hoakley October 18, 2018 Macs, Technology

Safari 12.0 can’t open a local Home page

It’s not a big deal, but a daily irritant: the Mojave variant of Safari 12.0 (14606.1.36.1.9) is unable to open a local Home page when it first opens. This is not the case for the Sierra variant of Safari 12.0.

For many years, my browser Home page has been a local HTML file, which I keep at the top level of my Home folder. When I upgraded to Mojave 10.14 and fired up Safari for the first time, it threw an error. I thought that something might have gone wrong with that file, although it could be opened in Safari perfectly well, and in any case wanted a blank black Home page instead.

Now, when I open Safari the following message appears:

safarierror01

followed by another error page reporting that the error page couldn’t be found:

safarierror02

Once I have loaded another page in Sierra, and I go back to my Home page, those errors vanish, and it then loads as expected. Other than pointing Safari at the file for my new Home page, I have made no other relevant changes in its settings.

I reckon that this is a bug. Do you agree?

40Comments

Add yours

1

Philip Noguchi on October 18, 2018 at 12:32 pm

Or its a feature…

LikeLiked by 1 person
2

hrbrmstr on October 18, 2018 at 1:52 pm

Neither a bug nor a feature. I put `home.html` under my home dir (which is /Users/bob) and put `file:///Users/bob/home.html` into the input box in the Safari prefs and it works just fine.

LikeLiked by 1 person
- 3
  
  hrbrmstr on October 18, 2018 at 1:53 pm
  
  and it also seems to work with ~/home.html as well (though proper file:/// URLs seem like a much better idea)
  
  LikeLike
  - 4
    
    hrbrmstr on October 18, 2018 at 1:54 pm
    
    (apologies for multiple replies, I keep hitting cmd-enter out of habit). I shld note I’m running Mojave developer betas (not the initial GC Mojave release).
    
    LikeLiked by 1 person
- 5
  
  hoakley on October 18, 2018 at 3:05 pm
  
  Thanks. That’s the odd thing: that is exactly what I did in the original. And every time that I opened Safari, I got the same error, and error for no error page! Otherwise my Safari and Mojave (10.14 release) installations work perfectly.
  Maybe it’s fixed in 10.14.1?
  Howard.
  
  LikeLike
6

Michael E. Cohen on October 18, 2018 at 3:20 pm

Safari in Mojave has a related problem to this one. When you first launch it (and it isn’t set to go to an external site when you do), if you immediately type a search term or URL, it ignores what you type. You must first navigate (via, say, a stored bookmark) to an external site first, and then Safari accepts what you type in the search/location field.

LikeLiked by 1 person
- 7
  
  hoakley on October 18, 2018 at 4:18 pm
  
  Thanks. I’m glad that I’m not the only one finding such oddities!
  However, I can’t seem to reproduce that here. Maybe my Safari is still stunned by not finding its own error page that it just connects!
  Howard.
  
  LikeLike
8

Peter CanaryWharf on October 18, 2018 at 4:51 pm

At last, someone else reporting this problem! I’ve been having it since day one, and there seemed nothing from searching for answers. As usual, getting the right form of words is especially tricky for an issue like this – ‘safari 12 error locally stored home page’ certainly didn’t work when I tried it – and the error message/number, again something you’d think was easy to find info about, isn’t. A proxy error was the diagnosis – well, I don’t have a proxy, never have and after an unproductive afternoon down that minehole I decided to leave it.

The odd thing is, as you say, go to a website, quit totally out of Safari, run it afresh again and it doesn’t give an error.

As for Safari 12 / Mojave, it worked better than Sierra or High Sierra out of the (metaphorical) box but as someone who has customized the UI, written his own scripts, bits of code and extensions for that, and does a lot of development-type stuff, it’s been a pain working through the undocumented minefield of giving programs permission to do stuff like access the disk etc. Lots of things, like CDock, ran but didn’t work. No errors or messages asking me to allow x or y popped up therefore it was decided, by someone somewhere, no that won’t work – you can run it, it can think it’s working but it’ll have no effect, give no errors and just annoy you as you reset the PRAM, restart, log on and off again.

The rubbish-but-the-only-thing-that-works solution? Just give any program that plays up full disk access and accessibility… er access. MacOS has asked once for permission for Photoshop to delete a file, when in that program’s file menu I did such a heinous thing. Otherwise it’s stayed quiet.

