I renamed one of these folders. Then I had to re-organise Safari. But now it seems to work better. I will observe....

Safari a disaster for me - I'm setting up a Conference Registration website. First I could not login to my web developer site. Then after a further upgrade to sonoma I could login in to developer site BUT could not use development tools correctly eg links to google forms not work.

Now panicking I'll be able to set up Conference Registration correctly.

I've got most things going using OPERA.

What an Apple shambles - how can a company of this size issue an important new OS release with such poorly tested software on such a huge community of users.

No sign of a correction release as far as I can see.

Can anybody eg Apple tell me how to get out of this mess.