Tabs Refresh Automatically in Safari 5.1?

Same here, I started to have the issue since a certain update.

It happens a lot if I'm too fast opening tabs. It seems like it doesn't happen when I open a tab, verify the tab is fully loaded, open the next one, verify, next, ... but it's getting highly annoying.

What's even more annoying is flash player's "plugin failure", when you reload the page, you get a black square (it doesn't restart the flash player plugin) and I have to quit Safari to get it back.

Switching off Java did not prevent this from happening. I wonder whether anyone in charge actually reads this?

Only way out: Switch to another browser.

Hi Roland,

Sorry for your problems. When you say the debug trick didn't work with the menu item not appearing, do you mean the debug menu didn't appear in Safari? Or that the 'use multi-process windows' item didn't appear? Did you enter the code into terminal, then quit terminal? Then quit Safari and re-open etc? I'm no expert (as you'll tell) and the 'debug' didn't appear in Safari for me until I'd entered the command in terminal and then quit terminal. Maybe that may help?

The menu item did not appear in Safari. Did it how you described. Will try again.

Now the Debug item's there --- will try and report back.

Okay, this just happened to me. I spent 30 some minutes composing a message on an internet forum, I opened a new tab to get further information about something, and suddenly the tabs refreshed and I lost the post I was working on! It was infuriating.

I run Snow Leopard. I'm all up to date on my software. I am currently using the following extensions: AdBlock 1.5.13, Apture 2.1.0, Add to Google Reader 1.1.9, Duplicate Tab Button 1.1, Shortly 2.2, Cick to Flash 2.6.

What do you think I should do? I read about the debug trick. Will that work for Snow Leopard? Will it diable the extensions that I use?

I guess the lesson is: compose your messages/posts in TextEdit and then copy them to the forum. But sure is annoying.

Yes, it's annoying. I'm not sure if the cause is Safari, or how the particulasr site is coded. It's worth reporting the issue to Apple, anyway:

http://www.apple.com/feedback/

Unfortunately, this is now "the new normal" for Safari, and it seems Apple considers this a "function" rather than a bug. The only surefire solution I've found is to abandon Safari and switch to Chrome or some other Webkit-based browser.

A shame really, because Safari was once a very capable browser. Now it seems to be more of a demo piece rather than an actual Web browser.

I solved the problem, & a couple others, by going back to using 5.0.5...

So far doing what Studabaker and Jason said has worked. I don't know terminal and I was able to do just as they recommended without difficulty. Will report back with any issues.

If the refresh function gets activated when the web process *crashes*, does this mean that we probably should not employ the debug solution proposed by Studabaker and Jason?

After my user tapped a 2 week old tab and re-did the two week old operation (refresh) and send out some business Emails to his boss, I did some experiments.

On my up to date iPad I went to my old (a day or two) tabs and every one refreshed. But when I tapped around they did NOT refresh again. There's something with timing where if they (safari) considers it "old" it refreshes. That seems it would save the folks who spent time composing, as their composition would be intact. However, the timeout (whatever it is) is a time-bomb.

In thinking, I see Apples point. If it's your bank balance or Southwest air fares, they think, "gee this is old, better refresh". But it's non of Apple's business what I leave lying around. The cure is worse than the disease. Sad the Redmond-ification of Apple.

This is all well and fine but what happens if you have Windows 7? Safari periodically refreshes.. but OFTEN. every 1-5 minutes. Every solution I read is for Mac. I stopped using Firefox because it didnt' play well with Facebook. I dont' want to switch to Chrome, and I don't use IE (haven't for years).

I have never had so many problems with Safari since the release of 5.0 and the start of this "Web2KitProcess" crap. The refreshing started a few weeks ago and at first it was on Google Maps so I thought it was them. Then it started on webpages.

I read it could be a virtual memory thing (or something like that), but this even happens if I have only ONE TAB open. I feel like it's 1999 and I have the 'I love you' virus and I have to "save" every 10 seconds except now I hit Ctrl-A, Ctrl-C for everything I type. I have NO extensions installed. I do not use RSS readers.

What if I uninstall and reinstall Safairi? Will I lose all my bookmarks/reading list items? How do I back them up so I can reinstall them?

There were no updates to Safari, I'm still running the most current version so I don't know what happened. It obviously doesn't happen in Chrome or IE, so it's def. safari.

I solved this problem soon after I updated to 5.1, by re-installing 5.0.5, and haven't had that issue again. I keep thinking Apple will get rid of all the bugs I found using 5.1, but I don't think that's happened...

Happened to me while reading this thread 😝

I have enabled the Debug menu and enabled the Single Process, let's see if it works.