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NewsPoster · 12:32 PM

Today -- January 27, 2016 -- Safari on OS X has begun failing so badly that we're not sure you can even navigate to this page. If you have, though, there is a workaround. Well, there are two: this is so big and so widespread that surely Apple engineers spluttered over their coffees, and are working on a fix. In the meantime, start by switching off Safari Suggestions. Update: Apple has now confirmed to us that this has been fixed on their end, but if you are still experiencing the problem, this Pointers will clear out some of your device caches and restore normal functionality.

This was tested on a late 2012 iMac running OS X El Capitan: we can't yet be sure whether it also affects older systems, but hopefully Apple will have fixed it before we can find that out. If you're wondering whether you have the problem, you probably don't. This is one example of what we're seeing:

Safari Suggestions

This is the setting you never think about, because you don't have to: it is the feature that means Safari will predict what website you're typing, based on where you've been before or where Google says many other people have gone. Somehow, it's going rather wrong: you certainly never get to the site, but also you can find different display problems. We first spotted it here when typing in an address, and finding it overlaid by a previous one. We fixed that problem by restarting our Macs, but that may be temporary and it's certainly time-consuming.

The better way is to go to Safari's Preferences and click on the Search tab. Underneath the top option about which search engine you use, there is a tick box that says "include search engine suggestions." Untick that, and you automatically untick "include Safari Suggestions," which is below it. Some people are reporting that they only need to untick that second one, but it's varying.

One other workaround

In Safari, press Command-Shift-N or choose File/New Private Window. This is the private browsing feature in Safari that some people use when they go to online banking and such, and the only difference is that it doesn't track where you go, and so doesn't have suggestions when you start typing. Switch to private like this, and you can continue using Safari pretty much as normal.

At time of writing, Apple hasn't commented on what's causing the issue, and we have no clue -- but it is very disruptive. We nearly had to switch to Chrome.

-- William Gallagher (@WGallagher)

Inkling · Jan 27, 2016, 09:51 AM

Glad to know Apple is working on Safari crashes. But Mail crashes far more often. Are they working on that. It has gone on so long, I've taken to being sarcastic in my bug reports.

sunman42 · Jan 27, 2016, 09:55 AM

Or you could just select DuckDuckGo instead of Google and not have the problem in the first place, or give your browsing history to Google.

zehspoon1 · Jan 27, 2016, 10:09 AM

I gave up on Mail after my upgrade to Yosemite. Too many beachballs. Even after wiping the entire machine and starting over.

growlf · Jan 27, 2016, 11:13 AM

Strange. I use Safari exclusively on several Macs. Haven't see this at all.

Mike Wuerthele · Jan 27, 2016, 11:16 AM

It's not hitting everybody, or every device. My Macs are fine, as are most of my iOS devices. Got one recalcitrant iPad, though.

bobolicious · Jan 27, 2016, 11:33 AM

I've switched to firefox & tor mostly because of the lack of privacy in Safari's supposed 'privacy mode'... Clicked email links for example override the new window privacy mode, presumably by design...

...if one is curious about the extent of data mining going on I can suggest FireFox with privacy settings & the NoScript, AdBlock Plus, Blur & HTTPS-Everywhere add-ons...

I suspect NoScript lists will be long... These days I don't think of browsers as browsers - for every one site one might browse 10~20 sites seem trying to look back...

drbroom · Jan 27, 2016, 12:00 PM

OR just don't downgrade to 10.10 or 10.11 and stay with 10.9 never saw any of these problems on any of the hundreds of Macs i manage. At least not with the machines that are still running an OS without so many holes

Flying Meat · Jan 27, 2016, 12:40 PM

I can't recall whether I've ever had "Include Safari Suggestions" enabled. No issues lately. Early 2013 MBP 13"

Flying Meat · Jan 27, 2016, 12:42 PM

"Early 2015 MBP 13" Early 2015.

Charles Martin · Jan 27, 2016, 01:46 PM

Mail has been working perfectly over here for a number of years now, even through betas. No issues for me, but then I'm all IMAP and that may be making a difference. The only time I've ever had a problem was when iCloud was temporarily unavailable. I rely on email a lot (not as much as I did five years ago, though) and those improved data detectors are a godsend. I've tried Airmail and the like, but on my setup there is nothing wrong with Mail that would cause me to move to another program.

Mojo · Jan 27, 2016, 02:15 PM

I prefer StartPage to DuckDuckGo because it uses Google for search results. StartPage removes your IP address before contacting Google. To add StartPage to the search engine options in Safari download the StartPage HTTPS extension at https://startpage.com/eng/download-startpage-plugin.html?hmb=1.

coffeetime · Jan 27, 2016, 08:41 PM

I thought I was the only one happened this morning.