I know the argument – makes things more foolproof, stops programs breaking things, virus, malware etc. But half-implementing a new protective policy that doesn’t properly ask permission when things go wrong – and breaks things without telling you – is yet another Apple decision that pleases neither the hacky-programmy-experty folks nor protects the average user when they get flustered that some art program is asking permission to delete something, god it might delete everything! Throw a bag over it and hope it goes away!

Yours-in-love-with-Apple-really-but-annoyed-at-them-thinking-they’re-my-mum-or-whatever

P

LikeLiked by 1 person
- 9
  
  hoakley on October 18, 2018 at 5:48 pm
  
  Thanks. I’m glad that I’m not the only one.
  Regarding TCC and privacy, I must beg to differ. If you find bugs, report them first to the app developer (if the issue is with the app), and then to Apple. I have never been particularly diligent at reporting bugs to Apple, as they too often end up marked as duplicates and that’s the last that you hear of them.
  With TCC/privacy, it is totally different: within a couple of hours of reporting the bug, I was informed that the engineers were working on it, and it was fixed within a day or two. This was on a Mojave beta, and it was a pretty serious issue, but I was very impressed. Many Apple staff are very keen to fix bugs and really glad to work with us to report and fix them. This is particularly the case with TCC/privacy.
  I have now heard of several apps which try to use now-protected services or hardware but which don’t generate the right consent dialogs. In every case, the issue was not in TCC/privacy/Mojave, but a bug in the app which was fixed quite quickly once the developers knew about it.
  Howard.
  
  LikeLike
10

Manoli on October 19, 2018 at 6:20 am

Hi Howard, I’m not sure if I understand the problem properly, but I think for me there is no problem. (I have probably same system environment like you macOS 10.14 (18A391) with Safari Version 12.0 (14606.1.36.1.9) and I’m opening HTML page with path inside my Home folder.)

The easiest and pretty straightforward way I did is to open the local page in Safari, then go to Settings > General and Homepage ‘Set to Current Page’ have Safari opens with: ‘A new window’ and New windows open with: ‘Homepage’. Then when I Quit Safari and open it again, it goes straight on to my local page with no complaints.

Unfortunately have no idea what could be causing the problem on your side. What URL exactly are you using to refer to the page you’re trying to open on Safari’s start?

Have good luck sorting out the problem, I’ll post back if I find anything useful. Have good one, bye.

LikeLiked by 1 person
- 11
  
  hoakley on October 19, 2018 at 6:28 am
  
  Thanks, Manoli.
  I’m doing exactly what you suggest, which is what I have been doing since the days of Camino, and which worked fine in Safari 12.0 in Sierra. The current path to the Home page is
  file:///Users/hoakley/blackpage.html
  although originally I think the plain HTML page was named Home.html. It is a passing irritant, not worth a major effort to discover a workaround: it only affects me one each day, and once I have opened a regular external page, the problem vanishes as oddly as it came. It’s interesting, though, that others are noticing issues with Safari when it first starts. Maybe these will be fixed in the next version.
  Howard.
  
  LikeLike
  - 12
    
    Manoli on October 19, 2018 at 6:41 am
    
    Howard, I think I found it, I get this error, too when Safari > Settings > Advanced – ‘Show Develop menu in menu bar’ is checked on.
    
    LikeLiked by 3 people
    - 13
      
      hoakley on October 19, 2018 at 6:54 am
      
      Ah – well done – that’s the trigger!
      I always have that turned on, and just tried disabling its ‘experimental features’, but that still leaves the problem. With the Develop menu turned off, it does go away though.
      How odd.
      Howard.
      
      LikeLiked by 1 person
14

lasermoon2012 on October 19, 2018 at 9:22 am

Since High Sierra I have been using this version of Safari all the time now.
Safari Technology Preview Release 67 (Safari 12.1, WebKit 14607.1.9.0.1)

https://developer.apple.com/safari/download/

LikeLiked by 1 person
15

philippefraser on October 22, 2018 at 10:52 am

HI we have the same problem with out intranet- the developer toolbar makes no difference! I can load the first page of the intranet – but none of the internal links work

LikeLiked by 1 person
- 16
  
  hoakley on October 22, 2018 at 11:30 am
  
  That’s odd. I’ve not seen any other misbehaviour with links or anything elsewhere.
  Might you need to add your Intranet to some of Safari’s allow lists in it Preferences, perhaps? Does it use anything like scripts or popups which might be blocked with its current settings?
  Howard.
  
