iOS 9.3: links in safari not clickable anymore

[alex_ivaylov]

I haven't read the thole thread (because i can't open it from my iPhone lol) but here is a quick update from me:

iPad 2 iOS 8.4.1: Safari works OK
iPad 2 iOS 9.3 (first official - haven't updated to latest yet): Safari works OK
iPad Air iOS 9.2.1: Safari works OK
iPad Air 2 iOS 9.2.1: Safari works OK
iPhone 6s iOS 9.2.1: Nothing works. When I open a link in Safari, the whole app freezes and I have to kill it. Google Chrome doesn't work either (doesn't freeze but links can't be clicked). Firefox is the same as Chrome.

 

[oscarf]

I may have a solution, I'm not exactly sure why this works or what has actually fixed it but so far it seems like my links are working again.

- Delete the Booking app.
- Reboot your device.
- Put your device into Airplane mode.
- Go into Settings > Safari and change your Search Engine to Bing and turn off 'Safari Search Suggestions' and 'Safari Suggestions'.
- Re-install the Booking app.
- Open the Booking app, deny any request for Notifications and GPS.
- Open the App Switcher by double clicking the home button and then kill the Booking app by sliding it up.
- Turn Off Airplane Mode.
- Change back your Search engine to Google (Or whatever you were using).
- Re-enable 'Safari Search Suggestions' and 'Safari Suggestions'.

Please let me know how this goes.

I had a few free minutes and this seemed an easy enough thing to try. Like every other suggestion in these 23 pages, it changed nothing for me. The problem persists.

 

[ardent11]

I had a few free minutes and this seemed an easy enough thing to try. Like every other suggestion in these 23 pages, it changed nothing for me. The problem persists.

Sorry to hear that, I tried to note down the steps as best as possible, I hope I didn't miss anything. Links are still working for me thankfully.

Edit: I just realised I miss a point about keeping Airplane Mode off and just turning on Wifi when re-installing Booking app. I have added it in.

Edit 2: I also think I had the Reboot step in the wrong spot, I have updated the steps.

 

[fullauto]

I may have a solution, I'm not exactly sure why this works or what has actually fixed it but so far it seems like my links are working again.

- Delete the Booking app.
- Put your device into Airplane mode.
- Go into Settings > Safari and change your Search Engine to Bing and turn off 'Safari Search Suggestions' and 'Safari Suggestions'.
- Reboot your device.
- Turn on Wi-Fi ONLY, do not turn off Airplane Mode.
- Re-install the Booking app.
- Open the Booking app, deny any request for Notifications and GPS.
- Open the App Switcher by double clicking the home button and then kill the Booking app by sliding it up.
- Turn Off Airplane Mode.
- Change back your Search engine to Google (Or whatever you were using).
- Re-enable 'Safari Search Suggestions' and 'Safari Suggestions'.

Please let me know how this goes.

Nope. Didn't work, but thanks for your suggestion.

Day 4. What a joke.

 

[sdz]

Sorry to hear that, I tried to note down the steps as best as possible, I hope I didn't miss anything. Links are still working for me thankfully.

Edit: I just realised I miss a point about keeping Airplane Mode off and just turning on Wifi when re-installing Booking app. I have added it in.

Edit 2: I also think I had the Reboot step in the wrong spot, I have updated the steps.

Did not help me for any of my affected devices.

 

[macfacts]

Nope. Didn't work, but thanks for your suggestion.

Day 4. What a joke.

This is a bug (buffer overflow) that existed since iOS 9.0, it is more than day 4.

 

[pauser]

I haven't read the thole thread (because i can't open it from my iPhone lol) but here is a quick update from me:

iPad 2 iOS 8.4.1: Safari works OK
iPad 2 iOS 9.3 (first official - haven't updated to latest yet): Safari works OK
iPad Air iOS 9.2.1: Safari works OK
iPad Air 2 iOS 9.2.1: Safari works OK
iPhone 6s iOS 9.2.1: Nothing works. When I open a link in Safari, the whole app freezes and I have to kill it. Google Chrome doesn't work either (doesn't freeze but links can't be clicked). Firefox is the same as Chrome.

According to Apple Support yesterday, "Engineering is working on it"--support had me off-load Java Script which had no effect. iPhone 6s+ and iPad Air email and safari links not working--devices freeze--since 9.3 installation. Update for iPad issued yesterday did not resolve issue.
[doublepost=1459256705][/doublepost]

Since I use iOS 9.3 (I was a public beta tester), in some betas links were not clickable in safari anymore. Beta 4 wasn't working, beta 5 was fine and now since beta 6 the problem got back.

Problem mostly exist when I try to google something from the search bar in safari. When I then try to click on a search result, safari dont respond and start to freeze. Then the app is closing and when I try it again, it freezes again.

I hoped on a solution with the official release of 9.3, however its still present. Its super annoying and I can't find a solution.

