Q: Safari freezes when visiting certain websites.

This appears to be the same problem that's been especially affecting other Mac and PC users for the last couple of months, all over the globe. The Amazon websites behave particularly badly in this regard, giving rise to not only the freezing phenomenon but also the appearance of the Mac's dreaded spinning beachball. There have been lengthy discussions within these forums on it. All platforms and pretty much all browsers are affected by it. Flash doesn't seem to be a factor, and the three latest versions of OSX - Mavericks, Yosemite and El Capitan - are equally afflicted.

The problem appears to be caused by changed Javascript at certain websites, which now makes those websites less compatible with browsers. My own investigations showed that, in the case of Safari, the problem was fontsize-sensitive. Certainly, in the case of iMacs, if you went into Safari's Preferences settings, to the Advanced tab, and set the browser fontsize to 14 or less, it avoided the issue and thereafter the site was stable. In your case you're using a MacBook but nevertheless it might be worth you trying the same.

This issue is widespread, but it'll never be fixed unless and until Apple gets enough complaints from the users. So, complain! http://www.apple.com/feedback. The affected websites need telling as well, but it's not so easy to contact their developers, I've found.

This issue has become huge in its importance. Apple appear oblivious to it (or disinterested), even after some months.

My personal view is that, quite apart from the 'edgy' implementation of Javascript at websites, Safari itself has some bugs in this area. I've found the beachball appearing momentarily (with no detrimental after-effect) when switching back from Web use to an onboard app or to the GUI of my router, for example.

I am having the same problem.

When running Safari Version 9.0.3 (11601.4.4), at least once a week my iMac Version 10.11.3 (15D21), the system essentially freezes -- I can move the mouse around on the screen, but cannot click as OP above, nor input from the keyboard.

The only course of action I can take is use the power button to re-boot.

Have tried to VPN in from iPad to kill Safari, but cannot connect when the system is in this state.

Are you able to force quit Safari (command - option/alt - esc)?

When the system freezes like this it causes a 'Web content error' to be logged by the Mac, as can be seen in Activity Monitor, the built-in utility in the Mac (see the Mac's Applications folder/Utilities). Virtually the whole of the CPU's resources get used as a result, so it's no surprise that your attempt to kill Safari remotely failed. On my own iMac I am at least able to Quit the browser when the freezing happens (albeit that I don't now get the issue because I've changed down to a smaller fontsize). I'm running on Mavericks 10.9.5 and Safari 9.0.3.

Eric Root wrote:

 

Are you able to force quit Safari (command - option/alt - esc)?

I can't say for certain as I was not familiar with this command... I will give it a try next time as this is much more graceful than power reset -- thank you.

But in general, clicking the mouse and other keyboard input is ignored, so not sure if this will work or not. Will report back.

ap3st3r,

I hope it is OK to join your thread as I believe we are having the same issue.

Im having the same issue for about 2 weeks now. I've updated OS and that didn't help.

Getting really frustrating having to reboot at least 1x a day.

Have you reported this to Apple? http://www.apple.com/feedback. Something will only get done about it if Apple concludes that enough people are having the problem - or a similar one - and that Safari is implicated. Since Apple developers do not peruse these forums, merely posting here isn't necessarily going to result in a solution. Have you tried the fontsize workaround? That's worked for some people, myself included, but I suspect it might be machine-dependent (screensize, and therefore that's why it's fontsize-dependent).

I must say that Safari seems completely broken at present, as there seem to be never-ending reports now of users having trouble with slowness, some websites never opening or only partially displaying, and freezing. I manually install my updates to OSX/Safari, but I'm finding the situation with Safari sufficiently worrying that I've purposely not done the latest one. My personal opinion is that bugs were introduced in one or more of the Safari updates some months ago and the effects of those bugs have rolled on into more-recent updates, causing the browser to become more and more unstable. Hence all the complaints in these forums. Meanwhile, Apple seem to have been ignoring the situation. Certainly, the latest update, issued about a week ago, has, by all accounts, made no difference. The freezing phenomenon hasn't been helped by certain websites having revised the Javascript that they use, making it less compatible with Safari and a few other browsers (at Amazon sites the webpage will eventually freeze if, in Safari, you use a fontsize greater than 14, on an iMac for example).

Safari - Unsupported third-party add-ons may cause Safari to unexpectedly quit or have performance issues

Safari doesn't load a page or webpage items are missing

Safari/other browsers – Website not loading

Have downloaded OS X Elcapitan Version 10.11.4 (15E65) yesterday. Safari "hang" is now more frequent and freezes after an hour of use. I have not noticed any patterns to the websites that cause the problem. In addition to occurring more frequent, some of the hangs are accompanied by the spinning beachball. The only recourse when this occurs is to use the power button to power down, as the keyboard and mouse are non-functional.

I checked some of the suggestions above and my Safari  (Version 9.1 (11601.5.17.1)) has no external plug-ins and no extensions installed.

