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Apple's Safari browser is crashing on iPhones and Macs worldwide

Apple's Safari browser is crashing on iPhones and Macs worldwide

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Apple's Safari browser appears to be experiencing issues worldwide this morning. Searching from the address bar in both iOS and OS X is causing the browser to crash in some instances. The Verge has confirmed the problem on several of our own iOS devices and at least one OS X machine.

Safari's search suggestions are to blame

Steven Troughton-Smith, an iOS developer, notes that the problems are related to Safari's search suggestions feature. Simply disabling this feature will stop Safari crashing, or using the private mode option in the browser as a temporary workaround. Not everyone is affected, and this could be because some have the search suggestions cached locally or they're still able to reach Apple's servers thanks to a DNS cache. The Verge has reached out to Apple for comment on the problems, and we'll update you accordingly.

Apple's latest software issue comes just a couple of months after Mac users were forced to reinstall software from the App Store following a security glitch. An expired security certificate used by Apple to verify apps forced a number of Mac users to reinstall certain pieces of software after the company attempted to move from the older SHA-1 standard, to the newer, more secure, SHA-2. Some apps in the App Store did not support the SHA-2 standard, resulting in the forced reinstall.