Safari 6.0.4 Cannot Play Google Voice Voicemails

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Level 1

10 points

Safari 6.0.4 Cannot Play Google Voice Voicemails

I've been troubleshooting this problem for far too many hours, and I am at a loss. I've tried everything other than reinstalling the entire system. Instead of doing that, I'm switching to Chrome and posting here in the hopes of finding a better solution.

The problem: Safari will not play google voice embedded audio voicemail files.

The voicemails show up with a play icon and a time; when you click on them, the graphic changse to an audio file progress bar, but the file never plays.
These voicemails WILL play in Chrome and they WILL play in Firefox.
More frustratingly, they will also play on my wife's iMac that is also running all updated software (OS X 10.8.3, Safari 6.0.4, etc.), and on my own iOS devices with Safari.

Background

I'm running 10.8.3 on a 2.7ghz core i5 27" iMac.
I have updated to the newest OS and all software updates.
I'm running the newest version of Flash and Java, and all are functioning properly.
I've uninstalled flip4mac and anything else that I thought might conflict with playing audio files.
I've reset safari numerous times, booted into safe mode, restarted numerous times, emptied every cache under the sun, repaired permissions, run daily/weekly/monthly updatesa in termina, and tried disabling all internet plugins. Nothing works.

Current Understanding/Knowledge/Conclusion

These files are NOT using any plug-ins to play, but are just using standard html5 audio tags. My wife's computer will play the files fine even with the quicktime plug-ins disabled. They DO use javascript to switch to the full audio player progress button, but I don't think javascript has anything to do with playing the actual file. Note: Firefox plays the files differently and it depends on Flash to play them; but I don't think that's the case with Chrome, and both Chrome and Safari are webkit browsers. Safari is unique in being a 64 bit webkit browser, and I'd be willing to chalk this up to it just not working in Safari – but it works just fine on my wife's machine.

Any solutions, ideas, or even troubleshooting tips would be welcome. As I said at the outset, the only next step I can see is reinstalling ML, and I'd rather just switch to Chrome than do that...

iMac, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.3)

Posted on May 6, 2013 6:10 AM

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Answer 1

Linc Davis

Level 10

209,547 points

May 6, 2013 9:39 AM in response to fronesis

From the Safari menu bar, select

Help ▹ Installed Plug-ins

Besides the following, what plugins are listed?

iPhotoPhotocast
Java
QuickTime
Shockwave Flash
WebKit built-in PDF

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Answer 2

fronesis Author

Level 1

10 points

May 6, 2013 11:03 AM in response to Linc Davis

Linc Davis wrote:

From the Safari menu bar, select

Help ▹ Installed Plug-ins

Besides the following, what plugins are listed?

iPhotoPhotocast

Java

QuickTime

Shockwave Flash

WebKit built-in PDF

Google Talk

Google Talk Video Accelerator

Google Talk Video Renderer

MS Office Live

Silverlight

But I should be clear: I've tried running safari with ALL of the extra plugins disabled, and I get the same result.

Also, something curious: If I click on the google voice "more" link below the voicemail, then choose "embed" and then copy that text into a new html file, I can then open that html file in Safari and it plays fine. I can also download the file and it plays fine from the finder.

So I think it's definitely a Javascript problem, where clicking the play icon does not actualy play the file, but just gives the progress bar.

What I CANNOT understand at all is why this works on my wife's computer with the same versions of OS X, Java, and Flash.

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Answer 3

Linc Davis

Level 10

209,547 points

May 6, 2013 11:31 AM in response to fronesis

I don't use Google Voice so I can't test. Disabling plugins also disables the built-in plugins. Can you play the messages on the other computer with plugins disabled?

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Answer 4

fronesis Author

Level 1

10 points

May 6, 2013 12:36 PM in response to Linc Davis

Linc Davis wrote:

I don't use Google Voice so I can't test. Disabling plugins also disables the built-in plugins. Can you play the messages on the other computer with plugins disabled?

OK, I can confirm that playing google voice voicemails do NOT depend at all on ANY plugins.

Specifically:

1. With ALL plugins disabled, the VM's still play fine on Chrome on my machine and still will NOT play on Safari.

2. With ALL plugins disabled, the VM's still play fine on Safari on my wife's machine.

However, I can say that the Google Voice page DOES depend on javascript. Turning off Javascript in Safari makes it so I cannot even click on the "play" icon and have anything happen. Turning off javascript in Chrome (these are browser level preference settings), makes the google voice website not work at all.

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Answer 5

Linc Davis

Level 10

209,547 points

May 6, 2013 12:44 PM in response to fronesis

From the Safari menu bar, select

Safari ▹ Preferences ▹ Extensions

Turn all extensions OFF and test. If the problem is resolved, turn extensions back ON and then disable them one or a few at a time until you find the culprit.

If you wish, you may be able to salvage the malfunctioning extension by uninstalling and reinstalling it. That will revert its settings to the defaults.

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Answer 6

fronesis Author

Level 1

10 points

May 6, 2013 12:50 PM in response to Linc Davis

Thanks, Linc. But I've already deleted all extensions in the process of troubleshooting this. I think I'm as close to having a "clean" install of Safari is I can get, without actually reinstalling the entire OS (since it seems impossible to reinstall safari itself).

