Will CroftIs anyone else experiencing insanely slow address bar autocomplete behaviour after updating to Safari 26 on macOS 15.7 Sequoia (ie not Tahoe)? Infuriating!
eurozerozero@willcroft Yes!
@eurozerozero Glad I'm not alone—maddening!
@willcroft Yeah. And after a while, even just clicking on the address bar to make it active becomes sluggish for me.
@eurozerozero Same, everything just slows to a crawl and eventually letter-by-letter typing starts to beachball. Will report back if I find a culprit/fix. Hoping for a speedy 26.0.2. Perhaps @jensimmons would know if this is a known bug or worth reporting?
@jensimmons Also it seems address bar autocomplete has regressed in general? I'm no longer getting autocompleted URLs (from my history) for 3–4 letter prompts. For example "dash" for dashboard.domain.tld ("dashb" resolves) and "dar" for daringfireball.net ("dari" resolves). Unsure if related!
@willcroft @jensimmons I ended up submitting this as FB20414621 because it seems to be getting worse. Today Safari 26 even crashed after beachballing for a long time while trying to type in the address bar.
The bad performance seems to get worse in relation to how long Safari has been open or how much browsing has been done, so initially everything seems fine, but after a few hours it sometimes takes seconds to respond (on an M4 Pro!).
Nicolás Alvarez@willcroft @eurozerozero anything in activity monitor eating CPU during those freezes?
@nicolas17 @willcroft Next time it gets bad enough I'll take a look!
@nicolas17 @willcroft OK, once it had started slowing down again I did a test of repeatedly typing and backspacing a few characters in the address bar. It’s only Safari that’s chewing CPU, and by repeatedly typing and backspacing it’ll peg 100% CPU until it eventually closes.
After opening it again fresh, I just started repeatedly typing asdf in the address bar while constantly hitting backspace. That reproduces the issue: 100% CPU, not responding, up to 100 GB of RAM, eventually it closes 😄
@eurozerozero I've taken to restarting Safari every time, too. Assuming this is some kind of memory leak, hoping for a fix in 26.0.2. Thanks for filing a FB!
@willcroft @jensimmons @nicolas17 I’ve added reproduction steps to FB20414621.
I can 100% reliably cause Safari 26.0.1 on macOS 15.7 to slow down and eventually close by repeatedly typing and backspacing in the address bar.
Even once I stop typing and it eventually goes back to 0% CPU, the whole browser is then sluggish when doing things like clicking into the address bar or maximising the window. Continuing to type/backspace causes it to lock up and close.
@eurozerozero @jensimmons @nicolas17 Thanks for the diagnosis—reproduced! 🙏🏻 For me, it's specifically the com.apple.Safari.History process though, which makes sense if it's trying to match results. I have history retention set to 1 year.
@eurozerozero @nicolas17 Fingers crossed for an OS-level fix in 15.7.1…
@willcroft @nicolas17 I’ve already updated to macOS 15.7.1 and the issue persists, unfortunately.
The trouble is getting anyone to look at the bug report.
It’s been literally years since I received even a generic reply to a Feedback report (even for bugs I can 100% reliably reproduce) so I don’t hold much hope of a quick fix, especially since their focus is on macOS 26. It might never get fixed.
@eurozerozero @nicolas17 Sad to hear this! Upgraded, but haven't seen the bug yet. I saw a fix for autofill in macOS 15.7.1 but clearly not related to the URL bar/history subprocess issues we've seen. Holding out hope for Safari 26.0.2 instead, then 🙃
Definitely aware of the black hole that is Radar!
@willcroft @nicolas17 Yeah, I saw that as well and was going to ask Ricky if it could be at all related, since the symptom sounds similar. I’ll be crossing my fingers too!
Jen Simmons@jensimmons @willcroft @nicolas17 Hi Jen, is it possible to get an update on how the investigation of this is progressing? It’s still in Safari 26.1 on macOS 15.7.2 and it is hugely impactful in day-to-day use.
I can easily reproduce this just by using the address bar in normal use, or instantly by repeatedly typing and backspacing in it. Lots of other people are reporting the issue in the wild.
Screen recording attached on Safari 26.1 showing runaway memory use (and it was then terminated).
@eurozerozero @willcroft @nicolas17 Try on Safari 26.2 beta: https://developer.apple.com/safari/resources/
@jensimmons Safari 26.2 beta is not actually released yet (except as part of iOS 26.2 beta).
@jensimmons The release notes are there, but there’s no download available for Safari 26.2 beta (it’s still showing the links to 26.1 beta).
@jensimmons @eurozerozero It's *finally* released.
@nicolas17 @jensimmons Thanks for letting me know – I checked it a day or so ago and it wasn’t there. I’ll give it a go!
@nicolas17 @jensimmons Jen, thanks for following this up. After using 26.2 beta 1 for an afternoon, I haven’t experienced the problem, so I think it might be fixed!
Please also pass on my thanks to those on the team.
@jensimmons @eurozerozero wonderful news, thank you Jen and team for the fix!
@jensimmons Thank you, Jen!