My wife has a 6 month old Air with upgraded specs. If a computer has a weak point, she will find it, and in this case it is Safari, and I am de facto tech support. She is a heavy internet user and frequently Safari will simply stop playing videos (YouTube, BandCamp, everything). I can take the same URL, drop it in Chrome, and it plays immediately, so to me that rules out WiFi connection, bandwidth, etc. Is Safari just a crap browser and she should switch permanently to Chrome? FWIW my 2014 Macbook Pro has none of the same issues. I use Safari 99% of the time except when I run into a site I need to use that has issues, but that is very rare. She does have a few tabs open (6 maybe?) and maybe rebooting would sort it out, but she's not fan of that solution and I don't blame her. This computer/OS combo feels not really up to Apple standards.
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Safari on M2 Macbook Air
- Thread starter johnc22
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no such issues here, and i usually have 12-14 tabs open... on an 8/256 M2 air. has she rebooted at least once recently? and any extensions installed? (ie an adblocker)...
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Thanks for the reply. I know she doesn't have an ad-blocker but I'll have to check on other extensions (doubtful, but maybe shopping helpers like Rakuten, etc). She rebooted yesterday and the problem was happening before and now after the reboot. For an example, a band was doing a livestream video show on Bandcamp and she was able to watch the stream yesterday but it will not replay in Safari now, whereas the replay works in Chrome on her M2, on my iPad, work (Win11) laptop, everywhere but Safari.
I have a similar issue on a brand new MBP M2, but in my case not with video playing. Safari just randomly stops loading websites for a few minutes (any website). But no spinning beach ball or frozen software. I have access to all menus and everything, but Safari just refuses to load anything. Restarting doesn't help. There seems to be a process that gets blocked (for lack of a better word) for a few minutes. No issues with WiFi or internet connection, because during those Safari blackout minutes, I still have super fast internet access on Firefox, Brave, and any other browser. It's only Safari, and only for a few minutes every now and then. After a while, for no apparent reason, everything starts loading again and Safari goes back to normal.
This is making me very sad because I am very reliable on Safari (because of passwords, iCloud tabs, and hand-off). Having bought such an expensive MBP and having issues with one of its main tools is making me want to cry.
I have no extensions installed and I have tried everything: cleaning caches, toggling on and off all possible preferences that might be causing the issue, clearing history, manually deleting plist files from the Library... Nothing helps.
This is making me very sad because I am very reliable on Safari (because of passwords, iCloud tabs, and hand-off). Having bought such an expensive MBP and having issues with one of its main tools is making me want to cry.
I have no extensions installed and I have tried everything: cleaning caches, toggling on and off all possible preferences that might be causing the issue, clearing history, manually deleting plist files from the Library... Nothing helps.
Disable iCloud Private Relay https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212614 and Hide IP address https://support.apple.com/guide/safari/privacy-sfri35610/mac
I have this problem as well occasionally. Seems related to video and safari. A wild guess would be that the hardware accelerated playback stalls and that this is an M2 (+M1?) issue specifically with Safari not being able to realise and recover.
Reddit shreds its way to cause this issue I guess because of the many videos everywhere when doomscrolling. I guess some other sites with similar approaches can too.
In my case I just restart Safari because I like the low energy and low RAM usage. But I get that some people would rather abandon the browser.
Reddit shreds its way to cause this issue I guess because of the many videos everywhere when doomscrolling. I guess some other sites with similar approaches can too.
In my case I just restart Safari because I like the low energy and low RAM usage. But I get that some people would rather abandon the browser.
I already tried that. Didn't help :-(
I think I have pretty much tried everything by now and the issue keeps coming back.
In my case the issue doesn't seem to be related to heavy loaded sites with lots of videos. When it occurs, it occurs for no apparent reason and Safari simply refuses to load anything, even the most basic sites like the Google homepage or a blog page with only text.
For a while I thought using the address bar for a search was triggering the issue, but I haver ruled that out as well, as the issue still occurs in other situations, and even after testing all possible preferences combinations for search.
I'm totally clueless and frustrated.
Try to change the DNS servers https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/change-dns-settings-network-preferences-mac-mh14127/mac
Google DNS Servers
8.8.8.8, 8.8.4.4
Cloudflare
1.1.1.1, 1.0.0.1
OpenDNS
208.67.222.222, 208.67.220.220
Google DNS Servers
8.8.8.8, 8.8.4.4
Cloudflare
1.1.1.1, 1.0.0.1
OpenDNS
208.67.222.222, 208.67.220.220
Sounds very much like the Wi-Fi dropout issues I've been having with my M2 since I got it last year - https://osxdaily.com/2022/12/12/m2-m1-macbook-having-wi-fi-issues-this-workaround-helps/
Tried all the linked ideas suggestions for disabling AWDL (and keeping it disabled) and other tricks; no joy. Every hour or two, stuff just stops loading in whatever browser I use, and I either wait 5-15 seconds for the "glitch" to end, or bounce the Wi-Fi connection, and then 1-2 seconds later everything becomes really responsive again... for a little while anyway.
It's super frustrating, especially as Apple seem to deny the mere existence of this issue.
Tried all the linked ideas suggestions for disabling AWDL (and keeping it disabled) and other tricks; no joy. Every hour or two, stuff just stops loading in whatever browser I use, and I either wait 5-15 seconds for the "glitch" to end, or bounce the Wi-Fi connection, and then 1-2 seconds later everything becomes really responsive again... for a little while anyway.
It's super frustrating, especially as Apple seem to deny the mere existence of this issue.
Thanks everyone, hopefully Apple will fix this in a future software/firmware/whatever update. My wife is a begrudging Apple user, hates her iPhone (Samsung through and through but we exercised a BOGO deal), and is starting to hate her Mac although she's had them for years without issue. Most recently she had an HP Spectre X360 that was an expensive nightmare, great if you are into S&M, so she was fine with going back to a Mac. I'm having to answer unanswerable questions on why she has issues with it.
I use Brave for Google-y stuff, including Youtube. My old M1 Air was the first machine in a longggg time I didn't install Chrome. Brave (with the Brave Rewards hoopla turned off in settings) has been rock solid for years and supports Chrome extensions since it's core is also Chromium. Arc (by The Browser Company) is also doing interesting things with Chromium core, but I've got more muscle memory in Brave as it's more or less indistinguishable from Chrome.
I use Firefox for anything Facebook or Instagram related, with their FB container extension installed.
I use Firefox for anything Facebook or Instagram related, with their FB container extension installed.