Safari crashing my display (and nothing else)

First on your mac - search help for shortcuts - there should be Shortcuts for freezes and Shortcuts for Sleep and shutting down.

The freezes go back to Snow leopard at least and have something to do with Spotlight/finder indexing not being able to keep up and Unix style drive cleanup.

Have had safari freezes over the years and that had to do with top sites - so edit out any top sites you don't want in top sites, RSS bookmarks also seem to refresh, same if in email. When I was using Safari did not realize top sites had been "fixed" to refresh until I edited out top sites - Apple does have a default list - and will add sites you use a lot - editing puts the site in a list as not top sites.

Apparently Spotlight can get behind on indexing (MD and MDworker jobs in Activity monitor) to the point that you may get a memory leak. After that happens if your startup sits on blue or grey screen but you hear the drive doing something - wait - when the desktop comes up - restart immediately - and if that gets any spinning wheel - restart again - should be fast - then to make sure see if you can go to a menu (i use utilities) and open something(I open console) if it is okay your are good to go.

dggxam1 wrote:

I don't think searching help for shortcuts would do any good because the entire display freezes, Safari or otherwise.

But let me see if I have your instructions clear:

1. Shut down computer
2. Start it up again
3. Wait for it to get to my desktop (what if it gives me the login screen first?)
4. Restart immediately (by going to the Apple menu?)
5. Restart again if I get the pinwheel
6. Open any app in utilities.

If they work the keyboard shortcuts for freezes are a great way to not just kill the power - for example On my mac - the shortcut for that lets you quit all applications and restart is Command-Control-Media Eject key. As they may have changed with keyboards great idea to find them just in case.

When the clock freezes it means that FINDER is causing the problem - not any application - and it has something to do with stuff that is suppose to be transparent to the user (hah!) Spotlight default really indexes everything and if it can't keep up - will freeze - as web sites designers get carried away with animation and videos - allowing indexing of web pages is not a great idea - same for videos and caches.

The above instructions are only if you get a slow startup with it sitting on blue or grey screen or both for more minutes than normal - the system is actually doing something - so let it take as long as it takes.

1. After the desktop appears in order to avoid a freeze up Restart from the Apple menu
2. If the restart still is a bit slow - or the desktop does not load same as normal - Restart from the Apple Menu (if it loads normal setup should be okay).
3. If the desktop seems to load okay - use the GO option from the menu bar to open up a menu that is listed.
4. On the menu you open up - select something to open - if no problem you are good to go.

This would also work if you have a slow wakeup --

i put the additional restart because I have had the system not come up correctly after the first restart.

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/Clear History…. 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. Go to Finder and select your user/home folder. With that Finder window as the front window, either select Finder/View/Show View options or go command - J. When the View options opens, check ’Show Library Folder’. That should make your user library folder visible in your user/home folder. Select Library./Caches/com.apple.Safari/Caches.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.

Safari Corruption See post by Linc Davis

Yes. The plural version of cache was a typo error.

It might. No way of knowing without trying it. You can also try what Linc Davis posted.

Safari Corruption See post by Linc Davis

dggxam1 wrote:

The 'Develop --> Empty Caches' thing didn't do any good.

I'm a bit reluctant to wipe my history.

I checked preferences and I don't have any extensions.

I'm gonna try deleting the 'caches.db' thing but I can't find it. There is a 'cache.db'. Should I delete that instead?

I haven't used Safari in awhile but I do remember in order to empty the caches you actually have to empty web data/cookies.

Also check spotlight preferences - if you let it search web data (that is the caches) the problem could be it trying to index web sites.