I already tried to delete data from safari and also did a hard reset.

Also problem seems to exist in Chrome and whatsapp as well (when someone sends me a link).

Who knows a solution?

According to Apple Support, "engineering is working on a solution". Uninstalling Java Script on iPad Air did not solve problem.

 

[alex_ivaylov]

I have to say that mine was also working fine up to yesterday (I upgraded to 9.2.1 weeks ago). I switched on airplane mode, deleted booking.com app, switched to Bing, cleared History & Website Data, Rebooted, etc but it did not fix the issue. I've asked a few people with iPhones who are on 9.3 and they all seem to be working fine (but they have older phones). I think I'm going to upgrade to 9.3 tonight and check if it helps (although I doubt it). The installation I have on my 6s was restored from a backup that was originally taken on my previous 5s. If upgrading to 9.3 doesn't fix it, I would wait for Apple to come up with something for a few days and then I might do a clean install. I really need browsing on my phone.

 

[C DM]

But why there are other people that don`t have this problem? Why is this bug not causing problems to everyone with ios 9.3 installed? This is what I don`t understand.

And it's also causing issues for people who don't even have iOS 9.3.
[doublepost=1459260069][/doublepost]

This is a bug (buffer overflow) that existed since iOS 9.0, it is more than day 4.

Where the bug might have been introduced and where the bug might have actually become known and reported are different things.

 

[mfram]

Just started seeing this bug on my iPad all of a sudden. What's really weird is that now I have Safari in a state where some tabs can follow links and some tabs cannot. I had opened a tab and entered the URL manually to get to these forums and now I can follow links in this tab. Strange.

 

[joshen]

Has anyone noticed impacted battery life too since the bug surfaced? My 6 Plus is down to 25% with only 2 hours of usage and Safari is at 65% consumption for the last 24 hours with only 3.5 hours on screen.

 

[BlueOrbit]

Has anyone noticed impacted battery life too since the bug surfaced? My 6 Plus is down to 25% with only 2 hours of usage and Safari is at 65% consumption for the last 24 hours with only 3.5 hours on screen.

Same thing here. High battery drainage after 9.3 update and/or link bug. The strange thing is that battery section in setting shows that Safari has consumed 20% of my battery in the last 24 h although I almost never used safari since the problem appeared. It seems that even if I open and then close safari for short time it will keep grinding something in the background hence the high battery consumption.

 

[dj1891]

Yep have also notice battery drain. And still no fix from Apple Grrrrr

 

[anandabd]

I have just solved it, at least in my iPad.
I have installed iOS 9.3 two days back in my iPad air 2. And my links didn't worked as described above; in my mail, and also in safari when I searched something. Links didn't work in any browser when I searched something using the address bar. Yes I had booking.com installed in my iPad and iPhone. My iPhone 5s was unaffected and it was on 9.2. Switching off javascript made the safari links usable but not the mail. Deleting booking.com also didn't solve it.
How I solved it:

• Deleted booking.com
• Restarted the iPad.
• Connected the iPad in iTunes using cable in my Macbook pro.
• I had a backup of January of the iPad in my macbook pro. Restored the backup, it didn't effect any of my apps, nor the firmware; just the settings were changed. I had to type my wifi password again.
• After restoring everything is working normally now.

It was such a horrifying experience; I can imagine what people are going through. And surely it is due to some particular Apps; thats why probably it was missed during beta testing. Also many 9.3 users are unaffected, who hasn't installed those Apps.

I have been an Apple product user for more than over a decade. Started from iPod mini, classic, iPhone 4, iPad 2, several MacBooks etc. Everything I use for my need is from Apple. Its really difficult to get out of the Apple Ecosystem now. But this incident has changed my perception about Apple. The beauty of all the Apple system was their simplicity and at the end of the day everything used to work effortlessly. But now its giving me so much of troubles (earlier with iCloud backup, and thats a long story)!
I am seriously thinking of moving to Android and windows, after this experience! The most pathetic part is Apple is not making any official announcements and keep pushing this buggy 9.3 iOS! Totally unlike Apple and against the principle of Apple concept. Really unfortunate!

 

[cwosigns]

http://9to5mac.com/2016/03/29/apple-ios-9-crashing-bugs-when-tapping-links-fix-software-update/

Interesting. I do have the EAT24 app on my phone that the article mentions as another possible offender. Deleted. I know it won't fix it, but I wasn't using it anyway.

 

[loekf]

It is currently believed it has been caused by several (or many) apps abusing a certain API in iOS 9 which is why all versions of iOS 9 can be affected. Even once those apps are updated or removed the service they have caused issues with continues to crash due to an overload of data.

a certain database in iOS gets corrupted, which causes a process supported Safari to crash. The only way to purge/clean this corrupted database is AFAIK:

- Do a complete wipe of your iPhone/iPad and set up things from scratch
- Restore a backup before you installed any of this "misbehaving" apps. So if you installed booking.com, take a backup before you installed it.

