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Safari crashing – it's java script.

ElGrandeMoskus

ElGrandeMoskus

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Aug 16, 2021
9
0
Hello hello.

Safari hangs when you visit certain websites like The Guardian unless you disable java script on the Develop dropdown.

Well, it does for me, and it's annoying.

Is this happening for anyone else? M1 Air here.
 
try setting up a test admin account, sign into that, open safari, go to that site. same problem? just wondering if it's a global issue, or tied to your account. and this is just speculation; that site is fine here...

maybe others have ideas..
 
fisherking said:
try setting up a test admin account, sign into that, open safari, go to that site. same problem? just wondering if it's a global issue, or tied to your account. and this is just speculation; that site is fine here...

maybe others have ideas..
Click to expand...
Good call.

But now we're running into really funky territory.

Attempted to restart with a guest account, and I get a screen I've never seen before: black screen with white images of the bottom of a mouse and what I think is a bluetooth keyboard. Clearly it wants me to pair bluetooth devices – but I have no idea why, and it's impossible to access the guest account.

The only way I can get it to stop and to boot is by first restarting with Startup Options/ holding down the power button and choosing my startup disk.

This is completely weird.

I'm going for a full reinstall. This is just too funky.
 
ElGrandeMoskus said:
Good call.

But now we're running into really funky territory.

Attempted to restart with a guest account, and I get a screen I've never seen before: black screen with white images of the bottom of a mouse and what I think is a bluetooth keyboard. Clearly it wants me to pair bluetooth devices – but I have no idea why, and it's impossible to access the guest account.

The only way I can get it to stop and to boot is by first restarting with Startup Options/ holding down the power button and choosing my startup disk.

This is completely weird.

I'm going for a full reinstall. This is just too funky.
Click to expand...
hard to tell what's happening here; sorry you're dealing with all that. back up everything first! and good luck, keep us posted...
 
ElGrandeMoskus said:
Hello hello.

Safari hangs when you visit certain websites like The Guardian unless you disable java script on the Develop dropdown.

Well, it does for me, and it's annoying.

Is this happening for anyone else? M1 Air here.
Click to expand...
No issues at all for me on an M1 MBP. I do have the Azul OpenJDK for the M1 Macs installed on my machine, but that's the development side rather than the browser/execution side of things, so it shouldn't have an impact on Safari loading a webpage.
 
Safe mode hasn't fixed it. Test admin account hasn't fixed it. Azul OpenJDK hasn't fixed it. Safari Technology Preview hasn't fixed it... I've reinstalled Monterey beta 5 and that's made no difference.

Hm. What's going on here? I think I'm going to have to do the dreaded downgrade.
 
Last edited:
ElGrandeMoskus said:
Safe mode hasn't fixed it. Azul OpenJDK hasn't fixed it. Safari Technology Preview hasn't fixed it... I've reinstalled Monterey beta 5 and that's made no difference.

Hm. What's going on here? I think I'm going to have to do the dreaded downgrade.
Click to expand...
What exactly are you doing, just clicking The Guardian link https://www.theguardian.com/international
and what it hangs just trying to render it down?
Im in Au so it's redirecting to https://www.theguardian.com/au

I've Installed STP Release 130 (Safari 15.0, WebKit 17612.1.26.1.5) this morning, so now, I clicked your link, it doesn't misbehave.
I've clicked quite a few articles on the main page, it loads very fast, not hanging as you describe.

I have DarkReader extension and Ad Guard extensions typically enabled and i've disabled these to test again, and no, no issues in page download it's even fast with all these spammed adverts, gosh that's atrocious, how people browse like that ahaha

Must be something else going on,
right click in the main window select Inspect Element in free space form the contextual menu and select the Network tab in the Inspector, reload (Command+Option+R = no cache reload)the page and see what resources are getting hung on, it could actually be some assets on 3rd party CDN that't not able to connect to from your route.

Here's a screenshot of my extension setup:
Screen Shot 2021-08-19 at 17.12.02.png
 
drayon said:
What exactly are you doing, just clicking The Guardian link https://www.theguardian.com/international
and what it hangs just trying to render it down?
Im in Au so it's redirecting to https://www.theguardian.com/au

I've Installed STP Release 130 (Safari 15.0, WebKit 17612.1.26.1.5) this morning, so now, I clicked your link, it doesn't misbehave.
I've clicked quite a few articles on the main page, it loads very fast, not hanging as you describe.

I have DarkReader extension and Ad Guard extensions typically enabled and i've disabled these to test again, and no, no issues in page download it's even fast with all these spammed adverts, gosh that's atrocious, how people browse like that ahaha

Must be something else going on,
right click in the main window select Inspect Element in free space form the contextual menu and select the Network tab in the Inspector, reload (Command+Option+R = no cache reload)the page and see what resources are getting hung on, it could actually be some assets on 3rd party CDN that't not able to connect to from your route.
Click to expand...
This is a great idea, and thanks so much for the suggestion drayon... only problem is, I can't, cos Safari just hangs!

Does it on several different sites, not just TheGuardian...

All extensions disabled, everything.

It's looking more and more intractable. That bootable USB drive is looking more and more like the easy solution here, but I really don't want to go that route... thing is there are other funky things happening too, like the weird guest account issue...
 
have you tried any of this at another location, ie on a different wifi network?

or, can't you just install chrome (or firefox) for the sites that are buggy, for now? or copy your bookmarks to chrome, and just use that for the time being? alternative options to having to downgrade the entire OS...
 
You could probably also test by setting a proxy (known working one) in system prefs network and let traffic run through it and fire up Safari and see if it can get to those pages.
 
Personal experience and recommendations:

There are many sites out there -- particularly "news/opinion" sites -- that use javascript to force you into things like "subscriptions" ("sign up to continue reading"), etc.

In addition, there are websites that are just filled up "with crapola" -- scripts trying to run, videos forcing themselves upon you, etc.

The fastest way to STOP this, is to disable javascript and ... reload the page.

Do this, and all that crap will suddenly be gone.
Of course, the animations, videos, slideshows, etc., won't be visible -- but THE TEXT of the page will be visible, and most of the time, that's all I wanted to see anyway.

I used the "keyboard shortcuts" pane in system preferences to create a custom key command for Safari:
Command-J
I use this to "toggle on/off" the "disable javascript" choice in the "develop" menu.

Now, if I encounter a page that's choking with javascripts or won't otherwise let me access it, I just hit:
Command-J
and then
Command-R
... and... "there it is".

If there's a website or two where javascript is so oppressive that it's crashing Safari outright... then my choices would be either:
1. Don't go to those websites. Just "let them be" and go somewhere else
or
2. Disable javascript BEFORE you attempt to visit those sites.
Works for me.
 
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Sorry to bring this back from the dead...

Just wondering if you've managed to fix this issue since? My MBA M1 has been acting up exactly the same since I got it in August - spoke to Apple and they had no idea at all about it, their advice was to try safe mode and then full reinstall if that didn't work. As you can probably guess, it didn't work.

I tried disabling/reenabling javascript as and when required but unfortunately there's no difference. It's a complete unknown whether a website is going to crash the whole app or not, so at this point it's unfeasible using Safari much as I would prefer to. I don't really want/have time to do a full reinstall either, so any pearls of wisdom are very appreciated!

Thanks in advance
 
I'm really sorry to hear that, and I understand your pain.

For me it's mostly working now. I managed to narrow the hangs down to certain adverts. I just fixed it with AdBlock Plus and that's basically working all right for me now...

I'm on the latest builds of Safari and Monterey. It still hangs every now and then, but so rarely it isn't an issue.

I hope you fix it. Drove me nuts.
 
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