  LikeLike
17

philippefraserPHilippe Fraser on October 22, 2018 at 2:19 pm

Hi – I can’t see the “allow list” on Safari… All the links on the intranet are for internal pages – the links to external pages work, it’s just the links to internal pages which don’t work

LikeLiked by 1 person
- 18
  
  hoakley on October 22, 2018 at 2:55 pm
  
  In Safari Preferences:
  – in Security, do you have JavaScript enabled or not? Do your intranet pages need JavaScript for their menus, etc.?
  – in Websites, do you need Flash Player or other support enabled to make your Intranet pages work? Do they produce popup windows which are being blocked? Are they being blocked by a content blocker even?
  When you hover over a link to an Intranet page, what does Safari show as the destination of that link – the correct URL or something different?
  If you first visit an external page, then go back and try to open one on your Intranet, what happens?
  Howard.
  
  LikeLike
19

philippefraser on October 23, 2018 at 11:35 am

HI

It’s just standard HTML, no javascript, no flash – just boring HTML text info
When I hover, it does show the correct local URL (starting file:///Users……)

this is a real pain.

Philippe

LikeLiked by 1 person
- 20
  
  hoakley on October 23, 2018 at 4:04 pm
  
  Thanks.
  How odd. I’ll see if I can take a look at this later.
  Howard.
  
  LikeLike
21

MaLi on October 28, 2018 at 4:53 pm

I have the same problem – Safari does no longer load local homepages. I can reproduce the developer on/off difference and found more problems depending in the combination of developer on/off and local/non-local homepage:

developer=off, homepage=local page:
homepage loads upon startup local page, but does not display embedded local images
– re-load does not help
– click on does not help
– open image in new tab – prompts ‘confirm the file to load and again’ – followed by a strange looping error

developer=off, homepage=google:
loads google w/o problems
– open local page works, but does not load embedded local images
– otherwise like before

developer=on, homepage=local page:
error: kCFErrorDomainCFNetwork:1
-> click on – everything (locally and remote) works

developer=on, homepage=google:
loads google w/o problems
navigate to local page -> works, also all local images

The log files say:
error Safari The downloaded plist could not be loaded: Error Domain=NSCocoaErrorDomain Code=260 “The file couldn’t be opened because it doesn’t exist.”
error Safari Page (pid: 24934) did fail provisional navigation (Error Domain=kCFErrorDomainCFNetwork Code=1 “(null)”)

Looks as if Safari does not find some plist file. Launching Safari many times I noticed that it sometimes starts with the local homepage. A very strange bug – why should there be a difference re-launching the same program under identical conditions?

LikeLiked by 1 person
22

Alan on November 1, 2018 at 4:23 pm

Apparently, sandboxing now prevents me from relocating ~/Library/Safari using a symlink.

LikeLiked by 1 person
- 23
  
  hoakley on November 1, 2018 at 4:58 pm
  
  Hmm. Perhaps you could try putting Safari into the Full Disk Access pane in Privacy?
  Howard.
  
  LikeLike
24

MaLi on November 6, 2018 at 11:02 pm

Full Disk Access does not change anything.

LikeLiked by 1 person
25

dedwarmo on December 23, 2018 at 4:09 am

I too go the error when launching Safari with the Developer Menu turned on, with my homepage set to a local file and Safari set to open with a new window and new windows open with Homepage. I’m using Version 12.0.2 (14606.3.4) on macOS 10.14.2 (18C54). Local homepage works fine when I turn off Developer Menu.

LikeLiked by 1 person
26

Poul G Hjorth on February 11, 2019 at 6:35 am

Well I’m not a developer, only a (30+ years) user, but I’m getting this bug also, and I can’t find a pattern to it. Whenever I go to settings and set the homepage to my local page, then quit Safari (at the time of writing 12.03), then when it opens again, no problem. – – Later that day, or the next, upon opening Safari, THEN it suddenly asks me to ‘confirm’ the local homepage. It takes a second, but it is annoying, and I’ve never had any Safary version do this.

LikeLiked by 1 person
27

Renée Mineart on April 15, 2019 at 4:10 pm

I’m having a similar issue. Like everyone else, a local homepage on my hard drive.
It was working fine 99% of the time. Opening Safari would open my webpage.

Opening Safari and/or new tabs still works fine, rarely get an error.

I think my Mac did an update a week or so ago, now on Mojave 10.14.4, and ever since, when I return to my homepage with the Home button, I get the error, and have to click Home again.

I just turned off the Developer tab, closed and relaunched Safari, but the problem persists. I’m getting into the habit of double-clicking Home, which I don’t like.

TRY THIS.