Really hate the notion of using trying other browsers... have been a die-hard mac user forever. This is first true issue I've ever experienced with Mac... really hoping someone has a suggestion to remedy.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

PS. I did report the problem last week, but have not received any acknowledgement thus far.

No, you won't get any acknowledgement from Apple. But at least it's a means of telling them. There are other methods of contacting them more directly, including free phone contact, and for that you need to look at the options at the bottom of http://www.apple.com/support/, including at extreme bottom-right. Another thought is that you could complain also at a local highstreet Apple Store, if one's conveniently to hand. The harder and more widely we press Apple, expressing our deep dissatisfaction with the situation, the more likely Apple will sit up and start to take notice.

You mention the spinning beachball. The appearance of that is indeed symptomatic of this issue with Safari. Until I discovered a workaround some weeks ago, Safari would freeze whenever I visited the UK Amazon site, and the beachball would then appear. It'd never happen with any other website I used. My mouse pointer immediately became ineffective, except for some limited movement of it. I found that if I moved the pointer out of the website's window I was then able to do a Quit or to move backward to a previous and different website and then continue. But I think the ability to do this probably depends on the individual circumstances. I've gathered that this freezing has happened with pretty much all the Amazon sites around the world. Also, some other large websites, such as that of the New York Times, exhibit this behaviour as well.

Use of Activity Monitor, one of the utilities built into OSX (see Applications > Utilities), has always flagged a 'website error' when this freezing has occurred, at the same time showing that CPU activity goes up to virtually 100%. It's clearly an issue that involves both Safari and certain websites, and it's my contention that the websites of Amazon and the like now fail in compatibility terms because changes were made some months ago in the Javascript that they use (that's Javascript, not Java), so that now the website hyperlinks and other functions no longer respond properly to the browser. Incidentally, this issue seems to be affecting all other browsers (despite some claims to the contrary), as well as being common to Yosemite, Mavericks and El Capitan. Curiously though, one or two respondents say that they don't experience the problem at all. Eric Root, for example, says he's not met the problem. The 64-dollar question is Why? What's he been doing that we haven't? Is it just that he hasn't exercised the Amazon site sufficiently? After all, the problem at that site comes and goes; sometimes you can spend some hours there and not meet it at all, but in other sessions the freezing will happen within a minute or two.

The workaround that I discovered was to reconfigure Safari to use a smaller fontsize. This was, and is, dead simple to do. It's stopped the freezing and the beachballing, though just occasionally the beachball will appear for half-a-second (with no consequence) when I'm moving from being online to offline. This workaround has worked for many others too, I've gathered, though I suspect it might be confined to specific Macs, such as iMacs. Always worth a try, though. It could be, for instance, that certain website developers took a decision some months ago to cut down the number of compatible fontsizes, perhaps as a measure in slimming down website performance to conform more to iOS devices. Who knows?

One particular theory banded about by others is that some websites are now employing IPv6 and that therefore users who continue to use IPv4 will inevitably find that their browser will then either not open the website at all, or will display only a limited amount of the webpage. Personally, I've not tested for this, for the simple reason that my ISP tells me that they do not, as yet, support IPv6. In any event, these symptoms can just as easily be the result of some corruption of website data on the individual's machine (history, cookies, cache, etc), which could be corrected by just clearing them out.

Finally, there's the question of Flash Player. Is it necessary? Should it be used on any Mac these days? Could it be interfering with the operation of Safari in some detrimental way? Well, it's classed as a 'plug-in' and is most certainly still required at many websites, one or two of which I regularly use. And despite all the bad press that Flash has received in recent years about holes in its security, I found that the latest iMac on demo in my local Apple Store most definitely was using it, so I can only summise that Apple regards the presence of Flash on its Macs as perfectly valid, provided it's kept up to date.

The workaround that I discovered was to reconfigure Safari to use a smaller fontsize.

I'm not clear how to try this suggestion -- on my version of Safari, Advanced tab has an Accessibility checkbox option "Never use font sizes smaller than XX"... is this the option being referenced to? I set it to 12 to try out, but it has not prevented Safari from hanging.

Also note, soon as I posted the prior message above, Safari froze on this Apple Support website -- as I mention above, I am seeing no pattern with this issue -- certainly not limited to Amazon or sites with high graphic content.

........ and?

Yes, I was referring to "Never use font sizes smaller than ...".

As it happens, I've been posting about Safari and its recent issues on a different Apple forum, and it might be of some interest that a fellow Safari sufferer (WWimac2015) has today 'achieved a result' by disconnecting and then rebooting the wi-fi, though quite what he/she means by that I'm not sure. It might not apply in your case but, again, might be worth a try. He/she managed to get an Apple techie to phone him/her. Only time and further browsing will tell whether it's proved to be a real solution for him/her. Have a look at "Is OSX/Safari update (21st March 2016) a help or a hazard?". Scroll right down to the latest submissions.

I have the same problem and it is becoming ridiculous: I am force-quitting the browser several times a day.

Safari - Version 9.1 (10601.5.17.4)

Yosemite