Safari 17.5 on my MacBook Pro freezes intermittently

Hi. I have called Apple and they have seen the frozen page on my laptop. They have even seen a page freeze right in front of them! We did updates and diagnostics and that didn't work. I have a 2019 I9 MacBook pro fully loaded and is still under Apple warranty. Apple knows about the problem. My next thing to do is back-up my laptop, restore it and use it as a new user. If Safari freezes up then I will bring it in for repair!

BTW Firefox freezes up for me as well!

Try this and get back to me please!

First run Safari with two tabs open! When the Safari page freezes up close the frozen tab only. Then go to Edit and click on "undo close tab". See if your tab is now working. Thats what I'm doing and it starts working every time. I believe it is in the memory stack. It is not loading the whole page and thats why it freezes.

Try this and get back to me please!

First run Safari with two tabs open! When the Safari page freezes up close the frozen tab only. Then go to Edit and click on "undo close tab". See if your tab is now working. Thats what I'm doing and it starts working every time. I believe it is in the memory stack. It is not loading the whole page and thats why it freezes.

this is clearly a BUG !!!! (in Safari)

So, please use the reporting tool to submit it as much as possible.

The problem is Safari 'dropping' the wait... when Chrome complains about a site not responding (like it often happens with ChatGPT), you can chose to wait, and it works fine... where Safari apparently stops waiting and the page remains unresponsive forever. It's clearly a problem in the way Safari handles timeouts...

Try this and get back to me please!

First run Safari with two tabs open! When the Safari page freezes up close the frozen tab only. Then go to Edit and click on "undo close tab". See if your tab is now working. Thats what I'm doing and it starts working every time. I believe it is in the memory stack. It is not loading the whole page and thats why it freezes. Also could you tell me if it is an intel laptop.

No solution yet as far as I am aware, but as quick workaround I've taken to using Command-W then Command-Shift-T which closes the tab and then immediately re-opens it. It sometimes needs repeating a couple of times but saves having to close the whole browser and rearrange windows across desktops.

Hope that helps alleviate the frustration a little.

File a bug report with Feedback Assistant http://feedbackassistant.apple.com/ , it seems to be the only way to get Apple's attention. You can add my report number (FB154*****) so they could aggregate bugs easily.

[Edited by Moderator]

@scottmil: copying the URL into a new tab solves the issue temporarily… it’s really extreme with ChatGPT, Gemini and Co…

and as for ChatGPT, the app is for Apple silicon only, so no way out…

gonna give Sequoia a try, probably.

I’m facing this since +-2 months now.

Usually I just right click on the frozen tab a select "Duplicate Tab". In any case, workarounds like this doesn't always restore full state of the tab, especially in highly dynamic pages.

Here it is (remove dashes): FB-15-45-47-08. Hopefully this one gets through.

[Edited by Moderator]

@Brianscrapple

what you suggest triggers just the same as copying the URL, closing the tab, opening a new tab and paste the URL, and yes, it works… until the next freeze.

As stated, this seems related to the (bad) handling of timeouts, but only a Safari dev could tell.

Not 100% sure, but the Intel Macs community seems over-represented here !

I don't suppose you've found a solution for this? I get the same behaviour and it's only in the last month or so. Exactly as you describe, the page will freeze and be un-clickable/unusable. Often, not even reloading the page will work, it just fails to render (often in the same way). Closing Safari usually works around specific pages but it is usually not long before another page glitches. I've restarted my MBP but this can happen quite soon after opening Safari or sometimes after a day or so.

Safari for (in my experience) the first time is practically impossible to use as it simply disrupts my workflow too much.

This seems to have happened after the latest update(s) to Sonoma, i.e. Sonoma/Safari was working fine until about the last month.

Me too.... but nobody here so far has mentioned whether it's affecting you on other Apple devices?

I have the same problem on my iPhone 14 ProMax as on my Macbook. It's been three or four months on the phone, so I try to use the Reader version if available which works for many things. Otherwise I work with apps instead.

On the Macbook, it's only been the past three or four weeks, since I went up to Sonoma I guess.

For me it is only noticeable on my MacBook Pro (Intel, 15-inch, 2018, 32GB RAM) and not on other devices that I've found. As you say, it's really only been since moving to Sonoma that it has become an issue.

The same thing is happening here too. Very frustrating that most of the responses are to launch in safe mode or turn off extensions, etc. These things don't help. I don't ever need to shut down Safari (although I have); simply opening a new browser window fixes it...until it happens again.

Would love to know why this is happening. Started after I upgraded to Sonoma.