This is a known issue that several AirPods Pro 3 users have reported specifically with Safari on macOS 26 across the public betas and 26.5. The crackling and audio cut-outs appearing only in Safari while other apps work fine points to a conflict between Safari's audio engine and the AirPods Pro 3 firmware, rather than a hardware problem.
Safari uses a slightly different audio routing path on macOS compared to apps like Music or Chrome, and on macOS 26 there are known bugs with how Safari hands off audio streams to Bluetooth audio devices. The 20-30 minute recurrence pattern is typical of a buffer overflow or session timeout issue on the Safari audio side.
A few things that have helped others in the same situation: First, try disabling hardware acceleration in Safari. Go to Safari > Settings > Advanced and check the option to disable GPU process for web content if it's available in your version. This can reduce the audio glitch frequency significantly.
Second, when the crackling starts, rather than toggling Bluetooth or restarting the Mac, try simply switching away from Safari briefly to another app and then back. This forces Safari to reinitialize the audio session without requiring a full reconnect.
Third, check if there is a Safari update available separately via System Settings > General > Software Update. Apple sometimes pushes Safari updates independently of the main macOS point releases.
Given that you're on macOS 26.5 which is still a relatively early release, this is likely to be addressed in a future point update. If you want to report it directly to Apple to increase its priority, you can use Feedback Assistant to file a bug report with your system details and reproduce steps.
