Beach ball navigating bookmarks in Safari

[svenmany]

This is a stretch...

I notice beach balls every now and again and they most often correspond to times when I hear my external drives spin up for no reason. I have two desktop-class disks in a dock; when they spin up I really hear them. Yesterday, I got the beach ball when using Safari and it did correspond to the disks spinning up.

Any chance you have external hard disks?

 

[steve333]

This is a stretch...

I notice beach balls every now and again and they most often correspond to times when I hear my external drives spin up for no reason. I have two desktop-class disks in a dock; when they spin up I really hear them. Yesterday, I got the beach ball when using Safari and it did correspond to the disks spinning up.

Any chance you have external hard disks?

Nope

 

[cra19j]

Ever since I installed the latest Big Sur update on my MacBook Pro 2015 13" safari has become unusable with beach balls, sluggishness or simply seizing up. Force quit shows Safari as unresponsive. After 2 days of this I am currently in the process of wiping the hard drive, doing a bare bones install, reintroducing my files from time machine and see if that helps any. I use external SSDs for time machine and extra backups, having these connected made no difference.

 

[svenmany]

Ever since I installed the latest Big Sur update on my MacBook Pro 2015 13" safari has become unusable with beach balls, sluggishness or simply seizing up. Force quit shows Safari as unresponsive. After 2 days of this I am currently in the process of wiping the hard drive, doing a bare bones install, reintroducing my files from time machine and see if that helps any. I use external SSDs for time machine and extra backups, having these connected made no difference.

Just to be clear (even though attached disks seem to be irrelevant), I did mean external physical disks that require spin-up time, not SSDs.

Good luck with your reinstall.

 

[notgonna]

Using internal MBA M1 SSD only, and still the issue.

 

[steve333]

The latest update did nothing, it is infuriating to have this issue and Apple doing nothing about it.
I prefer Safari's layout to the others, it gets out of your way if that makes sense, but this issue needs to be resolved soon or I will switch to something else. I really don't want to. Just fix the issue, Timmy

 

[svenmany]

The latest update did nothing, it is infuriating to have this issue and Apple doing nothing about it.
I prefer Safari's layout to the others, it gets out of your way if that makes sense, but this issue needs to be resolved soon or I will switch to something else. I really don't want to. Just fix the issue, Timmy

Did you contact Apple support? I had a recent issue which prompted a discussion with the support person. The said they don't require Apple Care to provide software support for free. (She used that as an excuse for why they weren't obliged to fix my software problem under Apple Care.)

Every time I talk to support, they vehemently assert that they don't read this forum (probably false). But, they certainly would never reply here.

 

[steve333]

Did you contact Apple support? I had a recent issue which prompted a discussion with the support person. The said they don't require Apple Care to provide software support for free. (She used that as an excuse for why they weren't obliged to fix my software problem under Apple Care.)

Every time I talk to support, they vehemently assert that they don't read this forum (probably false). But, they certainly would never reply here.

I used the Support Forum, soneone from Apple said to do this and do that, the usual crap which of course didn't work.
Some other users chimed in that they have the same issue and we never saw the guy from Apple Support respond again.
Apple is getting more arrogant than even Microsoft was

 

[cra19j]

Just to be clear (even though attached disks seem to be irrelevant), I did mean external physical disks that require spin-up time, not SSDs.

Good luck with your reinstall.

Thank you. After doing the reinstall, I cleared all Safari data. Then I downloaded and installed the full 12.2GB Big Sur 11.2.3 installer over the top of everything else. Safari is now behaving nicely for me.

 

[steve333]

What would happen is I just deleted Safari? Would it then be able to be downloaded from the app site or come up in software update?

 

[cra19j]

What would happen is I just deleted Safari? Would it then be able to be downloaded from the app site or come up in software update?

I don't think that would work, sorry. Just a thought, the problem may not be with the app itself, but some data the app uses may be corrupted somehow or confused with the update. I have found with some of my apps that I need to reset the app, (e.g. clear history, website data and cookies) and restart to get them working properly. This happened with OneNote and Deltawalker. I looked up how to reset the apps and after this process my problems disappeared.

 

[steve333]

I don't think that would work, sorry. Just a thought, the problem may not be with the app itself, but some data the app uses may be corrupted somehow or confused with the update. I have found with some of my apps that I need to reset the app, (e.g. clear history, website data and cookies) and restart to get them working properly. This happened with OneNote and Deltawalker. I looked up how to reset the apps and after this process my problems disappeared.

I tried re-setting Safari and it didn't work. I even bought CleanMyMacX and it didn't work

 

[steve333]

It's not every time, it's about every other time for the beach ball, which is even more odd.
Other than that my Mini works fine, it's just Safari that's the issue with the beachball, websites just hanging and not connecting. Very frustrating

 

[cra19j]

It's not every time, it's about every other time for the beach ball, which is even more odd.
Other than that my Mini works fine, it's just Safari that's the issue with the beachball, websites just hanging and not connecting. Very frustrating

Your last comment has me wondering if your internet connection is contributing to the problem? Not sure if you're having connection problems with any other apps than Safari. One other little thought that came to me - have you tried exporting your bookmarks, then deleting them, restarting and importing them again? If there's a glitch in your bookmarks this might help?

