macOS Sierra freeze on iMac late 2009 using Safari

After several days without a crash, your solution appears to have eliminated this issue on my machine as well. I will continue to push Safari to see if is indeed a workaround for this problem. I will update my reports to Apple accordingly.

do you think this workaround will affect vectorworks and other CAD software? i use it almost everyday for work. also, has anyone used photoshop or illustrator after disabling accelerated drawing?

just want to feel it out before i move forward. i really miss the safari reading list.

No freezes with Chrome on 2009 27" Imac but as soon as I revert to Safari, immediate freezes almost

Now it has begun with Itunes also, virtually every time I go into Itunes, it freezes and it is a complete lockout except for the mouse which continues to move with no problems

Come on Apple, someone must recognise the symptoms. Fix this!!!!!!!

Just a 'me too'. No real solution. So far, disabling all my Safari extensions (1Password and Better) seems to help.

iMac late 2009, 27", 2,8 GHz i7, 20 GB, 1 TB HDD, ATI Radeon HD 4850 512 MB

macOS Sierra 10.12.2

When using Safari the iMac suddenly stops responding to keyboard and mouse clicks. The cursor can still be moved though. The iMac seems to still be running but the GUI is frozen. The only solution is to power it down with the hardware button on the back. It usually happens after loading a new web page and I usually notice when I start scrolling down and nothing happens.

For some of the freezes there is a 'watchdog' entry in the logfiles that others have mentioned here, but not for all freezes.

The problem also occurs on a second (non admin) account on the same iMac.

I did a clean install of 10.12.2 from El Capitan. The problem occurred soon after this clean install, before I had copied over my user data and installed my applications, extensions etc. again. I have had this problem before on previous versions of OS X on the same iMac, but not on El Capitan and never as often as now. I also have a MacBook (unibody) late 2008 on El Capitan that has no problems with Safari.

I have had contact with a senior advisor from Apple Support. He made me disable plugins and extensions in Safari. So far that seems to prevent the problem. I've enabled plugins again without a problem (I have only one plugin installed: Citrix Receiver). However, as soon as I enable at least one extension (either 1Password or Better) the problem reoccurs. Sometimes within half an hour and sometimes after several hours of using Safari.

I've done some testing in Safe Mode but only for 45 minutes or so. The problem did not occur in those 45 minutes of Safe Mode.

I have not tried to disable hardware acceleration in Safari yet.

The problem doesn't occur when using Opera instead of Safari.

For me disabling all my extensions has helped so far. I can use Safari for several hours without freezes. As soon as I enable at least one extension the problem reoccurs, usually within an hour. I will continue using Safari without extensions for a few days to see what happens.

So far so good, no freezes in Safari in over 24 hrs, a record since loading Sierra. Could it be you have found the fix when all around you were failing, good work @riadfromhabsheim. Thanks for sharing

Same thing here. One 2015 Macbook Air 11, a 2009 MacBook Air 11 and a 2009 Macbook Air 13.

All freezing after the update. Issue is though that this also seems to happen if Safari is not running.

All of them are having a very different software setup.

One is my business laptop, the other ones are wife and kids. Pretty much a disaster on my business macbook!

Luckily I did not update the iMac 27 2009, and it's the only one not freezing.

With the amount of people running into the issue, and the very easy path to reproduce it, I'm a bit shocked how slowly apple is reacting. Holding on my new MacBook pro purchase until this has been fixed reliably.

Looks like the old wisdom coming from Windows to NEVER update before wider mass distribution, has now reached Apple too...

So, I just wanted to add to this post for I finally updated my late 2009 iMac (waiting as long as I could) and I had same problems as everyone else. Could not find a problem with the Safari ext in Terminal, but when I disabled the ALL the plugins and ran a disk utility check found problems and did a disk repair. So far so good.

Thank you to everyone for posting their experiences and solutions.

An update for my situation. I had plugins disabled and all extensions off. After several days without freezes I enabled plugins again. I have only one plugin installed (Citrix) and it's off (it's installed for another user account on this iMac). Again after a few days without freezes I've enabled a few Extensions (Syndicate and Wipr). Still no freezes. I've now also enabled the 1Password extension again. Let's see what happens.

So I am glad you responded...I thought my computer was going to work, I have no plugins enabled, have no applications running except Safari and it is constantly freezing on me if I try to enable iTunes. I am going to try one more thing then I am going to have to request a fix from a real pro. Using my MacBook Air all the time now.

Another update. I had plugins and extensions enabled without freezes for a few days. Yesterday a freeze occurred on another user account, also when using Safari (with no plugins and extensions active). Because of that I have now applied the suggestion of riadfromhabsheim via the Debug menu. Alle plugins and extensions are enabled again.

I had a freeze just now when using Mail, not Safari. I was reading my mail, double clicked on an attachment (a Word doc) and nothing happened. I think Safari was not even running, but I'm not sure.

This issue is impossible to troubleshoot. I give up and will just accept that my Mac freezes every now and then and hope a macOS update will fix it soon.

I give up too. I had support on the phone, cleaned up some malware but still my mac is freezing, Safari content quits all the time, shutting down on its own with a " Sleep Wake Failure Experienced a Problem" . I have not enabled any plug in and this computer has become useless.

I did not upgrade to Sierra, I just did a update with Yosemite.

Going to try Apple Support again today

I had this problem also on a 2010 iMac running Sierra. Thank goodness I found this thread with the Safari fix.

I needed to apply the fix across several user accounts so figures out some more direct terminal commands to get this done, sharing back as follows:

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