iOS 14.2 Safari Bug

Today I was “working on my iPad. Safari suddenly began reloading every single web page repeatedly. After a few minutes, it crashed. This happened with every site I visited, so I went looking for an answer. The short version: this is an iOS 14.2 Safari bug.

So I went looking for discussions. I found this useful thread on Reddit. Thanks to users sorcar and SIZtrio for their helpful suggestions. Those involve some Safari settings that I didn’t even know existed.

Apparently we’re all beta testers for Apple now.

So head over to your iPhone or iPad and launch Settings. Scroll down to the block of Apple apps and click on Safari. You’ll see this:

(click for larger image)

Scroll way down to the bottom of the list until you see the Advanced setting:

(click for larger image)

Click Advanced and look for Experimental Features (again at the bottom of the right sidebar).

(click for larger image)

Now let’s take a minute to think about this. “Experimental” is supposed to mean “not ready for prime time.” We used to call it beta testing. Apparently we’re all beta testers for Apple now.

Some combination of these features is causing the problem. The solution from Reddit is simple. Turn off all the experimental features. Then turn on all the CSS features as well as Web Animations. This seems to work.

Just to round out the article, here are the settings I found when I first looked at Experimental Settings. In my opinion, there are way too many of these turned on. I assume these are the default settings because I didn’t even know these settings existed until today.