Safari keeps crashing/freezing after install of El Capitan

Just changed over to Firefox--checked Facebook and Yahoo sites--no freeze, no problem. May make it my default browser. Time will tell. Going to stop using Safari for awhile. Obviously the problem lies with El Capitan and Safari. Apple better get on it and fix it!!!!

I haven't read through the entire thread but appear to have a similar issue with my 2009 iMac. After switching to Yosemite, my computer (the entire computer, not just Safari) would freeze, only my mouse would move, forcing me to press the power button to restart (sometimes multiple times per day). Realizing that this seemed to typically happen when in Safari, I decided to try Chrome. It's been about a week and I have not had any issues (knock on wood).

I can say with absolute confidence that there is no inherent issue on 2009 imacs or MBPs. I have a 2009 MBP and just re-furbed a 2009 imac for charity, and both worked absolutely great.

I have , with reluctance, accepted that there may be some issues on a subset of newer machines - all these clean installs, done twice and the problem remains - hard ot argue with.

but 2009 - nope. I have done that twice myself. Works great.

Let me be clear - i am not disputing that you have a problem - but the problem is either data corruption, a bad install ( **** happens), or conflicting 3rd party software (there was a hue and cry about Mail CPU usage that was an inherent problem, and then, we foudn out everyone was using a specific anti-virus p[rogram). As usual.

Start up in safe mode and try it.

G

There are two different recovery modes on a macbook: local, and internet one. Local recovery comes with the newest installed version of the os, and can install the same version (so you can install only El Capitan, if that is your current os).

On the other hand, internet recovery pulls an image from Apple servers, then boots it up. This recovery contains the version of OS X, that your mac came with (In my case Yosemite). Sadly I don't know, if you can, or cannot upgrade between versions of OS X, or just to the newest (Mavericks -> Yosemite (-> El Capitan) or Mavericks -> El Capitan).

You can access internet recovery with cmd+option+r. Note: if you wipe your disk, and install OS X again, all of your data will be deleted, so backup before it!

Once you recover - via internet, CD or Wizzard Magic to any given version of OSX, you are in the normal situation. If you legally accessed Yosemite form the App Store with your login, you should be able to again. Better yet, if you kept a copy of the installer (you don't? really?) you can run that. I have never done internet recovery, so i cant speak to the particulars of what you wind up with.

Grant

The 10.11.3 update today is only a security update and doesn't touch on UI bugs, so don't expect a change. I've had a tab freeze from a YouTube video already. It also doesn't remedy the (I believe, universal?) bug from 10.11.2 of fullscreen YouTube videos not scaling to fit the screen properly on random occasions. The 10.11.4 update is focusing on areas other than security so hold your breath for that one, not 10.11.3.

I have just worked out - using Activity Monitor - that when Safari crashes Flash Player is using 100% CPU. hence the freeze. I was wondering whether Apple has blocked the use of Flash Player in one of its security updates. Since Firefox works with no problems I am putting it down to an issue between Safari & FP. I have FP fully updated so not using an old version.

Questions: Do I really need Flash Player and will uninstalling it cause any problems with some of the sites I visit that seem to require it?

I have just worked out - using Activity Monitor - that when Safari crashes Flash Player is using 100% CPU. hence the freeze. I was wondering whether Apple has blocked the use of Flash Player in one of its security updates. Since Firefox works with no problems I am putting it down to an issue between Safari & FP. I have FP fully updated so not using an old version.

Most having this issue have confirmed it doesn't involve Flash on their computers. This is from either never having installed it in the first place, or having disabled or uninstalled it while the problem persists.

That's not to say you're not having the issue you're having, just that the most common shared issue with Safari freezing in El Capitan has been when using HTML5 video (YouTube and a lot of sites show video this way if they can't find Flash or it's a chosen preference).

Questions: Do I really need Flash Player and will uninstalling it cause any problems with some of the sites I visit that seem to require it?

You don't need it, no. You will come across a few sites that will not play videos if you don't have it, so it's up to your own personal preference. In my own case, I never installed it so I switch over to Chrome for these rare occasions, or click in the 'Develop' menu in Safari and choose 'User Agent' -> 'iPad'. Flash for video is getting increasingly less common and most sites that require it are getting a bit dusty in parts.

