Safari's back button dont work sometimes

It happened to me when I upgraded to Mountain Lion. Also, the "Back" command under history greys out in this state. It's a frequent occurence. I havent seen too many other reseources complaining yet, but it's real.

I have the same issue

Me too. It's essentially like not having a back button anymore.

I'm still on Lion. It's been happening ever since I did the most recent software update about a week or so ago. I can't remember if it was a Safari update (I'm on 6.0) or OS update (I'm on 10.7.4).

I really miss having a back button when web surfing or doing research. The back button still works as long as I stay within apple's pages, for instance, but if I venture to another URL, I often can't get back without going to the History pulldown menu. When using Google, I have to go back to History, read the list of pages where I've been doing research, then select what seems to be the starting point. Sometimes I have to do this multiple times to find the exact page I'm looking for (instead of just clicking "back," "back," "back.") Such a time waster. Wish I hadn't done that last update.

This seems to have fixed it for me as described below in another discussion:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4196363?answerId=19227613022#19227613022

I went to Safari.

I opened Preferences.

I chose "Tabs."

When offered the option "Open pages in tabs instead of windows," I changed “Automatically” to “Never” as described in the link above.

Apparently, in the latest version of Safari, if you choose a link that takes you to a new site, you don't get a new Safari window (As you know, when you open a new window, it has no "history," so you automatically know that you can't click the back button). But because this new version of Safari opens the link in the same Safari window that you already have open, you instinctively expect to be able to click "back." But in reality, you're in a window now that has no history and your old Safari window can only be accessed via the History button. (At least that's how I think it's working. I'm no computer whiz.)

On one of the sites that I went to, it still resisted letting me use the back button exactly the way I used to. However, at least the back button was black instead of gray and when I held down the back button, it gave me the option to return to one of several pages, including the one I had been using previously.

Switching Automatically to Never seems to have (almost) returned things back to what I was accustomed to. Way, way better than having to resort to the History pulldown menu every time.

Hope this helps.

Yes! Thanks susanmcm

I switched the tab to 'never' and surfed 30 pages or so. So far, so good!

You're most welcome. All credit goes to Kenichi Watanabe whose comments I saw in the discussion I linked to.

So glad it helped. I rely on the folks on this board year in and year out, so I'm happy to pass along the suggestions that worked for me.

THANK YOU!!! This problem started a few days ago after an "update" and it was driving me crazy. I originally thought it was a Facebook issue as every time I went to a link I was unable to get back and had to start over at the top of posts and scroll back down to whereever I was. It was making me not want to read links. Then found out it was with any link from any page.

What I don't understand is why Apple did this as it is unbelievably annoying - or at least tell people up front how to fix it. I was envisioning having to make an appointment and drag everything to the Apple store and pay a service fee, etc, etc...

Thanks again!!!!

I know exactly what you mean. I was getting ready to make a Genius Bar appointment myself.

So glad it helped. I have been helped more times than I can count by people on this discussion board, so I am only too happy to be able to pay it forward.

Just posted a question about this, before finding this thread. I knew it had to be something simple. Never seemed to affect Yahoo news pages though - you could go as far forward as you liked and still get home again.