Safari Running Slow or Freezing on Mac? How to Fix It

Safari is slow, shows the spinning beachball, or stops responding on your Mac.

Why: Usually one thing is dragging Safari down — a heavy or stuck webpage, a misbehaving extension, corrupted data stored by a specific site, or a network/VPN issue. The steps below isolate which one.

Fix 1: Reload, then force quit if frozen

1. Try View > Reload Page (or Command-R) to recover a stuck page.
2. If Safari won’t respond at all, press Option-Command-Esc to open Force Quit, select Safari, and click Force Quit.
3. Reopen Safari. If it’s just one tab that hangs, close that tab instead of the whole app.

Fix 2: Turn off extensions

Extensions are the most common cause of a slow or unstable Safari.

1. Choose Safari > Settings, then click Extensions.
2. Deselect each extension to turn it off.
3. If Safari speeds up, turn them back on one at a time to find the culprit, and remove the bad one.

Fix 3: Clear data for the misbehaving site

If only certain sites are slow, view the page in a Private Window — if it’s fine there, the stored data is the problem.

1. Choose File > New Private Window (or Shift-Command-N) and open the site.
2. If it works in private, go to Safari > Settings > Privacy > Manage Website Data.
3. Select the affected website and click Remove, then revisit it in a normal window.

Fix 4: Check settings, network, and updates

1. Review Safari > Settings under Privacy, Security, Websites, and Advanced for a setting that may be breaking pages.
2. A VPN, security software, or custom proxy/DNS can slow Safari — test the same page in another browser or on another device on the same network.
3. Keep your Mac current: Apple menu > System Settings > General > Software Update (Safari updates come with macOS).

FAQ

Safari is slow but other browsers are fine? It’s Safari-specific — start with extensions (Fix 2) and per-site data (Fix 3).

Everything on the Mac is slow, not just Safari? That’s a system issue, not Safari — restart the Mac and check memory/storage.

Sources: Apple Support — If Safari doesn’t work as expected on Mac