UPDATE: BuzzFeed reports Apple confirms that it has fixed the issue that was causing Safari to crash.
Users on both iOS devices and Mac are reporting that their Safari web browser is crashing when entering text into the URL bar. Some users are reporting that simply tapping on the URL bar causes the browser to crash.
Anything like a URL entry or entering a search term is causing the issue. It is believed to be caused by an issue on Apple’s end, as it is affecting both iOS and Mac users, and URL searches, auto complete, and related features rely on data returned from Apple’s servers.
To temporarily fix the issue until Apple gets things fixed, disable Safari Suggestions. On an iOS device, go to: “Settings” -> “Safari” -> “Preferences” -> “Search.” toggle the “Safari Suggestions” switch to off.
In Safari on the Mac, disable Safari Suggestions by clicking “Preferences…” in the “Safari” menu item, and then clicking the “Search” tab in Preferences, and clicking the “Include Safari Suggestions,” to disable the feature if it is enabled.
Users can also open a Private Browsing window, which also seems to prevent the browser from crashing until Apple can come up with a fix.
Reports are that the issue is affecting a number of users worldwide, on all types of devices, running various versions of iOS and OS X.
We tried this on our iOS devices and Mac, and haven’t encountered this issue. This could mean a fix is rolling out. However, it all seems to depend on whether your browser has certain data already cached. We did clear our browser’s cache, and also went in and out of Airplane Mode to flush the DNS cache on our iOS devices, and still didn’t encounter the issue on either our iPhone or iPad.
Apple hasn’t commented, but is likely working on a fix, due to the widespread affect of the issue. We’ll let you know as soon as we hear anything. Stay tuned.
