YouTube video playing in background from Spotlight search

Maybe I'm having a complete brain f-a-r-t here but I can't figure out what's going on at all. I did a Spotlight search and in the results a YouTube video from my browser history appeared. I accidentally clicked or hovered over it before clicking the correct result I wanted but suddenly in the background the video was playing. Or at least the audio continued playing.


No window in any open application was running it. I quit my browsers and iTunes, I relaunched the Finder, and I removed the search terms from Spotlight. Continued to hear the audio, couldn't find the video or loaded YouTube page on any of my Desktops or backgrounds. Launched Dashboard to see if it was running in a Widget but no luck there either. When it ended I tried to reproduce the problem:


  1. Clicking the Spotlight result for the video opened it in my browser, closed it no problem.
  2. Tried hovering over it, the menu fly-out loaded a preview of the YouTube page/video which played but then stopped after moving my mouse away.
  3. I hovered over the result again but this time clicked and dragged a tiny bit, a faint Safari icon appearing as I did. This duplicated the result and the mystery audio continued playing after I let go of the icon. I didn't drag and drop the icon anywhere, it just moved back into the results list. I essentially reproduced a clumsy, accidental move made with my drawing stylus.


Any ideas on what the hidden background audio (and possibly video) is playing in? How can it be stopped (other than restarting)? Thanks.


Message was edited by: dugost Can't believe f-a-r-t gets censored. Forums set to 'Victorian' mode, Apple? ;)

iMac, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.2), 2.7 GHz Inter Core i5, 12 GB RAM

Posted on Aug 27, 2013 10:14 PM

Reply
2 replies

Aug 28, 2013 4:21 AM in response to dugost

Safari browser?


Reset Safari.


Click Safari in the menu bar.

From the drop down select "Reset Safari".

Uncheck the box next to " Remove saved names and passwords".

Click "Reset".




Empty Caches


Safari > Preference > Advanced

Checkmark the box for "Show Develop menu in menu bar".

Develop menu will appear in the Safari menu bar.

Click Develop and select "Empty Caches" from the dropdown.


Turn off Extensions if any, and launch Safari.

Safari > Preferences > Extensions

Aug 30, 2013 1:33 PM in response to dominic23

No, not in the browser itself. The video didn't load in a particular browser when this issue first cropped up. That's why it's so confusing. Even after quitting all open browsers it continued playing. It's like the Spotlight results preview continued playing, but this only occurs when I click and drag slightly on the result. It's a really weird and extremely specific situation but I was hoping someone would have an idea how this could happen.

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YouTube video playing in background from Spotlight search

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