Is Your iOS Safari Crashing As You Type? Here’s The Fix
I have a confession to make:
Whenever I am alone in my room, I fire up YouTube on my Mac, look for some good hip-hop songs and act all cool.
Now here’s the fun part: As the loud music oozes out of my Mac, I immediately pick up my iPhone, search for the lyrics, and dance to the tune while lip-syncing like a boss. Like this:
But in a minute, I go from Imma-sexy-dancer mode into a mobile-nerd mode:
Why?
Well, because Apple’s Safari browser! It is the show-stopper as it starts acting up whenever I type something in the search bar.
At first, I thought it was just me and did the classic move – restarted my iPhone to see if that fixes anything.
Nope! Safari browser still crashed and ruined my dance party. In fact, the problem existed for so long on iOS 9 that I never knew.
Many folks on Twitter have also posted it. They hate it when Safari app crashes as you type in the search bar. And the classic solution of restarting or updating iOS 9 on iPhones doesn’t stop the unexpected crashes:
Every time I try to type in the search bar in safari, it crashes the app… Anyone else? I'd google the problem, but obviously I can't. 😑
— brandon woolsey (@brandonw00lsey) January 28, 2016
Anyone have an iPhone & whenever you try to type something in the address bar on safari it crashes?
— Ash♡ (@genotosid) January 28, 2016
Whenever I try to type something in on safari it crashes and I restarted my phone 2 times help
— Wallis (@wallislmao) January 27, 2016
Everytime I try type in my search bar in safari (on iPhone) the app crashes 🙈 Have restarted phone and run update and see crashes. Ideas?
— Kelly McGrath (@Kelly_McGrath) January 27, 2016
my safari crashes every time I try to type something into the search bar
— vivi (@bottomlouisus) January 27, 2016
So what’s the solution? How do I stop Safari from crashing on iPhone or iPad right now?
I first found this solution via Twitter. When applied, the issue was quickly resolved, which means my dancing moves were back – this time with more excitement:
You wanna learn how to do it? Well, in short – to fix the crashing problem in Safari, you have to disable the search suggestions. And you can do that in two ways:
Method 1: Disable Safari Search Suggestion From Settings
From your iPhone, go to Settings > Safari -> “Smart Search Field” -> “Search Suggestion“.
Note: CCM explains how to turn off the search suggestions of Safari in detail. You may want to read this article.
Method 2: Disable Safari Search Suggestion Through Preferences
From your iPhone, open Safari, go to Preferences, click Search, then deselect Include Safari Suggestions.
Note: Apple recommends this as a solution in their support page. More details here.
For me, the first solution worked just fine. I was able to use Safari back again and type those lyrics / search anything I want. The only downside of this is that you won’t get any search suggestions (as we are disabling them).
This is also a known issue that Apple needs to fix in its upcoming iOS 9 update. For now, simply turning OFF search suggestions in Safari will force the browser to work without any issues. And if you are a dancer like me, this is your only solution.
This, or use a third-party browser (which I don’t like).