A bug was reported with the “Go back” button not working properly on Desktop Safari beta. physixfan described the issue, which occurs when navigating from the homepage to a topic and then using the back button. The expected result is to return to the homepage, but instead, it goes to a blank page. However, on subsequent attempts, it correctly goes back to the previous topic. The issue was not reproducible by tshenry using Safari version 15.6, but physixfan confirmed the issue on Safari version 16.0 (18614.1.22.1.2). Falco pointed out that Safari 16 is still in beta, suggesting it might be a Safari bug rather than a Discourse issue. The issue was later reported fixed by physixfan after updating to Safari version 16.0 (18614.1.25.11.1).
After we upgraded Discourse to 2.8.7, we noticed this bug. This bug also exists on here meta.discourse.org .
Here’s how to replicate the bug on Desktop Safari:
First, go to homepage, and then click latest. Now go to any topic. Now hit the back button on the Desktop Safari browser. One would expect to go back to the latest homepage, right? But it goes to a blank page. Now go to latest homepage again, then go to another topic. Now hit the go back button. Now it goes to the previous topic!
It seems this bug does not exist on other browsers, I tested in in Desktop Chrome and iOS Safari and all works fine.
So maybe it’s a Safari bug, not directly related to Discourse?