Hi All: I have a problem that will be difficult for me to explain because I have no idea what happened, and I don't know the names of these pages etc. On our old iMac 2007 El Capitan the norm was to open safari, apple.ca comes up as the homepage, then we accessed google from above on the toolbar or we went to bookmarks for utube etc. All those are gone, when I open Safari a large white page with lots of Apple info comes up, all text all down the left side of the page. I think it's different way of looking at the page, a different view? different style? All was well until this evening. If I click on something from utube it comes up and says video not available and then it plays it anyways. I think the kid touched something he shouldn't have but I have no idea how to get it back to the way it was. Any ideas? Thanks Donna
homepage lost?
- Thread starter DonnaH
- Start date
chas_m
Well-Known Member
Apple.ca and YouTube.com still work fine here. As you mentioned El Capitan I think your browser is reasonably up-to-date (Sierra is out, but perhaps your machine cannot run it), so the first suspect I would turn to is a corrupted cache. Safari, like all other web browsers, stores a cache of frequently-visited pages in order to help speed up loading. This can easily become corrupted, which causes no harm but gives the "all text" effect you're seeing.
There are two easy ways to empty the cache in Safari: you can turn on the "Developer Mode" in Safari's preferences under "Advanced," which causes the "Develop" menu to appear. There is then a command for "Empty caches," and you should follow that by quitting Safari and re-opening it. You can opt to turn "Developer Mode" back off again after that if you like, but you'll need to re-enable it to repeat the cache-clearing command if you ever need to.
The other option is the frequently-recommended OnyX, a free utility that helps keep your Mac running smoothly. Under the "Automation" menu, you can opt to empty Safari's caches, history, and other stuff.
That should do the trick.
Cheers
Chas
There are two easy ways to empty the cache in Safari: you can turn on the "Developer Mode" in Safari's preferences under "Advanced," which causes the "Develop" menu to appear. There is then a command for "Empty caches," and you should follow that by quitting Safari and re-opening it. You can opt to turn "Developer Mode" back off again after that if you like, but you'll need to re-enable it to repeat the cache-clearing command if you ever need to.
The other option is the frequently-recommended OnyX, a free utility that helps keep your Mac running smoothly. Under the "Automation" menu, you can opt to empty Safari's caches, history, and other stuff.
That should do the trick.
Cheers
Chas
Hey Chas: Thankyou, you saved my life. I followed your instructions to empty the cache and just so you know when I went to the develop menu there was a tick beside disable styles, and of course I didn't know if that was proper or not so I unticked it and by gosh everything came back to life. I have downloaded Onyx and will run it when the kid goes away, I remember that there was a copy of Onyx on the machine awhile back but can't seem to find it now so a new one will be good. I am going to try and hide everything but the photo booth and Safari from the desktop and hide the tool bar etc, so he can't touch more things than necessary!! He just loves those videos on utube and he has learned to navigate the thing on his own, obviously by watching aunty, if I was only as bright as this near 3 years old. Yup, not quite 3, I'm in trouble. Thanks again Donna