Safari keeps crashing/freezing after install of El Capitan

The mouse cursor moves, but has no other effect (e.g., hovering over dock items does nothing, clicks do nothing).

So it appears that there are different types of freezes occurring. I am also experiencing occasional freezes when closing a YouTube tab, but sometimes my system freezes even when browsing regular web pages such as news websites (in Safari). In certain occasions, the cursor moves but cannot be used for anything, as you report, and in others it is completely irresponsive.

I just had a crash and used the Console for the first time ever and apparently "Smart Search Field" was "engaged" just before the freeze occurred. Funny though, the system has registered that I opened and closed the lid in an effort to make my computer usable again (to no avail), so apparently the freeze does not exactly make the whole system unusable, it just makes it... impossible for the user to interact with it.

This does make me think it is really either a problem with Safari or with my hardware. As I see, a couple of updates have been released for Safari and none of these (including the Technical Preview) seems to fix any of this. It's also been 7 months now. Time to give up on Safari, maybe? Or on Apple? I am relatively new to Mac (have been using one for less than 2 years), but this is certainly not the quality I expected.

Sigh... well it looks like I still get the same problem with Chrome. It was going smoothly for a while but the complete system freeze started up again. Oddly enough I'm getting the rainbow wheel as frequently as I was getting the total system freeze in Safari, and the total system freeze is happening less frequently. Hopefully this new Safari app will do the trick but if not I will have to take it to the apple store. There is no reason why a brand new laptop can't handle a couple of videos and some regular internet browsing. I'm starting to think the 2015 retina's are defective.

Same thing on my MacBook Pro Retina 13" Early 2015. Freezes when I switch tab and watch YouTube video (html5).

Log:

Woah I remember posting my problem on page 6 or 7 and now it has 28. So many people have the same problem.

The issue is still here for me. Freezes and now Safari even starting to lag and act weirdly. I get rainbow wheel when I open Facebook and I think its because of all scripts that Facebook use.

In my experiences it happens with switching or closing tabs that have not only HTML5 video but other scripts also. Just happened 10 minutes ago. It unfroze over the period of the time but I could hardly open this thread page. Didn't wont to load.

I just found it oddly that the problem is so big for us but still no Apple response.

Also guys anyone tried 10.11.5 public beta?

Any freezes on that latest update?

Strange that I can't to provoke crashes in safari. I try to open many YouTube tabs with video plays in it. But everything runs perfectly. Very strange

I found that clearing cache, website data and history (all of them, not just web data or caches) fixed the problem for a while - no crash or freeze for about 3 weeks. I also found an updated article on macworld which suggests the same thing. I will try running a clean safari until the next updates and see if the freezes happen again.

It happens 3 times in 2 days. That's **** me off. Today i will try 10.11.5 beta

OK, you're describing closely the problems I was having. No, they aren't limited to Youtube pages, though they could provoke it. Just news pages as you said, with lotsa script. Everything would look fine and then I'd start to scroll down and immediately I'd see that not very much of the page had loaded, and then the spinning beach ball and freeze. However, I could move the cursor and click in the command bar with the ball, or even click the offending tab and close it. That would appear to solve things, but not always.

This "problem" seems to affect a range of machines, and at least three browsers. The problem doesn't always manifest the exact symptoms, depending on the machine evidently, but the set of symptoms is similar.

Not to beat a dead horse, but I uninstalled Flash about two weeks or so ago. Not one freeze since. I used Adobe's uninstaller, but using Spotlight I found that it missed a couple of files which I discarded manually. I've been thinking, reinstall Flash and see what happens, just as a test. Please tell me not to do this but my curiosity grows.

Just happened to me on 10.11.5 while I tried to close YouTube tab.

Cache, history, data cleaned yesterday. Unfroze but it lags and I have to go restart my mac now.

Maybe this issues caused by third party apps? Lets try to create a full list of used apps and try to identify patterns.

So hey you guys, i m completely new to this community in terms of writing. however, i ve been reading this particular thread for about two weeks.

roughly 5 weeks to 7 weeks ago, my macbook retina mid 2015 froze when using safari (youtubevids were involved in 4 out of 5 freezes//perhaps also adblock-associated).it was really annoying and frustrating (as many of you know), so i contacted the support and learned about all the smc and nvpram and clean installs and whatever. none of these things really worked for me (as many of you also know).

when the mac froze the other day, it was the straw that broke the camel's back and i went to the genius bar -super ****** and annoyed btw- in a local apple store. not having been scheduled, i ve waited for roughly 3h to finally talk to one of the apple employees. the guy connected an ipad and did some tests on my macbook. during one of the test for the graphics software the macbook -fortunately- froze, prompting that the constant freezes are hardware related. the technicians at the store changed the logic board of my macbook and i ll keep you posted if the freeze still occur. so far, there haven't been any.

OK, the installation of Flash brought back all the problems. It's uninstalled and all's OK.

Maybe I don't have the problem others have. I know this: Until the installation of El Capitan, I had two MBPs that had NEVER crashed. NEVER EVER. And the crashes always involved either YouTube videos or script-heavy pages or both.

And, turning off Flash didn't work. I had to uninstall it.

Best of luck everyone!!!

FatFrumos wrote:

Maybe this issues caused by third party apps? Lets try to create a full list of used apps and try to identify patterns.

Naaah. I tried a clean instal od ElCapitan (by clean I mean a bootable pen drive installation) and after few days it crashed again. There is no pattern for it. I have a mid 2014 MacBook Air and also have this problem. With or without flash installed. On a "clean" system or on a "full" one. With "normal" safari and on Safari TP after few weeks.

I'm thinking about getting back to Yosemite via Online Recovery. Sadly I'll loose full iOS 9 integration (notes etc)...

all I can say is that it's f****ing ridiculous.. How can a system update be so bad that people all around the world have a problem with an integrated browser. Not mentioning photographers, creators etc having problems with their daily use professional apps.