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The Safari freeze issue, lets fix this

Not heat related for me, would not make sense, i have a fairly aggressive fan curve so all my temps are under 50 degrees celsius except for "Power secondary heatsink" on my 2009 iMac and it would not explain why my iMac only freezes while using Safari and not more demanding applications like FCPX and Premiere Pro which create far higher temps.

Anyways, this is crazy, 9 months later and here we are, same issue, same response when dealing with Apple. At this point it almost feels like intentional sabotage (on my tinfoil hat goes ;)). The frustrating part is that, i don't remember if it was 10.11.5 or 10.11.6 in one of the betas where my iMac was rock solid, and then came the GM of the very same release and again, my iMac started freezing up like crazy. Same thing happened now with Sierra, 2 of the laters numbered beta releases, i can not recall a single freeze for several weeks of usage but now, when i updated to the GM RC and eventually the final GM, my iMac started to freeze up like never before. I am on my 6th freeze now on my first day of usage and its not even lunch time yet.

So yeah, Apple support have been abysmal regarding this issue.
 
Just to share my 'workaround' for this problem in Al Capitan/Safari9: set energy settings to never sleep. The past 6 months no freezes anymore! I discovered the freeze occurs only after waking up from sleep (randomly within minutes, hours, days.. always after a wake-up). At least in my case it helped...
I have a late 2009 iMac 27" and I recognise all complains here!

Update: In 10.12 Sierra the problem is fully back! Changed energy settings does not work anymore :-(
 
For me it only froze in Youtube and I downloaded a script that would force 30 fps on youtube. It hasn't crashed since then and it's been about a week.
 
Any way to turn Flash back on? Clicktoflash doesn't work with it disabled and I use it to download video clips
 
steve333 said:
Any way to turn Flash back on? Clicktoflash doesn't work with it disabled and I use it to download video clips
Click to expand...

If you go into preferences, security and then plugin settings you can enabled flash for certain websites.
 
There is Flash listed there and it says OFF but there are no options available.
Do you know of any good video clip downloader? Airy is the one I've heard about but want to make sure before I buy it.
Too bad clicktoflash isn't updated anymore
 
steve333 said:
There is Flash listed there and it says OFF but there are no options available.
Do you know of any good video clip downloader? Airy is the one I've heard about but want to make sure before I buy it.
Too bad clicktoflash isn't updated anymore
Click to expand...

There should be a box next to the word flashplayer once you check it it's on. Sadly, I don't know of any video clip downloaders.
 
Thank you, I checked again and there it is.
I'm going to download clicktoplugin to see if it works with Sierra. I know it's not upgraded anymore though
 
Tried using Safari Technology Preview, computer locked up within 30 seconds.

I suggest everyone uses the Feedback Assistant or we'll be dealing with this for a while.
 
rewozz said:
macOS 10.12.1 (16B2338c) beta 3 still broken, sigh.
Click to expand...
Its weird, all of the 10.12.1 betas have been solid for me, not a single lockup for several weeks, but yeah, for me, alot of the betas are fairly stable but the GM versions screws it up everytime for some reason. Is it your 2009 iMac that is acting up? Can you post your hardware config so we can see if there is any difference compared to mine?
specs.png


rewozz said:
I suggest everyone uses the Feedback Assistant or we'll be dealing with this for a while.
Click to expand...
Yeah we have been dealing with this for almost 10 months now, hopefully Apple start to listen soon ;) :D
 
Thanks. Cant imagine the tiny spec difference can cause different behaviors in regards to this bug, i hate this bug, impossible to deduce anything from anything ;)

Ah well, i will retire my old workhorse soon anyway and hopefully buy a new Mac that isn't affected by this bug so yeah, thats one way to get rid of the pain i guess
 
Also on iMac late-2009, this problem crops up a bunch more on 10.12 than before (still happened occasionally before though). Switched to Chrome, which I don't particularly like, and now it never happens. : [
 
cerealrecords said:
Also on iMac late-2009, this problem crops up a bunch more on 10.12 than before (still happened occasionally before though). Switched to Chrome, which I don't particularly like, and now it never happens. : [
Click to expand...

I also have a late 2009 iMac that had this problem about once every two years. Since the update to 10.12 it happens several times per day. If I SSH into the machine, top -u shows that window server is stuck. I have sent Safari sys diagnose logs to Apple so these may help them resolve this issue.
 
same issue on mbp mid 2010. On yosemite, el capitan and sierra too. how can there not be a fix for this bs?
 
Just upgraded two systems to Sierra and one has already exhibited this complete lockup. Has anyone looked at whether Flash is the culprit? On the system that is locking-up Flash is installed (and is fully up to date).

On the system which has not yet exhibited this symptom Flash is not installed because I had to uninstall Flash during the El Capitan era for exactly this reason (hard locking the entire system). I uninstalled Flash and never looked back...

If it continues to happen on the first system I'll uninstall Flash and see if that's the root cause on that system. It might be worth your time uninstalling Flash if you have this issue, just to see if clears it up.
 
I haven't had Flash on my computer for 6 years, so this might be a separate issue.

I was using macOS Sierra on a 2015 MacBook Pro 15" over a couple days and never ran into this issue.

Running macOS 10.12.1 16B2548a (beta 4) now on my iMac, will let you know if it still happens.

[EDIT]

It just happened again.
 
Last edited:
How many of you have autobackups activated with Time Machine? Since my last clean install of the first 10.12.1 beta i have not bothered setting up Time Machine and i have had no lockups for several weeks but since 2-3 days back i activated Time Machine and since then my iMac have locked up / been freezing several times per day again.

Im not saying it has something to do with Time Machine itself but what if there is a bug in OS X / macOS that freezes the system under certain higher than average I/O loads when reading/writing random or sequential files. This is HIGLY speculative so take it with a huge grain of salt.

I have turned off Time Machine again and will report back if i get one of the daily freezes now without it.
 
Same issue for me, iMac late 2009, Sierra, but still original, so not 10.12.1.
Own as well a 2012 MBP, used mainly by my daughter. No issues.
When going tthru this thread one thing came to my mind. Is the box really frozen, or does it only not accept any key input? Stating key input because pointer for me moving as well. A click could be interpreted as key input as well.
May explain why music/video still playing.
 
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