OS X 10.11.4 freezing and/or crashing while using Safari

@saraigate: Sorry, but I sadly have no suggestions for you, as I am still totally at a loss on what might be triggering all of this.

@all: I have been updating to the latest 10.11.6 beta two days ago. It appears to be a lot better (worked on it for 6 hours straight after the first crash), but I still get crashes/freezes/reboots in the following cases:
1. when the system tries to turn off the monitor (not go to sleep) after 10 minutes of inactivity (I was on the phone), it reboots

2. my time machine drive shows constant activity after its 2nd (hourly) backup where it accesses the TM drive every second, so it clicks like an old clock, then you usually gets a warning that the backupfailed, then it reboots. The first backup always goes through without problems though.

My Youtube/iTunes reboots seem to be gone with the latest beta though, or at least have not occurred yet after some hours of letting it run in the background, so that's definitely an improvement.

This might help some. I to have had the "freeze" since 10.11.4. I've done the following:

Downgraded to Yosemite 10.10.5 - still had freezing.

Went back to 10.11.5 - freezing continued.

Most of the time the freezing occurred when switching to a new Tab. I also got an email from Apple on one of my Bug reports that maybe I had a hardware problem that can be fixed under a recall.

https://www.apple.com/support/macbookpro-videoissues/

Well I don't have time to place my MBP in service for a week (maybe later this year after a project I'm doing is finished). However I did research on the symptoms of these MBP's back in 2012/2013 and saw that some folks resolved their problem of freezing by

Open System Preferences

Open Energy Saver

Un Check "Automatic graphics switching"

Evidently there are 2 different GPU that can be used on your Mac and the system can "switch" to which ever one will do the job the best. (I could be wrong on this explanation).

Well after 3 freezes on 6/27/2016, I un checked "Automatic graphics switching".

Since then I have noticed that sometimes there is a slight delay in the display, but not so much that it is bothersome.

So far I have had 4 days of "no freeze". I plan on getting the recall fix later this year (expires 12/31/2016) but in the meantime I hope my fix will continue to work.

I'll post in a few weeks if it continues to work, or I'll post with the bad news that it didn't. I know this won't work for all Macs but if it does work for a few then great.

Thanks,

Tom

I'm having a similar problem on a MacBook Pro 13 Retina Early 2015 (OS X 10.11.5 (15F34)). When I play a YouTube video, the Safari (9.1.1 (11601.6.17)) tab freezes. It does not happen on other browsers and it does not happen with other streaming services (e.g., Netflix) played on Safari. Does anyone have a fix? Thank you.

Try turning graphics switching off, it has worked for me for a week now without freezing.

Open System Preferences

Open Energy Saver

Un Check "Automatic graphics switching"

Thank you for your reply, Toca143, but my MacBook model does not have this feature.

@tiger: constant 1600. here are all the numbers

new beta was released 2 days ago. I was stable for the first day, but did not have the system running for long. Freeze/Crash on the second day after approx. 5 hours. No more erratic Time Machine behaviour though. Maybe we are on the right track. But it still crashes.

Hi. It may be a combo of OS X itself (drivers and/or kernel) and Safari but some say using other browsers didn't help.

I kind of gave up for now with Apple fixing it with the incremental updates and even macOS Sierra (reportedly doesn't fix it) and just manually set the fans using smcControl (coz' the CPU rpm can go much higher than Macs Fan Control), set it all at 2550rpm (better if it's 90% rpm or even a 100% if you can tolerate the noise and ok with the notion that it'll shorten the life of the fans faster) and put a small Honeywell fan set at 2 all the time (better if 3 if you can tolerate the noise) at the back center as close to the iMac as possible (for Macbooks, you may need a good cooling fan sytem at the bottom). And then I never shut it down/switch off, it's ON 24 hours a day. No more freezing even with so many tabs on Safari (more than 30 tabs 2 windows). It's very, very stable now with this incovenient setup (quite noisy). It usually freezes when I boot it after a long shutdown. I based 2550rpm on a maximun branded fan I came across in my research. use two small desktop fans on the two hottest sides (for iMacs, for example) if you can (again it'll be noisy).

I read 2000rpm should be the minimum fan (was recommended by an authorized Apple technician) and I read from the PC guys (doing overclocking, which I used to do when I had to buy a PC coz' of cost reasons) that it's not good that the fans are on auto because it'll wear down the fans much faster with the variation (I suppose that's like switching on and off an appliance for hours on end) and that it's better if the fans are at constant speed all the time. I believe it 2000rpm seems to be a sweet spot of quiet and cooling.

I hope this works for you too. God bless. Rev. 21:4

with sleep & energy saver (my sort of shutdown now is manual sleep in the Apple menu). Enough to buy me time I suppose, to use for work until I've earned enough to buy a new Mac (pray a Mac Pro + latest Apple Display- hopefully they really lower the prices:-)

Hi Broozar, thanks for sharing, I have the following configuration (see picture) and no freezing.

Same with imac late 2009 3 time in 2 hours today

Dear all, I followed the steps suggested in another thread, and it solved by problem:

"Safari/Preferences/Advanced - enable the Develop menu, then go there and Empty Caches. Quit/reopen Safari and test. Then try Safari/History/Show History and delete all history items. Quit/reopen Safari and test. You can also try try Safari/Reset Safari. The down side is it clears all cookies. Doing this may cause some sites to no longer recognize your computer as one that has visited the web site. In Finder hold down the option/alt key while selecting the Go menu item. Select Library. Then Library./Caches/com.apple.Safari/Cache.db and move it to the trash.

Go to Safari Preferences/Extensions and turn all extensions off. Test. If okay, turn the extensions on one by one until you figure out what extension is causing the problem." (by Eric Root)

Cheers!