Home System Utility ‘Search Suggestions’ Bug Hits Safari

‘Search Suggestions’ Bug Hits Safari

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‘Search Suggestions’ Bug Hits Safari

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It’s been a rough week for Safari users. If you weren’t caught by a prank URL that crashes the browser, look out for program failure when using the address bar to search.

According to(Opens in a new window) Reddit users, Safari on iOS and Mac is unstable for some.

“Any time I try to use the address bar to type a search, Safari crashes,” scruffmagee wrote this morning. “I cleared the history and website data with no change.”

Apple did not immediately respond to PCMag’s request for comment.

Apple iOS developer and hacker Steven Troughton-Smith, however, indicated that the problems are related to Safari’s search suggestions feature.

To turn off the default suggestions, and stop the app from crashing, visit Settings > Safari and toggle off “Safari Suggestions.” The same setting is found under Safari > Preferences > Search on the Mac. MacRumors also recommends(Opens in a new window) opening a Private Browsing window to avoid the issue.

Troughton-Smith also pointed out that iOS 7 and earlier operating systems are unaffected; the bug appears to be attacking iOS 8 and iOS 9 only.

“A bunch of [people] in Cupertino are going to wake up to a very sh**ty day,” he wrote in another tweet. “The responsibility of having a billion users weighs heavy.”

This glitch comes a day after iPhone users were duped into clicking a link to crashsafari dot com, which, as its name suggests, crashes the mobile browser. Apple handsets then heat up and reboot, thanks to “an ever-increasing string of characters” bogging down the phone’s memory, The Guardian reported.

The URL also crashes Safari on iPad and Mac; it could also slow down Chrome on Android, Mac, and PC, as well as Firefox. Shutting down the browsers and rebooting iOS devices seems to fix the problem.

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Source link : https://www.pcmag.com/news/search-suggestions-bug-hits-safari