16th February, 2023.
I’m right, aren’t I … ?
If it’s not one thing, it’s another!
After the Great Disc Problem of a couple of days ago? Where my external optical drive stopped working? And was fixed by a further update?
Yesterday, I started having issues with Safari, my default browser.
It started refusing to open, when needed: bouncing up and down in a way that told me there was issues.
When opening, most Mac apps — if they’re on the Dock at the bottom of the screen — will bounce up and down to tell you they’re opening.
If they stay bouncing, without opening?
You know you’ve got issues.
I had an issue: one I didn’t figure out … until I had a look at the other account on my Mac.
Which had a perfectly working version of Safari.
Which meant the problem was one I had encountered, before.
My Safari
.plist file was causing problems.In Windows, there’s a thing called the Registry: which is where Windows operating systems store users settings on a given machine.
It’s one great big file: way down deep.
.plist files are the nearest Mac equivalent: there your settings for each app you use.
Except there’s multiple ones. One for each app, each user’s using on a machine. I’ve got one for Safari, another for Firefox, a third for iMovie, and one for each of the other apps I use.
There’s separate ones for Safari, Firefox, iMovie, and the other apps … in the other account on this machine.
Diagnosing problems with a .plist file is relative easy. You log out of your account, and into another: if the app in question works in the latter account, the .plist file in your account has gone wrong.
Your copy of the file only needs deleting, for the app to work.
I logged out of my user account, into the other … to find the other Safari was working perfectly.
My
.plist file had gone wrong.It was a relatively trivial job to delete the thing: it took longer to find it, than to get rid of it.
But once that was done, and Safari working properly?
I heaved a sigh of relief.
~≈🆘≈~
