Safari won't launch, how to fix without reinstalling Mojave?

Simon De Trey -White wrote:

Hi there.

Macbook Air 11 inch, mid 2012, running 10.14.6

First off an admission: this is a self-inflicted problem. I've been avoiding the Catalina

software update prompts for months and then somehow while distracted I

allowed 'software update' . The software it was trying to install was a security update 2020 - 002, but I thought it was going to begin installing Catalina, anyhow once I realised

that some software update was preparing to install I just held down the

power switch and did a forced shut down.. On reboot I fould Safari

would not load and gives an error report.

Someone advised me to manually reinstall the security update, I did that but it has not helped the issue, - Safari still won't launch.

My question is can I do

something in Library to fix the issue rather than having to reinstall

the whole OS?

Many thanks.

<Safari Error message.log>

Boot into Recovery (Command R) and from the dropdown menu: Utilities>  Disk Utility> run the First Aid on your Macintosh HD If errors are found and repaired, run again until no errors reported.

Recovery: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204904

Reb0ot and try re-running the Combo update 10.14.6 https://support.apple.com/kb/DL2010?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US

on top of your existing macOS 10.14.6

The combo should simply run.

If it does not you can reinstall the macOS on top of your existing macOS from Recovery:

How to reinstall macOS from macOS Recovery - https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204904

As Leroy says.

Or start in Safe mode and try to reinstall the security update.