Safari users are today reporting an odd issue causing Apple's web browser app to crash on both Macs and iOS devices. Several Mac users are also not receiving autocomplete suggestions when entering text into Safari's address bar, with many pages including sites like Google failing to load completely. For many iPhone and iPad users, simply tapping on the URL bar causes Safari to crash.
URL searches, autocomplete, Top Sites and other Safari features rely on queries being sent to and returned by Apple's servers, suggesting this is where the problem lies. The issue also seems to depend on what data the browser most recently cached.
The current fix for iOS and Mac involves disabling Safari Suggestions, which stops the app from crashing to the home screen. On your iOS device, go into Settings, tap Safari, and toggle off the "Safari Suggestions" switch. On your Mac, the same setting is found in Safari -> Preferences -> Search.
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Alternatively, opening a Private Browsing window also appears to solve the issue.
The problem appears to be affecting users around the world and will likely be resolved when Apple corrects the service on their end.
Update: According to BuzzFeed, Apple has now fixed the issue that was causing the Safari browser to crash on iOS and Macs due to issues with Safari Suggestions.
Top Rated Comments
I wonder if this is actually a problem with Google search autocomplete because I'm not experiencing the problem and I use duckduckgo which has its own autocomplete. Obviously still a bug in Safari but perhaps triggered by Google.
Using DuckDuckGo too, Safari works fine on all my devices......I thought my iMac got a virus or something. It's been not working for a few hours already. Search bar non responsive and typing did not even appear on search bar.