The location the html file was stored at, was a OneDrive folder on my computer that synched with OneDrive in the cloud. I just copied it to my Documents folder, and reset my homepage to that location. And it seems to work fine.

IS THE LOCATION WHERE YOUR LOCAL HOMEPAGE IS STORED SYNCHED TO THE CLOUD?

LikeLiked by 1 person
- 28
  
  hoakley on April 15, 2019 at 4:15 pm
  
  Thanks. My home page is in my local Documents folder, not linked to any remote location, and still never works until I have accessed a remote page. It then works fine!
  Howard
  
  LikeLike
29

Pin on April 24, 2019 at 4:13 pm

I have exactly the same problem with a local .html page on my hard drive.

LikeLiked by 1 person
30

allynh on June 1, 2019 at 6:06 pm

I have the same problem with bookmarks.

I get the same error as above “error: kCFErrorDomainCFNetwork:1”

I have a ton of files on my local drives that I have bookmarked and opened with no problem for years.

I can open the file using “open with” Safari in Finder. Or “Open File” inside Safari, but the bookmarks no longer open.

I can “Open File” then bookmark that window, yet the new bookmark fails to open.

I’m about ready to dump Safari and use another browser.

LikeLiked by 1 person
- 31
  
  hoakley on June 2, 2019 at 6:13 am
  
  Thank you.
  Are these modern .webloc files? It may be worth navigating to the location, adding a Bookmark, then dragging and dropping that onto your Desktop to make a replacement modern .webloc file for each: those should work properly now.
  Howard.
  
  LikeLike
  - 32
    
    allynh on June 2, 2019 at 4:04 pm
    
    The problem is easy to duplicate.
    
    Find a file on you hard drive and “Open With” Safari.
    
    – This can be a .txt, .jpg, or .htm file.
    
    Once the file has opened in Safari, bookmark that window. Then try to open that bookmark. It will fail, with the error message above.
    
    This all started with the last mac update a few weeks ago.
    
    I have a ton of files that I have bookmarked so that I can bring them up fast. That all stopped working with the latest update. I’ve loaded a few other browsers to play with. If Safari does not start working, I’ll use them.
    
    Thanks…
    
    LikeLiked by 1 person
    - 33
      
      hoakley on June 2, 2019 at 4:08 pm
      
      Ah – I understand, they’re Bookmarks to locally-stored files.
      I suspect that this is all happening because of sandbox restrictions on what Safari can open: local files which are outside its sandbox are treated as being potentially hostile. And I don’t know that you can do anything about that, I’m afraid.
      Howard.
      
      LikeLike
34

Tim Cox on June 17, 2019 at 3:51 pm

Can this just be that ‘Disable Local File Restrictions’ under the Develop menu needs to be selected? Discovered this option via a google search today which led to https://ccm.net/faq/36342-safari-how-to-enable-local-file-access. Dated 2014! Seems to have solved the issue with my local html home page.

LikeLiked by 1 person
- 35
  
  hoakley on June 17, 2019 at 3:54 pm
  
  Thanks – that seems a logical suggestion, but it doesn’t fix the problem here, I’m afraid.
  Howard.
  
  LikeLike
36

Tim Cox on June 17, 2019 at 5:13 pm

I discovered it stopped working for me an hour or so later too. Sorry for the noise.

LikeLiked by 1 person
- 37
  
  hoakley on June 17, 2019 at 5:55 pm
  
  No noise – thank you for the suggestion. I’m sad for both of us that it didn’t work out.
  Howard.
  
  LikeLike
38

dagansamy on June 26, 2019 at 10:48 am

This is not a bug, but have to change settings in safari:
Look at ccm.net, choose: menu / how to . In the search type safari , and then look at “Safari- How to enable local file access”. The instructions are there.

LikeLike
- 39
  
  hoakley on June 26, 2019 at 11:32 am
  
  Thank you.
  The instructions are to enable the Develop menu (which I already have, and have done for a long time) and enable the Disable Local File Restrictions command there. I have already tried this several times, and tried it again. It does nothing: the problem remains.
  That is a bug, then. It’s also worth noting that this only happened in 10.14 – I had never had the problem before.
  Howard.
  
  LikeLike
40

Random observation on July 13, 2019 at 7:42 pm

I’ve noticed this for a while and only looked today. The odd thing is file URLs work just fine for me in the second (and beyond) tabs. It’s only the initial window that has the issue in my case. And turning developer menu off the first tab works fine.

LikeLiked by 1 person