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Answer 7

Linc Davis

Level 10

209,547 points

May 6, 2013 2:56 PM in response to fronesis

Please read this whole message before doing anything.

This procedure is a diagnostic test. It won’t solve your problem. Don’t be disappointed when you find that nothing has changed after you complete it.

The purpose of this test is to determine whether the problem is localized to your user account. Enable guest logins* and log in as Guest. Don't use the Safari-only “Guest User” login created by “Find My Mac.”

While logged in as Guest, you won’t have access to any of your personal files or settings. Applications will behave as if you were running them for the first time. Don’t be alarmed by this; it’s normal. If you need any passwords or other personal data in order to complete the test, memorize, print, or write them down before you begin.

Test while logged in as Guest. Same problem?

After testing, log out of the guest account and, in your own account, disable it if you wish. Any files you created in the guest account will be deleted automatically when you log out of it.

*Note: If you’ve activated “Find My Mac” or FileVault in OS X 10.7 or later, then you can’t enable the Guest account. The "Guest User" login created by "Find My Mac" is not the same. Create a new account in which to test, and delete it, including its home folder, after testing.

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Answer 8

fronesis Author

Level 1

10 points

May 6, 2013 3:08 PM in response to Linc Davis

Hi, Linc. Thanks for continuing to try to help me out.

I forgot to say: I have a second user on my machine that is purely a test/troubleshooting account. I tried logging in with it already, and verified the same failure in Safari. I even went so far as to create an entirely new user and log in with it – still no luck.

I'm not so frustrarting/invested/interested in this problem that I'm going to install a clean version of ML on my other partition, just to see what comes of it.

I've been reading more off and on, and my only guess is that somehow my installation of javascript is corrupt. Google Chrome uses a different version of javascript, and it works fine.

I downloaded the nightly build of the webkit browser, and it shows the same problems. Webkit and Safari, of course, share the same version of javascript.

I've checked the version numbers, and I'm running the exact same javascript version as my wife, but for some reason hers works and mine doesn't.

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Answer 9

Linc Davis

Level 10

209,547 points

May 6, 2013 3:16 PM in response to fronesis

If all the facts are as you've reported, you should reinstall OS X. Back up first.

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Answer 10

fronesis Author

Level 1

10 points

May 6, 2013 3:54 PM in response to Linc Davis

I can now confirm that a brand new install of 10.8.3, with all software updates, runs fine.

So I have something, somewhere, that is corrupting somehting – I'm fairly sure it's a javascript problem, but there's no way to reinstall just javascript.

Thanks again for al your help.

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Answer 11

fronesis Author

Level 1

10 points

May 6, 2013 5:24 PM in response to fronesis

Reinstalled Mountain Lion on my Macbook Air (which has the same problem) and after the complete reinstall it still DOES NOT WORK.

So I clearly have something, somewhere conflicting with javascript, or with something needed to play these voicemails – but I have no idea what it might be, and I'm not so sure I want to erase my hard drive, do a clean install and then piece everything backed together.

This is a bizarre and frustrating one...

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Answer 12

Linc Davis

Level 10

209,547 points

May 6, 2013 6:25 PM in response to fronesis

This is a third computer? You've mentioned two already.

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Answer 13

fronesis Author

Level 1

10 points

May 6, 2013 10:44 PM in response to Linc Davis

Yes, 3 computers in the house: wife's iMac where all was fine, and my iMac and MBA that showed the same problems.

After more than a dozen hours, this is what fixed it:

On the MBA I did a recovery and reinstall of ML and then removed anything I could think of from /Library. After the reinstall the problem was still there, but something I removed did the trick.

On the iMac I did the same thing, but it never worked. So finally I had to erase the HD and do a truly FRESH install of ML. This worked, obviously, but it's taken me all night.

Certainly wasn't worth it for something so minor, but as I dug into it I started noticing more little problems with javascript, even in Chrome.

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Answer 14

May 14, 2013 10:49 PM in response to fronesis

I wish I knew what was wrong with Safari 6.0.4. Google voice has not worked for me in Safari since I upgraded to Lion. I upgraded to Mountain Lion recently thinking it might fix the Google voice problem but Safari is still terrible. I have problems with Safari 6.0.4 hanging, freezing, crashing and taking forever to load. I have no extensions installed other than the Adobe PDF Reader and Flash. Safari is reminding me of Netscape Navigator, which eventually died a peaceful death in the hands of AOL.

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Answer 15

fronesis Author

Level 1

10 points

May 15, 2013 6:29 AM in response to cbird1057

cbird1057 wrote:

I wish I knew what was wrong with Safari 6.0.4. Google voice has not worked for me in Safari since I upgraded to Lion. I upgraded to Mountain Lion recently thinking it might fix the Google voice problem but Safari is still terrible. I have problems with Safari 6.0.4 hanging, freezing, crashing and taking forever to load. I have no extensions installed other than the Adobe PDF Reader and Flash. Safari is reminding me of Netscape Navigator, which eventually died a peaceful death in the hands of AOL.

I know you might not be interested in taking the time to do this, but Safari 6.0.4 has run flawlessly for me since I did a clean reinstall of ML. All of my previous installations (of Lion and ML) had been upgrades, with all my other files in place. This time I erased the sytem and started from scratch. This is a ton of work and takes hours. But the results were great.

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