In the last few days, Safari suddenly started crashing on WSJ.com. Particularly when opening articles with lots of ads, the page reloads several times then crashes saying “a problem repeatedly occurred”.
On the Mac, it says that it is using a significant amount of memory, on the iPad it just says website crashed.
I can load the articles when I disable JavaScript in Settings, but that is not an ideal solution.
Website works fine on Chrome and Firefox on the Mac, but does not work on Safari on Mac, or on iPad or iPhone.
I already tried:
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clearing cache, history, cookies
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deleting website data
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force restarting
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incognito mode
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both WiFi and cellular data
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deleting all content and settings in the iPad, and setting up as new device (!)
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family member’s iPad – same issue
Any tips? WSJ customer support thinks it’s a problem with my devices.
This started shortly after last iOS update.
OS versions:
- iPad Air 3 – iOS 14.2
- MacBook Air – macOS Catalina
- iPhone SE – iOS 13.3.1
Best Answer
WSJ website now behaves normal
WSJ must have updated their website. I can't reproduce the huge RAM usage on the website and have not done any Safari or macOS updates. Therefore it was not an issue with Safari but with the WSJ website itself.
This is not a very technical answer but WSJ customer support is sort of correct.
I just loaded WSJ website myself and after a few seconds the RAM usage was way too high:
This will be too much for any iOS device and even for lower-speced Macs.
I can't tell you if the WSJ has made significant changes to their website the last days or if it is Apples fault. Either way I would - if its that important to you - write to both Apple and WSJ about this.