When this issue first happened for me, I uninstalled flash player. I uninstalled it for two reasons…to see if it fixed this issue and also because I was absolutely sick of having to update it constantly. In answer to your questions, when I uninstalled flash player I almost never ran into an issue of not being able to view videos or any other web content. I think in the last two months since I've had it uninstalled I haven't been able to view content or videos maybe twice at the absolute most. I guess most websites are using HTML5 these days? Hope so. However as far as alleviating this issue, I don't think that did it. If I go to a YouTube page to view a video then open a new tab and close that YouTube tab I still have problems, however one thing I noticed is if I take my time and not close the tab immediately, in other words give 5 to 10 seconds or so, then close the tab it seems to work just fine. So to your point I wonder if Safari is doing something that takes a few seconds and closing the tab at that time causes the crash. I don't know, I didn't perform a scientific test, so it's very hard to say. One other thing I did is I repaired my permissions. I did that because not only was Safari crashing due to this issue, but it got to the point where Safari was crashing for me constantly on all sorts of websites. I could use my MacBook for an hour and it would crash 3 to 4 times and I haven't played any videos whatsoever. So clearly I had some other issue. Now as you know, Apple took out repair permissions from disk utility in El Cap. So I had used Onyx, which is my go to utility, and I repaired permissions via that. Since then Safari has not crashed one time and that's been almost a month. No exaggeration, Safari has not crashed once. However I do still see that delay or freeze or whatever you want to call it when I close a tab after having viewed a video. I'm not getting the crashing but clearly the issue still exists at least to some degree. Now don't get me wrong I'm not saying that repairing your permissions is going to cure all of your problems, but I did find it positive that at least it stopped Safari crashing in general for me. Your mileage may vary of course.

...however one thing I noticed is if I take my time and not close the tab immediately, in other words give 5 to 10 seconds or so, then close the tab it seems to work just fine. So to your point I wonder if Safari is doing something that takes a few seconds and closing the tab at that time causes the crash. I don't know, I didn't perform a scientific test, so it's very hard to say.

Yes, you're not the only one getting this impression. Myself and Adam F have also felt this. See below for an earlier comment I made in this thread:

It's probably just confirmation bias but I'm almost convinced that if I pause a video before closing the tab and don't roll the mouse about too much before closing the tab it seems to crash less. I'm not going to advocate that as a solution as I'm sure it's just random odds working in my favour (as many apparent solutions can be).

I haven't anything more substantial to offer so I'm still not going to go down the road of confirming this affects the issue. But it's still a hunch in the back of my mind.

Seems the problem is in video html playing. It stops on Youtube and Netflix aswell

Thank you for adding that @TheJimbo. There's definitely a correlation between closing tabs/windows and the system taking going down. Somehow, when Apple ignores the issue it doesn't seem to go away.

You're the first to bring up permission repairs.

It would be nice if Apple would get this ridiculous issue squashed... a $2K rMBP can't play YouTube videos without 3rd party software!? SERIOUSLY?

Re: Flash Player - again

As this thread has moved (to page 10) history becomes, well, history.

At the very beginning, i threw out there that on my Macs (neither of which have any issues, BTW) most Youtube videos are accompanied by very high CPU associated with a flash player instance.

I was told that YouTube uses HTML5 and it could not be the case. Yet, it was. And i was aware of the discrepancy.

So i'll come back and say again that i do see flash activity coincident with Youtube playing - *sometimes*. Why? And might this be connected?

Just a clue.

Grant

I'll precede this by saying I don't have Flash installed on this laptop and never have, so any of my comments so far have been guaranteed relevant to HTML5 video only with no undiscovered Flash background-process that I wasn't aware of.

I was told that YouTube uses HTML5 and it could not be the case. Yet, it was. And i was aware of the discrepancy.

YouTube can still use Flash for videos. Perhaps the suggestions were alluding to it being **** hard to make this happen now. YouTube has been pushing HTML5 videos for quite a while now and if you Google advice on how to use Flash in YouTube you'll see it's not straightforward anymore. If you want to be certain, just right-click a YouTube video. A menu you will pop-up and the bottom option will mention 'about the HTML5 player'. If this appears, you can be certain the video is not Flash. If it doesn't, YouTube used to (last time I remember using it with Flash) have a Flash specific menu. Either way, the inclusion or omission of the 'about the HTML5 player' will dictate the platform in use.

I don't think anyone said YouTube can't use flash. I think I had mentioned that YT defaults to flash since I don't have flash installed.

Chrome has its own Flash, so I just used it for YouTube. On my end, it's even showing the HTML 5 player. Somehow Chrome doesn't get tripped up with YouTube.

Sooooo...no word from Apple on this issue...any chance Apple is going to try launching a YouTube competitor? 😕 (Just throwing it out there.)

Grant - You had stressed that we need people to try clean installs way back in this thread. A bunch of people have chimed in since then saying that they tried clean installs and couldn't alleviate the problem.