Safari 15.5 XXX

My Safari 15.5 will not open about 90% of links from Mail messages! I’ve searched about this problem, talked to Apple (got a VERY inexperienced tech guy!), and would quite using it if it wasn’t for all my stored pm’s. NOW, every time it fails I can copy link to FireFox and the link opens immediately. Since I don’t her widespread complaints about this, I assume it is something local? I would sure appreciate some feedback!

First thing to try: Create a new user account (System Prefs/Users & Groups), or activate the Guest User account, and log in as that user. If that user doesn’t have the problem, it’s something in your user–probably in the Safari prefs, database, cache, cookies etc. that you can start trying to figure out.

A faster way to open a link in a browser other than Safari is to use the ‘Open Page with’ item in the Safari Develop menu. If you don’t see that menu, you can find the option to add it via Safari>Preferences>Advanced.

When that happens to me (more than occasionally, unfortunately!), I go back to Mail and click the link again. It then loads immediately.

So could you add some more detail? When you say “will not open,” does Safari come to the foreground when you click the link? If so, does the progress bar in Safari start advancing, and then just stop? Or do you get an error message (either immediately, or after waiting a while)? If so, can you repeat (or take a screen shot of) the message in its entirety?

Happens to me way too frequently. Pain in the neck when it happens. It has greatly increased with the last update. I should also add that it is not just links from Mail but stored bookmarks in Safari although those usually tend to be having to sit and wait an eternity and they fail to load. Safari has become a very iffy app for me of late. I then have to use Brave to get to where I want to be.

Thanks! I do have a 2nd account and sure enough, links work better in it! SO, my friends, now where do I start troubleshooting my user account problems? Thanks!

Thanks! Didn’t know about that…

Thanks for sharing the pain…Apple support doesn’t seem to be aware/concerned about link problems with Safari!

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Hmm! Didn’t work for me!

At this point, we know the software itself isn’t broken and there isn’t anything special in the mail messages. We know it is some part of the system configuration on your primary account.

The next step would be to look through the complete set of preferences for both Mail and Safari to see if there is anything unusual. Maybe write down the settings from the working account and compare them against those on the broken account. If you see differences between the two, try changing the configuration (one option at a time) until they match, in order to figure out which one is the cause of the problem.

If that completely fails, then it’s possible that there is some corruption in the preference file, which you can’t change because the UI doesn’t give you access. In which case, you can (after making backups, of course) reset the Mail and Safari apps (delete preference files, delete caches, etc.) to see if that works - it probably will. At which point, you will need to re-apply any customizations and extensions. A pain in the neck, but it should work if nothing else does.

The symptoms you mention in several of the posts in this thread make it sound like a Safari extension problem.

I’ve definitely had problems with pages loading incorrectly or misbehaving in Safari that I’ve tracked down to (mostly) content filtering and blocking extensions. Things iike StopTheMadness, Hush, and others are mostly great, but conflict on a few random sites. PITA to track them down some times.

At any rate, try disabling all extensions in Safari on your problem account, and see if that changes the behavior. If it does, re-enable them one or two at a time, until you’ve found the culprit.

Might be worth checking iCloud Private Relay.