 

[steve333]

Your last comment has me wondering if your internet connection is contributing to the problem? Not sure if you're having connection problems with any other apps than Safari. One other little thought that came to me - have you tried exporting your bookmarks, then deleting them, restarting and importing them again? If there's a glitch in your bookmarks this might help?

Only Safari having issues, Firefox works fine. I prefer the layout and feel of Safari, I just keep Firefox when Safari has issues with certain websites, which it always has had. I really wish Apple would change whatever Safari is based on and use Mozilla or Chrome as the engine.

I could do that with the bookmarks but that wouldn't fix the other safari issues.

Someone suggested a clean install, which I guess would mean erasing the hard drive and then re-installing over the internet. I am actually considering it even though it would be a major pain to re-install everything. If it didn't work, though, I would be apoplectic!

 

[notgonna]

Thank you. After doing the reinstall, I cleared all Safari data. Then I downloaded and installed the full 12.2GB Big Sur 11.2.3 installer over the top of everything else. Safari is now behaving nicely for me.

Can you be more explicit as to what step-by-steps you did? What/how did you reinstall? How did you clear all Safari data? Did you download the full installed from the App Store? Thanks.

(I've been so frustrated that I've tried running the macOS 11.3 betas and Safari Tech Previews to avoid the beach-balls. I usually avoid betas.)

PS: Yes, I've reported this through Feedback app.

 

[notgonna]

Updated to 11.3 beta 4 (macOS 11.3 (20E5210c). Safari Tech Preview Release 122 (Safari 14.2, WebKit 16612.1.6.2) No improvement.

 

[cra19j]

Can you be more explicit as to what step-by-steps you did? What/how did you reinstall? How did you clear all Safari data? Did you download the full installed from the App Store? Thanks.

(I've been so frustrated that I've tried running the macOS 11.3 betas and Safari Tech Previews to avoid the beach-balls. I usually avoid betas.)

PS: Yes, I've reported this through Feedback app.

1. Clear all Safari data - specifically website history and data and cookies
2. Create a Big Sur USB install
3. Boot in recovery mode
4. Use Disk Utility to wipe entire SSD
5. Install Big Sur from USB installer
6. Restore data (documents, apps, settings) from Time Machine backup
7. Reinstall Big Sur - the full installer from the App store - just in case something in the settings from Time Machine restore was corrupted.

What I did may include unnecessary steps, but so far Safari is working for me and I didn't have to do a full start from scratch. I just hope I don't have to reinstall Big Sur every time a minor update is released. Otherwise I may go back to Catalina. I didn't install Big Sur until 11.2 was released.

Safari is still occasionally slow, but my MacBook Pro only has 8GB of RAM and I have a few apps open most of the time.

 

[ab225]

The longer I've used Safari the more beach balling it's doing in general. Sometimes opening a new window will cause it. Everything else is fast and smooth, but every so often the beach ball will start (with no other CPU processes and a bunch of available RAM). I've got no other complaints apart from this, but it's annoying.

 

[svenmany]

The longer I've used Safari the more beach balling it's doing in general. Sometimes opening a new window will cause it. Everything else is fast and smooth, but every so often the beach ball will start (with no other CPU processes and a bunch of available RAM). I've got no other complaints apart from this, but it's annoying.

There was some suggestions above that favicons are playing a role in the delay (downloading them or accessing them in cache). When you open a new window, do you display it in a tab? My windows never show favicons since I don't ever have multiple tabs in a single window and I have "show tab bar" in the View menu turned off.

 

[notgonna]

Thanks, Crai19. I went through and deleted all in each of these categories (see attached).

Dang. I was about to write that the beach-balling stopped. But it just happened again.

Later I'll try export/save all my bookmarks, and then delete, Sync with iCloud so that is cleared, and then import them back. Maybe I'll set up a new admin user account, and import them into the new account. (I really want to avoid the wiping the SSD.)

 

[svenmany]

There was some suggestions above that favicons are playing a role in the delay (downloading them or accessing them in cache). When you open a new window, do you display it in a tab? My windows never show favicons since I don't ever have multiple tabs in a single window and I have "show tab bar" in the View menu turned off.

Speaking of favicons. Did everyone with the problem delete the cache of them (with Safari stopped). That's the contents of the folder ~\Library\Safari\Favicon Cache. I just did a search of that in this thread and don't see that mentioned.

 

[steve333]

Speaking of favicons. Did everyone with the problem delete the cache of them (with Safari stopped). That's the contents of the folder ~\Library\Safari\Favicon Cache. I just did a search of that in this thread and don't see that mentioned.

I don't see this anywhere, looked into Library and everything else. Where is this located?

 

[svenmany]

I don't see this anywhere, looked into Library and everything else. Where is this located?

Jeepers, that's strange. Are you looking at the Library folder in your home directory? So, if my user name is "Sven", then I'd be looking in "/Users/Sven/Library/Safari/Favicon Cache".

The Library folder in your home directory is hidden by Finder; it has the "hidden" flag set. I can explain further if that is getting in the way of you finding the cache folder.

 

[steve333]

Jeepers, that's strange. Are you looking at the Library folder in your home directory? So, if my user name is "Sven", then I'd be looking in "/Users/Sven/Library/Safari/Favicon Cache".

The Library folder in your home directory is hidden by Finder; it has the "hidden" flag set. I can explain further if that is getting in the way of you finding the cache folder.

I rooted it around and found it. There is a folder within the folder that says favicons. Do we empty that out as well as the cache?