After loading 5-10 websites, Safari and all other browsers stop trying to load pages After the recent macOS update, I am running into a problem where after browsing to about 5 different URLs, Safari is unable to load any sites. It doesn't matter if I use one tab or multiple tabs. This is not a network issue as I can still ping, etc. from the command line. In addition, it doesn't matter if I use Safari, Chrome, or FireFox. Once the problem starts with one it impacts the others as well. If I reboot the Mac then it resets.

Here is one of the weird things about it: Let's say I open Google in one tab. I then open another tab and after a few sites I can't navigate, in the tab with Google the search sometimes still loads a new page, but the suggestion auto-complete will still work, for terms I've never typed before so it is not something in the history. This indicates to me that it is not a network access issue as it is clearly still going to Google.

If I open Dev Tools and go to the network tab, then click a link or type in a url, nothing happens; the browser doesn't even seem to be trying to issue an HTTP request anywhere. The progress bar goes about 15% and hangs there for the page load.

This only started happening after the last macOS update.

Other things I've tried so far:


Checked to ensure I have enough free space on HD
Flushed the DNS Cache and cleared history
Disabled DNS pre-fetch
Tried a different DNS server like 1.1.1.1 / 8.8.8.8
Confirmed that the network still works
Confirmed I have no proxy, no browser addons/extensions
Confirmed no VPN


I am looking for some more suggestions or things to check besides the basics you see in every web article. It really doesn't seem like a network issue. Is there some system-wide service that would impact requesting or rendering of websites regardless of the browser?



Edit: Turned out the SOCKS proxy got re-enabled by something and this was causing another bug, when this was disabled then the other problem and the above problem went away.
The solution is this case was to disable the SOCKS proxy.