What could be causing the whirling ball or page freezing in Safari (most often in Amazon)?

Please run EtreCheck and post the report here.

http://etresoft.com/etrecheck

Download it, open Downloads folder, click on it to open and select ”Open”.

Select a problem from the “Choose a problem” popup menu box and then “Start EtreCheck” in the dialog.

Click “Share Report” button in the toolbar, select “Copy to Clipboard” and then paste it when you reply.

Delete Safari Caches and com.apple.Safari.plist

1. Delete Caches

Close all windows and quit all applications.

Hold "option" key down and click "Go" menu in the Finder menu bar.

Select "Library" from the dropdown.

Library > Caches > com.apple.Safari

Right click the com.apple.Safari file and select "Move To Trash.

Close windows and relaunch Safari.

2. Delete com.apple.Safari.plist file and test.

Empty the Trash.

Quit all applications.

Hold the option key down and click the "Go" menu in the Finder menu bar.

Select "Library" from the drop down.

Library > Preferences > com.apple.Safari.plist

Right click on it and select "Move it to Trash".

Restart. Relaunch Safari.

If this doesn’t help, “Put Back” the com.apple.Safari.plist

Right click on the Trash icon in the Dock and select “Open”.

Right click on the com.apple.Safari.plist and select “Put Back”.

blountcomick,

I get this beachballing too. I'm using an iMac running Mavericks 10.9.5. Browser is Safari 9.0.3.

Like you, I seem to be getting this only when accessing the UK Amazon website. The beachballing pops into action the moment I click on a link anywhere in an Amazon page. Because all other websites that I regularly visit are not showing this problem I'm inclined to think that this is something specifically to do with the Amazon site itself at present. I'll be interested to see what conclusions Dominic23 and yourself arrive at, following the changes/testing you've now performed.

Incidentally, I've Adobe Flash installed, and I wonder whether this 'intolerance' of Safari, which began only in the last few days, has anything to do with Flash (which I've blocked for the Amazon site and a good many others). Apart from Flash, I've no other extensions or plug-ins installed. The only reason I have Flash at all is because it's still needed for one particular major site that I regularly use. Am not sure whether Amazon still run Flash on their webpages or whether they've long since adopted HTML5. But there again this might not be anything related to Flash, perhaps.

A restart generates a new .plist.

blountcomick wrote:

Do I repeat your solution if the problem returns?

Yes.

These are two of the standard troubleshooting steps.

Safari Caches and Safari.plist hold valuable data. Indiscriminately removing data is no not warranted.

But you can delete it.

If deleting this data doesn't resolve the issue, Apple provides the "Put Back" from Trash option.

That will return the Caches and .plist folders to previous state,the way it was before moving to the Trash.

Best.

blountcomick,

Am glad you got it sorted - or at least that's how it appears to be now.

Yes, like you, when I browsed at Amazon, on some pages the choosing of reviews just resulted in the page effectively freezing and the spinning beachball then resulted. Other websites were fine, and they still are. But the Amazon one is still the same.

This looks like a problem that's special to the Amazon website, as it's quite a coincidence that the two of us have experienced the identical issue at much the same time, and yet all other websites that I normally use - a core of about 20 - are absolutely fine.

I'm afraid I confess ignorance in this particular technical area but I guess something about the way in which the Amazon site has got cached lately on our respective machines has messed things up, and so clearing out the Safari caches has fixed it.

Can you clarify exactly what you did at Step 2 onward, as you said you couldn't find the com.apple.Safari.plist file? This is just in case I myself am forced to use the same technique that you used to solve this problem.

So the final line of Dominic's Part 1 should have read:

"Close windows, Restart, and relaunch Safari", then?

I've now done just about everything to rid myself of this annoying problem, including the clearing of all website data in the browser (Safari > Preferences > Privacy), Resetting Safari, and deleting all websites from my Reading List. I've also separately removed all cookies, etc from the privacy settings. It then seemed for a while that the issue with the Amazon site had been cured, because I didn't get the beachball. However, it has now returned. Thus, I'm no further ahead than before. It's beginning to look as though I'll have to try the method you used, blountcomick.

Along with the normal cookies you'd expect to get loaded, I've noticed that the following cookies/local data get put on my Mac when certain of my regular websites are visited. None of the websites concerned are doubtful ones, incidentally; they're all well-known and up-front sites. The cookies/data concerned are:-

247-inc.net

betrad.com

luckyorange.net

veinteractive.com

Googling for these, it appears they're all 'legitimate' sites involved in tracking and collecting visitors' usage at certain websites. It begins to look as though the Amazon site has some of these embedded in it now (it didn't used to). I've therefore been wondering if this has had a bearing on the beachball appearing at Amazon.

Have a look at your cookies listing in Safari (Safari > Preferences > Privacy > Details button), bloutcomick, and let me know whether you too have got any of those four there. Of course, much will depend on the actual sites visited. If you do find any of them, this is, I think, a new development which certainly in my case has coincided with "A Privacy Reminder from Goggle", which appeared in the google results when I did a search on these four. This Reminder has subsequently invited me to download an add-on to the browser to (apparently) allow me to control the data collected by these sites. I've not responded to it. In fact, I wonder whether that's bona fide; I'm not in the habit of downloading files I know nothing about.

It looks like I'll have no option now but to try 'the bloutcomick method' in order to get rid of the beachball. I do hope you're 100% convinced you yourself have finally got rid of it. I thought I had, for a while, but it was still lurking around, waiting to suddenly appear.