X(Twitter) page misbehaves in Safari 26.2 and 26.3

TidBITS Talk
1

I (almost) always keep X(Twitter) home page open, as a tab in Safari window. It used to have no problem at all, until Safari 26.1.

On December 13, 2025, I updated my M4 Mac mini (24 GB RAM installed) to macOS 26.2, so Safari was updated to version 26.2. Since then, the X(Twitter) tab started to misbehave frequently.

The symptom: If another tab is opened over the Twitter tab (that is, if the Twitter tab is put to the background) and I work on the other tab for a while (especially do something that involves video playback), then, when I select the Twitter tab to bring it back to the foreground, the Twitter tab frequently comes up empty. (that is, the tab’s page content is fully white - nothing is drawn there.)

Pressing Command-R (Redraw page) does not change the situation, but if I click the “Twitter” item on the Bookmark (Favorites) Bar, the tab does go back to normal, fixing the problem.

I tried Emptying Cash (Command-Option-E) and relaunched Safari, but that didn’t fix the situation.

Sometimes (but very rarely), a chunk of text is drawn at the top-left corner of the tab page, saying:

“Too much electricity consumption caused this Web page to be redrawn.” (or something, in Japanese)

but actually the page was not redrawn: the tab page is empty, other than the one-line text.

The situation remains the same, after I installed macOS 26.3/Safari 26.3, until now. What can I do to avoid the empty Twitter page, without needing to hit the bookmark each time?

2

As far as I can tell, there is no way to stop Safari in macOS from shutting down resources to a background tab that is using too much energy (other than being always plugged in maybe?)

One thing you could try is to pin the tab - maybe Safari is more liberal with pinned tabs? But I’m not sure that this will matter.

If that doesn’t work, I might consider using twitter with another browser? Or simply quitting and re-opening Safari, which should reopen all existing tabs? On an apple silicon Mac this has always been fast for me. I used to do this a lot when the 1Password extension stopped working right in Safari, but thankfully that issue seems to have improved lately.

3

Thanks, Doug, for your ideas.

One thing you could try is to pin the tab - maybe Safari is more liberal
with pinned tabs? But I’m not sure that this will matter.

I tried that, but it didn’t work. The problem still remained.

Or simply quitting and re-opening Safari, which should reopen all existing tabs?

Selecting the Twitter bookmark on the Favorites Bar (or just Command-Option-4, because it is the 4th item on my Favorites Bar) on the blank tab page (that’s the working method) is easier then quitting and re-opening Safari (Command-Q and then Control-Option-Command-S), isn’t it?
(Control-Option-Command-S is my Keyboard Maestro shortcut for launching Safari.)

As far as I can tell, there is no way to stop Safari in macOS from
shutting down resources to a background tab that is using too much
energy

Is there any way to downgrade Safari-only, that is, (somehow obtain and) install Safari 26.1 over macOS 26.3? (Safari 26.1 on macOS 26.1 never had this problem.)

1 Like