Safari and iCloud Freeze

[bunger]

My Macs have always been stable... until I upgraded to Mavericks. Since that time, my iMac ( late 2012 model ) seems try randomly struggle either closing or opening Safari. I was hoping the latest update would fix the issue, but it didn't. The fix thus far has been a simple reboot.

Today I stumbled upon a related issue. When Safari won't open or close, I have found that iCloud Preferences ( in System Prefs ) also won't open and that will hang System Prefs.

Has anyone else seen this?

 

[bobr1952]

Yes--I have had that problem as well--and it does seem to be directly related to iCloud--or not being able to connect to iCloud--then it hangs an application--usually mail or iPhoto--and iCloud System Preferences. It seems to resolve itself and has no particular activity that precedes this from happening. Pretty baffling and difficult to diagnose since it happens to me only every few days.

 

[bunger]

Frequency is about the same for me as well, though typically rebooting my iMac fixes the issue... strange...

 

[ufkdo]

Do you have glims or any other Safari modifications installed? Do you have any third party plug-ins or extensions? Safari under Mavericks should be perfectly fine. I think the cause is most likely the third party.

 

[bunger]

No glims, mods, plug-ins or extensions. Those were the first things I checked. I am running Safari clean...

 

[bobr1952]

I have found quite a few people talking about this on the Apple forum. It is a problem with the communication link between the computer and iCloud. As anything that needs to connect to iCloud--be it photos, mail, system preferences, safari or whatever else may need to do so--fails to connect which in turn causes the app to freeze.

I tried one solution--

Try deleting the contents of ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.iCloudHelper and then kill the com.apple.iCloudHelper process in the activity monitor.

Seems to work but most likely the problem will return. Something is apparently corrupting an iCloud cache file(s) so removing the cache gets iCloud running again. Maybe someone else can have more insight into what might be actually causing this--but at least this seems to be a fix that is less drastic than a reboot.