macOS bugs causing sporadic browsing issues with Safari, Firefox, others

An apparent bug — or series of bugs — in macOS 11.3 and 11.3.1 is causing seemingly random website browsing problems in Apple's Safari 14.1, as well as on other browsers.

According to user reports on the Apple Support Communities, the Safari 14.1 update breaks functionality on popular websites like eBay. The issue appears to predominantly affect Safari 14.1 on macOS Catalina and macOS Mojave.

There are reports from developers about ongoing problems with the latest versions of Apple's browser, too. Google Chrome developer advocate Jake Archibald reports that localStorage in Safari 14.1 is broken, causing tabs with use the same localStorage for text boxes.

localStorage is broken in Safari 14.1.

Tabs end up with seperate localStorage for reading, but the same localStorage for writing. This will likely result in data loss for users. (h/t @forresto)https://t.co/5Ljxl4vvbH
— Jake Archibald (@jaffathecake) May 4, 2021

Other reports indicate that Safari 14.1 for macOS Mojave and macOS Catalina also has problems with WebAuthN. According to Eclectic Light, Apple pulled the Safari 14.1 update for both of those macOS versions on May 1.

AppleInsider staff members have also run into website problems with macOS Big Sur and Safari 14.1. Problems across our staff don't stop at those browsers, since we've also noticed website functionality issues in Firefox and Google Chrome on sites like eBay and others.

As far as potential fixes, there doesn't appear to be anything surefire. Some users report that disabling JavaScript in Safari preferences seems to resolve some of the issues. The troubleshooting advice given by other users in the Apple Support Forums suggest that a clean reinstall of the operating system solves the problem, but AppleInsider can confirm that this is not a universal solution.

In the meantime, it appears that Apple is aware of the problems and is likely working on a fix, as evidenced by the removal of Safari 14.1 for macOS Mojave and macOS Catalina.

10 Comments

cgriff 5 Years · 2 comments

About 3 years ago

So interesting that this rears its head in macOS / am wondering if this is also the case for iPadOS Safari ? The browser has a history of randomly blowing away entire tab collections, and Apple’s lame advice has been to use the tab history to deal with this aberration. HOPING for a FIX !

caddyman33 7 Years · 25 comments

All the betas and this does not get reported? I guess I don’t understand why they do betas

commentzilla 10 Years · 777 comments

Since the updates my computer frequently crashes after waking up from a long sleep. There is also still something wrong with the USB SSD speeds over Thunderbolt.

mr. h 22 Years · 4557 comments

I was having serious issues with Safari 14.1 on Mojave (macOS 10.14.6), but after re-installing using the direct download at:

http://swcdn.apple.com/content/downloads/36/06/071-02600-A_V0GH526IV1/1cn8scgv7ujlqsglord2zkdyy3ho2ebunz/Safari14.1MojaveAuto.pkg

It's been error-free. There's also a direct download for Catalina here:

http://swcdn.apple.com/content/downloads/62/62/071-00728-A_5SWQUDK0WB/jyq47oimzangibo4lmyevte0ezlrg8w8s9/Safari14.1CatalinaAuto.pkg

It seems that the built-in software update did not update all of Safari's support packages, in particular libwebrtc.dylib at /System/Library/StagedFrameworks/Safari/ was out of date (should have a created date of 22/04/2021 for Mojave)

dewme 10 Years · 5775 comments

caddyman33 said:

All the betas and this does not get reported? I guess I don’t understand why they do betas

There may be something about opening up betas to such a wide audience that is actually resulting in less coverage. When I’ve done beta testing as part of a select group I definitely scrutinized the beta much more intensely. With vast numbers of people involved with the betas now, I think it’s becoming more of a Preview program rather than a true Beta program.