Safari: Safari is the default web browser that comes with your Mac OS X designed by Apple based on the Apple’s WebKit engine. It was first released in 2003 with Mac OS X 10.3 – Panther, then a mobile version was included in iOS devices since the introduction of the iPhone in 2007. A Windows version of Safari was also released in the year 2007, which Apple discontinued in 2012. The first version of Safari for Mac was named Safari 1 and now the current version as of writing is Safari 12.0.2, released for macOS 10.14 Mojave. It got some new features like Favicon or website icons in tabs and more. For more information, read. Apple claims that the new version of Safari is more secure and reliable but as we know that nothing is perfect in this world.
Just like other browsers, Safari also gets infected with Malware, Spyware or Adware. Sometimes new updates from Apple are rolled out which makes Safari unstable or even remove it from the system. In order to deal with such situations you should know how to. Here in this article, I would be explaining to you about some major issues with Safari along with their solutions and if none of the solutions works, the last resort to you is which I have covered in the end. How to Reinstall Safari on my Mac Issue / Error With Safari Safari was recently in hot search trends due to Apple’s latest software updates to the Safari web browser issued on 3rd December, 2015 which reportedly failed and removed Safari from users’ systems. There was another update to Safari which made it incompatible with the OS and changed the safari logo to a crossed out circle. If you would try to open Safari it would show an error message that reads “The version of safari installed on this Mac is not compatible with the current version of OS”.
You may also get one of the following error messages. Safari quits unexpectedly error. “This version of Safari is no longer supported. Please upgrade to a supported browser.”. Safari crashes as soon as you open it and shows error message Safari quits unexpectedly. Can’t connect to the server. Safari loads partial webpage”.
Safari may become corrupt and may not run at all or runs very slow like a snail, it takes ages to open a web-page, while other browsers run perfectly fine. So if it is not working or having problems to browse websites, you may need to reinstall it. As per the Apple there is no way to reinstall Safari except reinstalling OS X. Reinstalling OS X does not delete any user’s files, however, its a lengthy process and require so much time and care. But before we reinstall the OS X, I would suggest you to try the following troubleshooting which may fix the issue with Safari. We could also install Safari as a standalone app using a third party software called, which is explained in the end.
Troubleshooting the issues with Safari #1. Check to see if Safari is running in 32 bit mode. Apple introduced 64-bit version of Safari with the release of Snow Leopard (OS X 10.6), but it was still possible to run Safari in 32-bit mode for backward compatibility.
At the time of release so many JavaScript application and Safari extensions were not designed for 64 bit version of Safari so users had to run Safari in 32-bit mode. After Mountain Lion( OS X 10.8), Apple removed option to change the bit mode of Safari as all of the extensions and JavaScript Applications were already upgraded to run in 64 bit mode. Check if Safari is running in 32 bit mode Right or control click the Safari icon in your Applications folder then click Get Info. If the box next to: Open in 32 bit mode is Checked, Uncheck it, quit then relaunch Safari. Disable Safari in 32-bit mode-Reinstall Safari 2. Reinstall Flash Player Plug-ins. Safari has a long term issue with Flash Player which was also published in an article written by Steve Jobs-.
Check safari. After the safari is uninstalled delete its left over files from the following locations if available. /Library/Internet Plugins /Library/Application Support/Adobe/Flash Player /Library/Application Support/Adobe/Flash Player Install Manager /Library/Caches/Adobe/Flash Player /Library/Preferences/Macromedia/Flash Player /Library/Preferences/com.adobe.flsh-12.plist /Library/Preferences/com.adobe.flsh-11.0.plist /Library/Preferences/Flash 11.5 MRU /Library/Application Support/Adobe/Flash CS5.5/ /Library/Application Support/Adobe/Flash 3. Restart your computer. Reinstall and enable Flash player for Safari. If you are having trouble with web installer, download the standalone Flash Player version for Safari and Firefox – NPAPI directly from. Remove incompatible Flash Extension Remove ClickToFlash extension if it is installed, it can prevent Flash based videos from streaming.
It can be found as a plugin in /Library/Internet-Plug-Ins. Make sure the JavaScript and plugins are allowed in Security settings of Safari Preferences window. Allow Safari Plugin- Reinstall Safari Also check the Safari Develop Menu to make sure “ Disable JavaScript” is not checked. Allow JavaScript in Safari- Reinstall Safari 7. Check Safari after Turning Off the IPv6 Support. Mac OS X has included support for IPv6 since Mac OS X v10.1 but Mac has also been known to have issue during transitioning into IPv6. Whenever a new step in IPv6 transition was taken, the next OS X release used to have issue with DNS and IPv6 implementation which Apple fixed after rolling out new updates from time to time.
Pacifist is a viewer for Mac installers as, for example, PKG and DMG, which will allow us to access to all their content and to all the content of the executable files of OS X. Extract them and even install all or part of the app to which each file corresponds.
This issue made Safari run very slow like a snail, while other browsers were running fine. On February 4, 2008, IANA adds AAAA records for the IPv6 addresses of six root name servers. With this transition, it became possible to resolve domain names using only IPv6. On August 28, 2009, OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard was released to manufacturing worldwide and reported to have issues with safari if using IPv6. On June 6, 2012, the Internet Society together with many other big companies and organizations held World IPv6 Launch Day, a global permanent deployment of IPv6.
On July 25, 2012, Mountain Lion- OS X 10.8 was released and had a known issue with ipv6 and dns implementation and people started using Chrome and firefox until Apple admitted there was a bug and fixed it. The Same bug chased OS X 10.10 Yosemite too. To fix this issue, first make sure your Mac is up to date by installing all Software updates. If its already updated and you still have the same issue then turn off the IPv6 as mentioned below.