Steve Wilkinson · Jan 28, 2016, 12:13 AM

Originally Posted by Charles Martin

Mail has been working perfectly over here for a number of years now, even through betas. No issues for me, but then I'm all IMAP and that may be making a difference. The only time I've ever had a problem was when iCloud was temporarily unavailable.

Hmm, so I assume you're not using Gmail then for your mail host? (you mention iCloud) My understanding is that many of the issues with Mail are related to Gmail (which, is nearly everyone). It (Mail) hasn't really been usable for years with Gmail as a mail host.

I switched to Postbox a couple of years ago. It has been rock-solid as a mail client, but I miss a few things like a more 'native' compose window and good print-preview, etc. But, I can't deal with my email not working... it's a core thing.

And, unfortunately, I'm probably not coming back, as I just switched my wife's Mac to Postbox a few months ago as well (our last Mail.app computer), as she was having too many issues too. (And, that was probably OS X 10.11.1, so pretty recent OS)

Steve Wilkinson · Jan 28, 2016, 12:20 AM

Originally Posted by Mojo

I prefer StartPage to DuckDuckGo because it uses Google for search results. StartPage removes your IP address before contacting Google. To add StartPage to the search engine options in Safari download the StartPage HTTPS extension at https://startpage.com/eng/download-s...gin.html?hmb=1.

Yea, it's tricky, because Google clearly has the best search engine, yet I don't necessarily like Google building up a profile of just about everything these days.

That said, you pretty much would need a clean computer on a good VPN not to be tracked these days. Modern OSs (and all your apps) contact all sorts of services all the time, so even if you do VPN, it would be pretty easy to track your IP jump based on all those services, even if you use some 'private' search engine or browser.

And, actually, that's one complaint I have about iOS: when you're traveling an on public WiFi, the moment you make connection, nearly every service on the darn thing sends all your info over the insecure Web before you could possibly enable VPN, especially at airports and hotels where you have 'accept' or 'sign in' via a web-page. You'd think there should be a 'suppress all other communication until VPN is established' setting!

Juan_Guapo · Jan 28, 2016, 12:37 AM

Interesting, and Safari has been rock-solid for me (knock on wood). The only crashing I've had with Safari had to do with an extension.* Once I disabled the extension, I've not had a problem with crashes or performance.

*For the curious, it was the Evernote Web Clipper extension for Safari.

Charles Martin · Jan 28, 2016, 01:46 AM

Steve: I gave up on Gmail for the obvious reasons, plus back when the nagging to be a part of G+ became obnoxious. Sounds like I've avoided a lot of trouble by doing that.

HPeet · Jan 28, 2016, 08:33 AM

Not had this issue with safari and have the same setup as sunman42 - DuckDuckGo. My only complaint with Mail is the amount of time it takes to exit the program. No Gmail accounts.

Could it be that Google is the problem?

Mike Wuerthele · Jan 28, 2016, 08:49 AM

No - Apple said it was their own systems, regardless of default search engine choice. It didn't affect everybody, and even then, only a percentage of people using their machines for the first time in the day between about 12:30AM and 3AM ET yesterday morning.

Steve Wilkinson · Jan 30, 2016, 02:54 AM

Originally Posted by Charles Martin

Steve: I gave up on Gmail for the obvious reasons, plus back when the nagging to be a part of G+ became obnoxious. Sounds like I've avoided a lot of trouble by doing that.

Yea, quite possibly. I've considered finding an alternative... but I've got a number of addresses and services tied to Google in one way or another. I haven't even considered it seriously enough yet to think through all of the ramifications, but I'm pretty sure it wouldn't be simple.

And, Gmail is about the best email services I've ever used in terms of reliability, spam detection, etc., despite the, as you say, obvious downsides (like Google having all that info!).

Flying Meat · Feb 5, 2016, 03:40 PM

I've only ever had but a handful of Mail.app crashes with my two Gmail accounts. One personal, and one corporate.
It seems to happen when the inbox gets to around 5000+ messages, so I periodically/quarterly file the older messages.

Steve Wilkinson · Feb 5, 2016, 04:03 PM

Originally Posted by Flying Meat

I've only ever had but a handful of Mail.app crashes with my two Gmail accounts. One personal, and one corporate.
It seems to happen when the inbox gets to around 5000+ messages, so I periodically/quarterly file the older messages.

It's not so much that it crashes (maybe that's more a recent thing) but is unreliable in collecting, sending, and staying in-sync with the state of the actual Gmail account via IMAP. Basically, if you need reliable email, it's unusable, or at least that was my experience, as well as my wife's, and pretty much what I've read about it for years now. Apple apparently made efforts to fix it (or at least that was the hope for each major OS update for the last few).