What is going on with Safari in Sequoia 15.3.2?

Question

What is going on with Safari in Sequoia 15.3.2?

Instagram and Facebook constantly/repeatedly reload to the point of being completely unusable (starts with the bar up top saying "This website was reloaded because a problem occurred," will work for a bit but many videos will be black reading "Sorry, we're having trouble playing this video," then shortly thereafter will go through a short burst of several attempts to load and reload, then gray screens on "a problem repeatedly occurred on ____." Not the worst sites to not function, but I do like YouTube....

Youtube started off a few days ago by bottlenecking during the ads and after a few seconds it would jump to the end/"skip" (okay, not complaining....). But then the videos themselves started having trouble. Spinny spinny spinny try to load. Then back to the thumbnail, with the play icon. Hit play. "An error occurred. Please try again later."

Speed tests more or less seem fine. Downloaded Chrome, everything works fine.

This has all been in the last few days. I updated from a slightly earlier version of Sequoia but don't know which, though a fairly recent one as this is a newly acquired refurbished m4 mini and I updated upon migration.

The following is a tangent, but it is quite frustrating to drop $1600 on a new whip, only to find the search function even more broken than before, Safari only half working, and many of my totally mainstream software no longer running natively or properly and/or takes a latex glove and some vaseline to get installed, and by the time I verify it is baseline usable I've passed the 14 days trade-in window so I now have 2 disappointing machines (previously had an m1 with 16gb ram). Not to mention that my system still overloads in Logic even with 32gb RAM and the bus power drive eject issue persists as well. Why is the Apple ecosystem becoming increasingly dysfunctional? Regretting this purchase.

Mac mini

Posted on Mar 30, 2025 1:29 AM

Reply

Answer 1

Yer_Man

Level 10

164,766 points

Mar 30, 2025 3:33 AM in response to Flomer the Mule

The bare fact is that nothing is going on in Safari in 15.3.2. It's working just fine. There has been no outcry or surge in posts here about it, and given that it's possibly the most used app on a Mac if there was an systemic issue with hugely popular sites like FB, Instagram and YT I think it's a safe assumption we would be inundated with posts on here.

Which is not to deny that you have serious issue, but it does suggest that the issue is local to your setup.

First test: Create a new use account. Log into these websites from that account. Is the experience any better? Or the same?

If it's better then we can suspect something in your user account is the source of the issue. If it's the same then we can look at what else is going on on the machine.

Reply

Answer 2

Mar 30, 2025 4:34 PM in response to Yer_Man

There seem to be quite a few discussing this in recent posts (though the forums are not inundated, you're correct):

For example:

Why is Safari not opening websites on mac… - Apple Community

Safari fails to load more and more sites … - Apple Community

As, like others have said, it is salved briefly after a restart before starting up again, so I will have to try your suggestion and report back. Thank you.

Reply

Answer 3

John Galt

Level 10

150,626 points

Apr 7, 2025 6:46 AM in response to FrankieNinja

Lots of people experience problems with Safari. Lots of people also install or use ill-conceived system modifications, Safari extensions, VPNs, various and sundry non-Apple "anti-virus", "cleaning", "Internet security" products... absolute garbage that should never have been installed to begin with.

iOS devices are not as easily modified as Macs. The fact Safari is working on your iPad is a clue something is amiss with your particular Mac. So, fix it.

So, while I do not know what is causing this, I think its frequent enough that it merits further attention from Apple.

Did you tell them? The rest of us who aren't experiencing any problems will not be doing that on your behalf.

Review If Safari doesn't open a page or work as expected on your Mac - Apple Support. It addresses most common user-inflicted causes.

Reply

Answer 4

Apr 7, 2025 4:44 AM in response to Yer_Man

@Yer_Man. I have an M1 Mac Studio running Sequoia 15.4 and also experiencing issues with YouTube videos intermittently blacking out though sound remains fine. Tried completely clearing cache/history with restart to no avail. I tried on other browsers and it worked just fine. Thinking along your lines (that it might be a local problem) I tried the same on my i-Pad Pro also via Safari. No problems either. Though it might seem to be a local problem,. However, given the amount of material on the subject, I would say that there has been an outcry and it's not a new one. The problem may be occurring on some units while on others it does not. I don't know enough about it to say one way or another but I do know that I am experiencing the same issue and so are many others and apparently they have been for a long time. At least four years according to YouTube upload dates. So, while I do not know what is causing this, I think its frequent enough that it merits further attention from Apple.

Reply

Quick Links

What is going on with Safari in Sequoia 15.3.2?