Safari randomly logging me out of every website and dumping all website settings

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Level 1

30 points

Safari randomly logging me out of every website and dumping all website settings

I'm current using MacOS 14.1 (23B74), but this problem predates Sonoma. Safari Version 17.1 (19616.2.9.11.7)

The problem happens every 3 or 4 weeks, and just happened now. I'm working away in Safari, when all of a sudden, I am completely logged out of every website. Google, YouTube, Shopify, Facebook, every **** website that I've been using, all open in multiple tabs, completely logged out. All of my cookie banner opt-out preferences completely reset. It is as if I accidentally deleted all of the cookies stored by Safari. But here's the thing; every single cookie is still intact!

I go to the Safari menu -> Settings -> Privacy -> Manage Website Data and every cookie I've ever allowed for at least 2 years shows up here.

But now, I have to re-login again to every website I use. I have to deal with a fresh deluge of cookie consent banners. I was right in the middle of dealing with a P1 incident for a client's website when Safari decided to fail on me. I have Chrome and Firefox, but I want to use Safari as my primary browser. I've invested a lot of time in getting things "just right" in Safari, and I have special uses for Chrome and Firefox, so I 100% do not want to switch browsers, but I need a browser I can trust, and this recent misbehavior from Safari is has put a big dent in my trust.

Has anyone else seen this behavior? Any suggestions or troubleshooting steps would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

MacBook Pro (M1, 2020)

Posted on Nov 22, 2023 4:43 AM

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Answer 1

Dec 15, 2023 2:35 AM in response to griz_fan

It is happening the same here. I have updated to 14.2 and still remain. I thought it was something that happened when not using Safari but, it just happened like you, when doing something in the browser and just kicked my out and had to start all my work again.

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Answer 2

griz_fan Author

Level 1

30 points

Dec 15, 2023 2:43 AM in response to Thorinroble

Unfortunately, this problem has only gotten worse for me, happening every day, sometimes more than once a day. I had a call with Apple Support, and they were stumped, too. A Reddit thread on this suggested that Apple's Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP) could be misbehaving, wiping out the cookies. https://stape.io/blog/safari-itp-update-limits-cookies-to-7-days-for-responses-from-3rd-party-ips#

Unfortunately, the only solution Apple Support was able to provide is to wipe and reload my MacBook, which is a something I'm completely unwilling to do, since this is my work computer, and I can't afford 2 or 3 days downtime rebuilding my system. Not to mention that I would have no idea if this would actually work or not.

So, I've had to abandon Safari and make Firefox my daily driver for a web browser. Fortunately, Firefox is really good, but I wish there was a way to salvage Safari.

Who knows, maybe someday, someone at Apple will figure this out. For now though, I've had to abandon Safari.

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Safari randomly logging me out of every website and dumping all website settings

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