How to replace Safari with an older version?

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Level 1

18 points

How to replace Safari with an older version?

I accidentally installed Safari 11.1 on my fully patched High Sierra install. Unfortunately, this version is badly broken with most pages failing to load with "A problem repeatedly occurred with <URL>" message.

I grabbed an older copy of Safari.app from a backup, and am trying to replace this new one, but the os is refusing to allow me to because

“Safari.app” can’t be modified or deleted because it’s required by macOS.

How do I bypass this protection??

MacBook, OS X El Capitan (10.11.3)

Posted on Mar 31, 2018 9:35 PM

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Answer 1

Eric Root

Level 10

685,341 points

Apr 1, 2018 2:27 PM in response to TomKS

Try disabling the lastpass extension. It has caused some problems for others.

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/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.

Safari Corruption See post by Linc Davis

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Answer 2

seventy one

Level 7

27,466 points

Mar 31, 2018 10:23 PM in response to TomKS

Sadly you can't. Safari cannot be downgraded and it would be unsafe to do so were it possible because there are security implications involved.

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Answer 3

Eric Root

Level 10

685,341 points

Apr 1, 2018 7:55 AM in response to TomKS

You can either restore your computer from a backup made prior to downloading Safari 11.1 or try some troubleshooting.

Safari/Preferences/Advanced and make sure Never use font sizes smaller than is not checked.

Safari can’t open a website

Safari – slow page loads

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

Web Content not responding

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Answer 4

TomKS Author

Level 1

18 points

Apr 1, 2018 1:39 PM in response to Eric Root

I have an older disk image that if "restored" would cause me to lose recent files until I restored from CrahPlan. Seems like a real pain in the *** considering I have a perfectly good copy of safari.app that I could just put over the newer version.

Internet connection at home is very slow, but looks like I'll have to go to a better location and do a OS reinstall.

Really seems to me that copying an older version of satari.app from a "backup" should be something that can be possible to do.

This all happened because MacUpdate offered the safari update. Now, I'm wondering why, and worse, why I approved it.

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Answer 5

Eric Root

Level 10

685,341 points

Apr 1, 2018 1:57 PM in response to TomKS

Did you try anything in the troubleshooting links I posted? I'm using High Sierra and Safari 11.1 and I am not experiencing any problems. Are you running any antivirus software that might be affecting your ability to load pages?

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Answer 6

TomKS Author

Level 1

18 points

Apr 1, 2018 2:12 PM in response to Eric Root

I did most of the stuff which either didn't apply or didn't help. Just now tried disabling the 3 solid extensions I have and when I unchecked the 3rd item, Safari crashed. Several restarts and it's still crashing. The error is below.

Oh, and one of the pages Safari fails to open is this discussion, so I'm using Chrome for now. Will reboot to see if that helps Safari.

Termination Reason: DYLD, [0x4] Symbol missing

Application Specific Information:

Enabled Extensions:

com.lastpass.lpsafariextension-N24REP3BMN (3.2.29 - 3.2.29) LastPass

com.betafish.adblockforsafari-UAMUU4S2D9 (102.40.1 - 2.40.1) AdBlock

com.devon-technologies.think.clip-679S2QUWR8 (1.2.6 - 1.2.6) Clip to DEVONthink

Dyld Error Message:

Symbol not found: _CTFontCreatePhysicalFontForCharactersWithLanguage

Referenced from: /System/Library/StagedFrameworks/Safari/WebCore.framework/Versions/A/WebCore

Expected in: /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreText.framework/Versions/A/CoreText

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How to replace Safari with an older version?

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