Buttons on websites frequently don't work in Safari, have to "inspect element" to interact

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Buttons on websites frequently don't work in Safari, have to "inspect element" to interact

I'm on an M1 Mac Mini running Sequoia 15.4.1, Safari v. 18.4. This is a recent problem, within the last couple of software updates, intermittent but very frequent. It can (and does) happen on any website, so it's not just one specific site, and it's only in Safari (I navigate the same sites, successfully push the same buttons in Firefox). But I frequently can't click on buttons or interact with things in Safari. It' won't *always* happen, but it happens so often that until I figured out a workaround, Safari became essentially unusable for me. I'll do something on a website, like fill out a form, but I can't interact with the "submit" button (clicking does nothing). I'll go to "like" a post on social media (any social media) and it does nothing. I'll try to put my curser down in a text field (like this one I'm writing in now--and it did happen here), and it does nothing. I searched for this issue online, emptied caches, restarted my computer, made sure javascript is enabled, to no avail. The only workaround I've discovered is that if I right-click and choose "inspect element," while the developer window is up, I can freely interact with everything. The issue happens so often, I'm in the "inspect element" mode more than I'm out of it some days. Any clue what's going on?

Screenshot: I had to do this while writing this post when I tried to move the curser to edit something I'd said earlier. I wasn't able to place it in the text field until after I asked it to "inspect element."

Posted on May 13, 2025 09:32 AM

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Answer 1

dorrie6 Author

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May 20, 2025 05:29 AM in response to dorrie6

Update to this, I've noticed an additional feature of this problem that might help in determining its origin. The issue most often occurs when the button/text field/etc is in the bottom half of the page as it appears in the browser. If it's a longer page that I can scroll and move the button, etc. higher in the browser window, I can usually click it then. If it remains in the bottom half of the browser, I will need to "inspect element" in order to click it, but I'm wondering now if partly it's that "inspect element" forces it up higher in the browser window.

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Answer 2

Jun 20, 2025 05:57 AM in response to dorrie6

This has been driving me nuts too. Scrolling the button to be higher on the page works, as does simply resizing the window to be higher on the screen. ChatGPT offered this:

Short version: you’re not going crazy and your web-sites are not broken — this is a Safari 18.4/18.5 hit-testing bug on macOS 15.4/15.5 (“Sequoia”).

For certain window sizes the WebKit hit-test code mis-maps the page’s coordinate system, so mouse events that should land on elements that are rendered in roughly the lower third of the viewport are delivered to the wrong place (effectively “missing” the controls). That’s why:

* the element still highlights on mousedown (the CSS :active state is set), but the click never fires;

* scrolling the page or shrinking the window makes the same button work (it’s no longer in the affected part of the layer tree);

* opening Inspect Element temporarily fixes it — the DevTools pane forces WebKit to rebuild its compositing layers, realigning the hit-test grid.

It pointed to this bug <https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=258255>. This appears to have been fixed - you can download the latest Safari Technology Preview to test, which implies that this will be rolled out in the next OS update (presumably 15.6). You can use Safari Technology Preview in the meantime (set it as your default browser in the "Desktop & Dock settings... setting used to make sense once) until the release.

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Answer 3

dorrie6 Author

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4 points

May 21, 2025 02:08 AM in response to dorrie6

One more new detail: I can interact with the page if I resize the browser window so that it only takes up the top 2/3 of my screen. Basically the bottom 1/3 of the screen is entirely useless in Safari most of the time, can't use text fields, click buttons, or interact with it in any way.

This only happens in Safari. No other apps have this issue, including other web browsers.

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Buttons on websites frequently don't work in Safari, have to "inspect element" to interact

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