Safari opens with 30 tabs automatically

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Level 1

12 points

Safari opens with 30 tabs automatically

On Mac MinI running Sonoma 14.4.1 when I start Safari it automatically opens with about 30 unwanted tabs showing websites from my browsing history. I am able to close the excess tabs by Control clicking the one I want to keep and choosing to close all the other tabs.

WE have several user account on this machine. This behavior does not show up in Safari in my husband's user account.

Hard reboot did not help. Ran MalwareBytes and it found nothing.

Something's cooking. How do I fix it?

Thank you

Posted on Jun 17, 2024 5:51 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

MartinR

Level 7

25,530 points

Jun 17, 2024 7:54 AM in response to mbb04915

Check your Safari Preferences > General. Make sure that "Safari Opens With" says "A new window." (Not "All windows from last session" or "All private windows from last session.")
In System Preferences (aka System Settings) > General make sure that "Close windows when quitting an app" is checked.

Further info here ->

You could, of course, also erase all history before you close Safari each time (Safari > Clear History > Clear All History).

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Answer 2

Jun 17, 2024 6:30 AM in response to mbb04915

is it possible that you have some "pinned tabs" in safari? if you drag the URL bar of an opened site to the left, it will "collapse" and create a "pinned tab". check your safari toolbar and see if there are web pages that only show the site's favicons.

if that is the issue, that is why those 30 pages open upon launching safari. you can drag the "pinned sites" to the right of the URL bar until they expand. then you close those sites as you normally would.

EDITED

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Answer 3

CT

Level 7

24,291 points

Jun 18, 2024 6:56 AM in response to mbb04915

What happens if you launch Safari while pressing the shift key?

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Answer 4

mbb04915 Author

Level 1

12 points

Jun 17, 2024 4:55 PM in response to jeffreythefrog

I dont believe they are pinned tabs. I attach a screen shot.

Tried to get a view of all the tabs via a View menu choice (can’t remember which one exactly) and now safari is not able to function. It hangs right away and I have to force quit Safari to get out of it. Soft and hard rebooting make no differance.

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Answer 5

mbb04915 Author

Level 1

12 points

Jun 24, 2024 9:28 AM in response to mbb04915

Safari opens with many, many tabs and when I tried to use View/ Tab Overview, safari hangs and a window pops up saying “System has run out of application memory”. Using Ctrl Click on one tab and choosing “close other tabs” successfully closes the multitude of tabs. But why is this happening?

I expect it is malware of some kind tho’ malwarebytes cannot find it.

Making me nervous about the security of my system

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Answer 6

Jun 17, 2024 8:36 AM in response to MartinR

thank you MartinR for the Pin frequently visited websites in Safari on Mac - Apple Support link. I've added it to my list of links.

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Answer 7

Jun 17, 2024 5:16 PM in response to mbb04915

it does appear that those are NOT pinned tabs. have you tried MartinR's suggestions?

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Safari opens with 30 tabs automatically

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