For OS 10.6.8 and earlier a.) Go to System Preferences Network Advanced TCP/IP Configure IPv6: Off. Click “OK” then Apply and then test after restarting the Mac. You could also use the following command in terminal to do the same. Turning off IPv6 support for ethernet: networksetup -setv6off Ethernet Disabling IPv6 for wireless: networksetup -setv6off Wi-Fi Disable IPv6 in Safari- Reinstall Safari Note: Disabling IPv6 may also stop you from using some of the core OS X system services, like the discovery service Bonjour, AirDrop, because they use IPv6. Accordingly, disabling IPv6 may render AirDrop sharing unusable, certain print services configured on Bonjour will become unavailable, and some other convenient Mac features may turn inoperable as well. For OS X 10.7 and above b.) Go to System Preferences Network Advanced TCP/IP Configure IPv6: Link-local only.
Click “OK” then “Apply” and then close preferences. Check Safari after Logout and log back in, it should be working fine. Disable IPv6 in Safari- Reinstall Safari Re-Enabling IPv6 for Wi-Fi & Ethernet in OS X Of course, reversing the above change is also possible, and you can re-enable IPV6 support with the following command strings entered into the terminal: For Wireless Interface networksetup -setv6automatic Wi-Fi For Ethernet Interface networksetup -setv6automatic Ethernet 8. Flush the DNS Cache OS X keeps a local cache of resolved DNS queries for a time defined by the DNS server. Sometimes it might be necessary to reset the cache immediately and re-query a DNS server if an entry on your DNS server has recently changed.
To Flush (Reset) DNS Cache, use the terminal commands below for the version of OS X you’re using. OS X Yosemite and later Use the following Terminal command to reset the DNS cache in OS X v10.10.4 or later: sudo killall -HUP mDNSResponder Use the following Terminal command to reset the DNS cache in OS X v10.10 through v10.10.3: sudo discoveryutil mdnsflushcache OS X Mavericks, Mountain Lion, and Lion Use the following Terminal command to reset the DNS cache in OS X v10.9.5 and earlier: sudo killall -HUP mDNSResponder Mac OS X Snow Leopard Use the following Terminal command to reset the DNS cache in OS X v10.6 through v10.6.8: sudo dscacheutil -flushcache 9. Try Open DNS Use Open DNS With Safari- Reinstall Safari For, “can’t connect to server” issues, Apple suggests using Open DNS or Google DNS. If you are using Safari 5.0.1 or later and you are facing issues like Slow or partial webpage loading, or webpage cannot be found. Try open DNS server mentioned below. Open System Preferences Network Advanced DNS Click + and type: 208.67.222.222 Click + again and type. 208.67.220.220 Click ‘ OK’.
Quit and relaunch Safari to test. If that didn’t help, go back to the DNS tab. Select the 208 addresses then click ➖ under the DNS Servers panel to delete.
Then click + to add Googles’ DNS Server. 8.8.8.8 8.8.4.4 Then click OK and try Safari. Scan the Computer with Malwarebyte Anti-malware Your Safari might be infected with Malware, Spyware or adware which is causing Safari to crash. I have created a, check to see if your Computer is infected with any of these.Scan your computer with. Remove all the found items as they are harmful to your computer.
Remove Malware from Mac- Reinstall Safari Look into the following folders and browse their contents for any third-party add-on files. Move the third party add-on files to trash.
/Library/Internet Plug-Ins/ /Library/Input Methods/ /Library/InputManagers/ /Library/ScriptingAdditions /Library/Internet Plug-Ins/ /Library/Input Methods/ /Library/InputManagers/ /Library/ScriptingAdditions 11. Reset Safari If all the above methods have been tried and Safari still does not work. Reset the Safari by deleting the following files. 2. Type the following command defaults write com.apple.DiskUtility DUDebugMenuEnabled 1 3. This command enables the hidden Debug menu to appear in Disk Utility.
Open Disk Utility and look for “ Debug” alongside ‘ Help’. 4. Click on the new Debug menu and select “ Show every partition“.
Now you should see the ‘Recovery HD’ in the left-hand pane of the Disk Utility window although it will be grayed out. Reinstall Safari from Recovery partition 6.
Select ‘ Recovery HD’ and click the Mount icon, at the top of the Disk Utility Window, to make it active. After it is mounted, It will show up on desktop as a drive icon. Now use Pacifist to extract Safari.app from Recovery Partition as mentioned below. Open and click Open Package then select recovery HD. Go to the folder named “ com.apple.recovery.boot” and select BaseSystem.dmg and click open.
Reinstall Safari from Recovery partition. Once the BaseSystem.dmg is loaded you would see all of its contents. Select safari under Applications folder and then click on “ Extract To” on the top and install it in /Application Folder. If it asks you to merge or Replace, Click Replace and Safari would be installed in the default Applications folder. Reinstall Safari from Recovery partition #3. Reinstall OS X to Reinstall Safari. If all the above steps have been tried out and it still does not fix the Safari issue.
The last resort to you is Reinstall OS X to reinstall Safari, it will install a fresh copy of both your operating system and Safari and will not loose any of your files or document they will remain as is. Follow the step mentioned below for Reinstalling OS X. Restart your computer and hold down “Cmd+R ” together until you see gray Apple Logo. Make sure you’re connected to the Internet, select “Reinstall OS X” and click “Continue.” Follow the onscreen instructions to install OS X. Hope you found it helpful and it helped you reinstall Safari on your Mac. In case you still have the same issue and it does not fix the Safari problem, then write to us in the comment section below.