Why does Safari hang in OS X Lion?

Is there a particular site that you experience this with?

I've never seen Safari do that myself.

Seems to be random. But apparently I'm not alone. I've been reading several threads here on apple.com with similar stories. I found if I use gfxcardstatus and keep my video card from switching the Safari freezes stop.

Seems to be a common problem with the MBP early 2010 sat least. Hopefully a new driver will be coming down the pike soon. Meanwhile gfxcardstatus is making things tolerable.

jayravens wrote:

There aren't many posts on hang ups in Lion, are they?

Take a look here:

Mac OS X v10.7 Lion

Bring a fire extinguisher...

Safari hang sometimes on my MBP 2010 i7.

Hanged now on the forum!! 😟

I've no safari plugin and no antivirus...

My Safari also hangs once a while. The terrible thing is that once it hangs, i can't force-quit it. it freezes the computer and i have to reboot. so in the end there is no error report generated that i can send to apple.

Another 'app' that causes similar problem is the trash. I empty my trash often as i use a small capacity SSD and like safari, it will freeze the computer. recently i did a chkdsk on my bootcamp & hopefully that'll will mitigate the problem (i repaired permissions etc etc too).

Thanks for sharing. After reading this post, i will check the background apps like sophos etc. hopefully no more hang ups. i'm beginning to hate lion... it's becoming like the old windozs on my mac...haiz...

Your symptoms are more likely hardware issues rather than anything having to do with Lion; the chkdsk you performed is a good start, and I assume you ran a "Verify" from Disk Utility as well.

yes i hv done the verify disk as well. it is ok. i'm not sure if the SSD is a potential cause because i also just got it and installed Lion on it. did an upgrade but with the hang ups, i decided to do a clean install. but the problem still persist. i also did a check on the SSD firmware and it is up to date (Mar 11 anyway).

will monitor and troubleshoot and hopefully i will have something useful to contribute and update.

thanks.

Took delivery of an iMac 27 from apple last week, it was pre-installed with Lion when it came, so no upgrade issues.

Since then, I've had 2 crashes with Safari which have hung the computer, both times when starting embedded video on a web page. One of these was QuickTime, on the Apple "Introduction to Lion" page and the other was on the BBC iPlayer page. I'm reasonably certain this uses Flash player to run the video.

Given that this has happened with both QuickTime and Flash player, I'm starting to suspect the graphic card switching as is goes to high-def mode.

I've had one other crash with PhotoBooth when I tried to use the Eiffel Tower background (I know, I'm just an old romantic).

I'm going to talk to AppleCare and see if there's any logging I can switch on that might help them track this down.

Cheers all

Rob

OK - Apple's advice was to re-set Safari, and install the 10.7.1 update. Both done, so I'll see how it goes from here.

Cheers,

Rob

Yes, sir. Safari under OS X Liong 10.7.1 hangs unexpectedly and is annoying especially after a GMAIL reply has been typed but not saved yet. Sometimes GMAIL saves before Safari hangs and then the only saving grace is to create another Safari window to GMAIL and go forward from there. The 'hung' Safari/GMAIL window is then discarded (closed - Apple W keystroke).

Any hints on what is wrong? Anybody?

Do you have any Safari extensions or utilities installed?

I've used GMail extensively with Safari and haven't had any hangs.

I see this as a definite issue as well - all the time. I know there are some in this thread claiming they don't see it, but I think they are the lucky ones or just don't want to admit it. I have Lion installed on 3 machines right now - and all three see this hang at random times, especially when using tabs.

It doesn't matter the website as it does it on all of them.

But if you beg for a specific, how about www.me.com - then it's in-house. I am currently running a clean install of Lion, updated to latest patch (10.7.1) and the latest Safari. I go into MobileMe, then open another tab - for example, Apple.com. Many times, returning to the first tab, the Safari window goes white, as if it got lost in an auto-save and I get the beach-ball. After a minute or so of waiting, my MobileMe screen returns. I think this is the hang many people are describing here. And it happens on this 100% clean install - and on my two other machines.

Also, I do not run any plug-ins or enhancers with Safari. Straight out of the box.

Machine Stats:

MacPro Quad Core (2006) - OS 10.7.1 / Safari 5.1 / 12 GB memory

MacBook late 2010 - OS 10.7.1 / Safari 5.1 / 2 GB memory

iMac 2011 - OS 10.7.1 / Safari 5.1 / 4 GB memory

But what you've just described with me.com aren't hangs at all. A spinning cursor indicates your system is busy doing other things and isn't responding - something that COULD represent a hang but since Safari recovers obviously isn't.

The better question is why is whatever other activity - paging, swapping or just Safari waiting for data - occurring.

Do you see extended waits for system I/O in any other apps?

There are indeed some memory handling issues in Safari under Lion which are known and are being worked, but I've rarely had Safari TRULY hang - meaning it NEVER recovers and must be force quit.

I am getting really, really fed up with these Safari-triggered crashes on Lion. Today has been particularly frustrating. There seems to have been no improvement even after the .1 update. No spinning beach balls just a straight screen freeze up. Sometimes, just moving the cursor triggers it. I need to restart typically 3 to 5 times each day. I don't run anything fancy. No extensions, no customizations. Anybody else feeling my pain? This is so Windows-like.

iMac 24" 3.03 GHz Core2Duo.

William, whatever you want to call it, it's an issue with Safari/Lion. With a clean install and absolutely nothing other than Safari running, I get these "non-hangs" - just a 1-2 minute wait for the page to re-discover itself so I can continue reading on it. An issue that not once surfaced in Safari/Snow Leopard. If the system is busy "doing other things" then it is Lion prancing about on the prarie - because there is nothing else I am telling it to do and nothing else is running.

So for your "better questions", it's for the developers at Apple to answer. Why is a a quad-core running nothing but Loin, Safari and 12GB of memory doing something else when I try to load me.com (while switching tabs, that is)? And why does it need to do it at least once an hour?

I do not see any extended waits on other apps like Keynote, Pages, Garageband, PS CS5, Lightroom 3, etc.

Maybe it is, as you suggest, the memory issue in the new Safari and just a coincidence we are noticing it with Lion - and we are all miss-naming it a hang, when it's really Safari puking on the memory load and Lion trying to slap it back awake?