Safari crashes in distant session

What do you mean by a "distant session?"

Launch the Console application in any of the following ways:

☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)

☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.

☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Console in the icon grid.

Step 1

Make sure the title of the Console window is All Messages. If it isn't, select All Messages from the SYSTEM LOG QUERIES menu on the left. If you don't see that menu, select

View ▹ Show Log List

from the menu bar.

Enter the name of the crashed application or process in the Filter text field. Select the messages from the time of the last crash, if any. Copy them to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C. Paste into a reply to this message (command-V).

When posting a log extract, be selective. In most cases, a few dozen lines are more than enough.

Please do not indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into this discussion.

Important: Some private information, such as your name, may appear in the log. Anonymize before posting.

Step 2

In the Console window, look under User Diagnostic Reports (not "Diagnostic and Usage Messages") for crash reports related to the crashed process. The report name starts with the name of the process, and ends with ".crash". Select the most recent report and post the entire contents — again, the text, not a screenshot. In the interest of privacy, I suggest that, before posting, you edit out the “Anonymous UUID,” a long string of letters, numbers, and dashes in the header of the report, if it’s present (it may not be.) Please don’t post other kinds of diagnostic report — they're very long and not helpful.

Please post the whole report. I know it's long.

Read this whole message before doing anything.

Back up all data.

Quit Safari if it’s running. Then select

 ▹ Force Quit…

from the menu bar. A small window will open with a list of running applications. Safari may appear in that list, even though you quit it. If so, select it and press return. Close the window.

Step 1

If Adobe Flash Player is installed, select

 ▹ System Preferences... ▹ Flash Player ▹ Advanced

and click Delete All. Close the preference pane.

Hold down the option key and select

Go ▹ Library

from the Finder menu bar. Delete the following items from the Library folder (some may not exist):

• Caches/com.apple.Safari
• Caches/com.apple.WebKit.PluginProcess
• Caches/com.apple.WebProcess
• Caches/Metadata/Safari
• Preferences/com.apple.WebKit.PluginHost.plist
• Preferences/com.apple.WebKit.PluginProcess.plist
• Saved Application State/com.apple.Safari.savedState

Leave the Library folder open. Try Safari again. If it works now, stop here. Close the Library folder. If you still have problems, continue.

Step 2

Triple-click anywhere in the line below on this page to select it:

open $TMPDIR../C

Copy the selected text to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C.

Quit Safari again. Launch the built-in Terminal application in any of the following ways:

☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)

☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.

☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Terminal in the icon grid.

Paste into the Terminal window (command-V). I've tested these instructions only with Safari. If you use another browser, you may have to press the return key after pasting. A folder should open. Delete the following items from the folder, if they exist:

• com.apple.Safari
• Anything with a name that begins "com.apple.Web"

Quit Terminal. Close the folder. Launch Safari and test.

Step 3

If Safari still doesn’t work, quit, go back to the Finder and move the following items from the open Library folder to the Desktop (some may not exist):

• Cookies/Cookies.binarycookies
• Internet Plug-Ins
• Preferences/ByHost/com.apple.Safari.*.plist
• Preferences/com.apple.Safari.Extensions.plist
• Preferences/com.apple.Safari.LSSharedFileList.plist
• Preferences/com.apple.Safari.plist
• Preferences/com.apple.WebFoundation.plist
• PubSub/Database
• Safari
• SyncedPreferences/com.apple.Safari.plist

Here, * stands for a long string of letters, numbers, and dashes.

Note 1: you are not moving the Safari application. You’re moving a folder named “Safari.”

Note 2: This step will remove your Safari extensions, if any, and their settings. If you choose to restore them, do so one at a time, testing after each step to make sure you haven’t restored the problem.

Try again. Your settings and bookmarks will be lost. The default set of bookmarks will be restored. Delete them all.

If Safari is now working normally (apart from the lost settings), look inside the “Safari” folder on the Desktop for a file named “Bookmarks.plist”. Select

File ▹ Import Bookmarks

from the Safari menu bar. Import from that file. Recreate the rest of your Safari settings. You can then delete the items you moved to the Desktop.

If the issue is still not resolved, quit Safari again and put all the items you moved to the Desktop back where they were, overwriting the newer ones that may have been created in their place. You don’t need to replace the files you deleted in step 1. Stop here and post again.

If you don’t like the results of step 3, you can undo it completely by quitting Safari and restoring the items you moved or deleted in that step from your backup, overwriting any that were created in their place.