It just started on almost everything I do when using Safari - very annoying. What is it telling me and how do I fix it?
The rotating beachball is a "wait cursor." It comes up whenever you
have to wait a pre-determined amount of time before the requested
function will be finished. If it comes up too often and remains too
long, it is usually a sign that something is hogging CPU time in the
background. It can be caused by a buggy driver, a corrupted
application or database, or a utility that isn't compatible with
your version of OS X (e.g. a Safari plug-in that needs to be updated).
If you are getting the rotating beachball in Safari, there are a couple of simple things to try right off the bat that will more than likely fix the problem.
In Safari, go into the Safari menu and choose "Reset Safari". UNcheck Remove All Cookies, Removed Saved Names and Passwords, and Remove Other Autofill Form Text. Leave everything else checked. Click on Reset, and let Safari have a few seconds to recover.
Now do this:
Quit Safari. Navigate to:
On your desktop:
[hard drive icon] --> Users folder --> [your user name] --> Library --> Preferences
Now, in this Preferences folder, find this file:
com.apple.quicktime.plugin.preferences.plist
and drag it to the trash. (Don't worry, you don't need it. It will automatically be replaced with a fresh version the next time you launch Safari.)
Now, launch Safari and see if things are all better. Please let us know!