Apple should fix this. It's of course ridiculous that a daemon (process) crashes because a database is either too big or corrupted because app devs try to stuff too much data into it. IMHO, this so called Shared Web Credentials Daemon data should not be a seperate database loaded at app install. It should be part of the browser cache somehow. Bad API design if you ask me.

 

[qap]

Some tabs work because you click on a link inside the same subdomain and without linking to a specific url who should call for an app inside iOS. For that someone is thinking the bug is related to Booking app, is it and is not, because the Booking app use the same Universal Links, as Wikipedia and a lot more apps: when you tap a url, iOS checks if this url cold be opened inside the "same domain" app. This is not done "every tap" but when you install an app that could do this, iOS add this app to a file in order to share this info iOS-wide and check if the link not related to a malicious app/site.

This is broken. Not for all the devices, maybe on some devices the aren't an updated list of these website, or maybe Apple pushed a wrong list/file...who know...but this is the bug.

Anyway it would be nice an option to chose if I want to open the 'Apple page on wikipedia google search' on my browser or inside the wikipedia app. If this would be already present in iOS, maybe this bug would be avoided simply by switching off this service.

And we would not wait "some days" for the fix, we shoul wait at least "some hours"

 

[mattburley7]

maybe we will get a iOS 9.3.1 update today that fixes this?

 

[damant]

Fyi.
After 12 hrs , i can confirm restoring to a pre 3/24/16 backup (without updating apps & deleting booking.com) does work.....;-)

 

[trifster]

Y

I haven't read the thole thread (because i can't open it from my iPhone lol) but here is a quick update from me:

iPad 2 iOS 8.4.1: Safari works OK
iPad 2 iOS 9.3 (first official - haven't updated to latest yet): Safari works OK
iPad Air iOS 9.2.1: Safari works OK
iPad Air 2 iOS 9.2.1: Safari works OK
iPhone 6s iOS 9.2.1: Nothing works. When I open a link in Safari, the whole app freezes and I have to kill it. Google Chrome doesn't work either (doesn't freeze but links can't be clicked). Firefox is the same as Chrome.

Do you have a list of apps on all devices? I haven't seen a discussion on apps other than booking.com initializing this bug. I'm very interested as I tested Betas 3 through 7 of iOS 9 on a 6S and iPad Air and never came across anything like this.

 

[kagharaht]

I read the article Mossberg wrote about Apple quality. This is getting ridiculous.

 

[leesweet]

maybe we will get a iOS 9.3.1 update today that fixes this?

And what about those not on 9.3? Going to be rough if the only fix is 'upgrade'. It really doesn't need to be a 'release'. It could be a separate 'program' that cleans out and restarts the swcd daemon/process and reloads (if needed) with whatever is needed.

 

[arctann]

WARNING - I spent the last hour restoring my iPhone 6 128gb (a lot of data and apps stored there) having removed the (updated) booking.com app. I then went through the process of re-registering and verifying 4 credit cards with Apple Pay etc etc so it was a real bind to do. It's still restoring the apps as I write - a lengthy process. The upshot is - I still can't follow links. Some people on this forum seem to have had success with this, but not me, and maybe not you. So before you try it, consider whether you have upwards of an hour to waste or whether it can wait until Apple finally come up with a fix.

Question, did you restore with a backup that was definitely BEFORE the issue started for you (i.e. pre-corruption backup)?

Because I initially restored with a backup AFTER the issue started (i.e. post-corruption backup) and the problems persisted.

However, next I restored using a pre-corruption backup (though deleting the booking app before it could download and reinstall) and everything has been working fine since then.

@damant did the same thing and it appears we both have working devices again.

 

[silentwishes]

This is a total breakdown for Apple! First the linkfreezing since a couple of days a go wich make both my iPhone and iPad useless as smartphone/iPad and now the battery in my iPhone drain from fully loaded to zero in 2h without using it.
What is Apple doing? Have they totally lost it. Not a word! If they want to change the world, they can start with to take responsibility. I thought I woul never say this, but if this is'nt solved soon, very soon, I'm up to change to Android.

 

[alex_ivaylov]

Y


Do you have a list of apps on all devices? I haven't seen a discussion on apps other than booking.com initializing this bug. I'm very interested as I tested Betas 3 through 7 of iOS 9 on a 6S and iPad Air and never came across anything like this.

Booking.com was indeed installed on the iPhone and it was not installed anywhere else. Unfortunately, I cant give you a list as these are 5 devices and they have a lot of apps installed each so it will take me forever to write them all down. I pretty much use standard things (Google Maps, Gmail, Facebook, Messanger, Twitter, Skype, Watsapp, Instagram, etc).