Many users have been reporting today that Safari, Apple’s built-in browser for iOS and Mac, has been crashing on their devices. Even if they simply tap/click the URL bar at the top, the app winds up freezing and closing unexpectedly, which is causing a big inconvenience to most people. And while there isn’t an exact issue found yet leading to these crashes, we do know that it has something to do with Apple’s Safari Suggestions, which is a service used to predict the website you’re about to visit in the browser and give you Top Sites you might be interested in checking out.
It appears that there’s a bug in the system’s servers used to send users this information, which is ultimately causing the crashing. And while this issue comes to light out of nowhere, there are indeed workarounds to stop the crashing. Here’s how to fix the issue on your iOS device and Mac:
To fix on iOS:
- Open Settings on your device
- Scroll to find and tap “Safari”
- Toggle off “Safari Suggestions”
To fix on Mac:
- Open Safari from Launchpad
- Click “Safari” in Menu bar
- Click “Preferences”
- Click “Search” tab in pop-up box
- Disable “Include Safari Suggestions”
The bug is active in many countries, but not all. However, don’t let that mislead you that it’s not going around on your turf. It’s probably not active in the countries where iPhones and Macs aren’t active…
The crash has been reported on iOS 8, iOS 9, and OS X 10.11, so a vast majority of customers will be experiencing this bug at some point today if they don’t follow the steps above to avoid it.
Here’s a short video of the bug in action on an iPhone:
Have you noticed Safari crashing on your device?
