anyone else having major problems with Safari 5.1 on Snow Leopard?

Just to bump your solution to use Time Machine to restore to 5.05 Safari.

I use SL 10.6.8 on MacBook Pro. Had updated from 5.05 Safari to 5.1 per Software Update suggestion. Big mistake. Ran into two days of trying to get Safari to permit private browsing which of course it did not. Removed all extensions. Had no effect. Cookies kept getting added. Finally used Time Machine to restore to 5.05. No problems since then and the Software Update no longer lists 5.1 as an update 🙂

I figured out what is causing the spinning pinwheel when using Safari 5.1 on my intel iMac Core Duo 10.6.8. Flash. Whenever I select something that requires the Flash Player I get the spinning pinwheel. I've tried uninstalling and reinstall 3 different versions of Flash. Nothing helps. So I've gone back to Safari 5.0.5. Flash works fine on it.

lenn

Christopher Breen of MacWorld has posted an excellent fallback solution while we all wait for apple to fix this problem. See: http://www.macworld.com/article/161367/2011/07/revert_safari.html#lsrc.nl_mwweek _h_cbintro where he provides instruction on how to find an old Safari 5.0.3 copy and use Pacificst to safely extract and replace Safari 5.1 elements. (Pacifist can be used in a free trail mode, but if you find it useful, it's definitely worth the $20).

My Safari 5.1 update doesn't work at all. I had to restore my computer to a system image with version 5.0.5 on it. Next time let Apple work out all the bugs BEFORE they waste everybody's time with updates that don't work.

I got really fed up with my Mac on Snow Leopard getting repeatedly frozen and unresponsive. Even without open Safari, and just listening radio on iTunes. So instead of hitting power button again, today I installed old Tiger. Not a single problem. There's more than a bug in Safri, I suspect. There're should be some changes in the OS itself, preventing my Mac running smoothly on snow Leopard.

Or you could just have grabbed Safari 5.0.5 from a backup and trashed 5.1. I did that and it works. The problem isnt Snow Leopard, the problem is Safari 5.1

I confirmed this issue, but apparently Apple deleted my post…

Anyway, I’m still having huge performance problems with Safari 5.1 on Snow Leopard. I did notice a temporary return to good performance after rebooting, but it didn’t last long.

Yes, I restored my previous browsing session. Yes, it has lots of tabs. However, before the 5.1 update Safari could handle them without beachballing all the time. Sometimes the waiting lasts for minutes.

I’m about to try removing plugins as a workaround, but I’d be really surprised if a plugin for a single item was capable of slowing the whole application down. Most of the tabs in my session don’t even have media that requires plugins.

Keep looking for solutions and workarounds. I hope there is a Software Update forthcoming…

Safari just keeps spinning. No response at all

Elizabeth,

I had the same spinning pinwheel when i first intalled Safari 5.1 on my iMacCore Duo running 10.6.8. What finally fixed it for me was to trash the Safari folder in Users>name>Library>Safari. Empty the trash and then try reinstalling Safari 5.1. Also, make sure if you're ruunning any Safari plugins or extensions that they work with Safari 5.1.

lenn

Sad to say but Safari 5.1 really has made me think again about upgrades. It now seems to be slower, takes more resource and also has stopped Keychain working.

Come on Apple sort it out!!