Issues after upgrading to MacOS 12 (Monterey) or to Safari 15

We updated this page on 13 January 2022.

Apple released macOS version 12 in October 2021. This included Safari 15.
Safari 15 is also available on other macOS versions.

This has caused issues for some players. The issues are:

Audio not working - not being able to hear other people.
Being disconnected when you arrive at a table. The director will see this as the Mac user not being logged in (so that their name turns dark grey).
The player will see this as the Realbridge interface "freezing". After this, if the player refreshes the page, they may see a "Page Not Found" error.

The problem only affects Mac users who use the Safari web-browser to play on RealBridge.

It mainly affects people who have upgraded to macOS Monterey, but some people have had these problems using Safari 15 on other versions of macOS.

Try using Google Chrome

For playing on RealBridge, we strongly recommend using Google Chrome instead of Safari. If you use Chrome, we believe that you will not be affected by the Monterey / Safari 15 issues.

Edge, Brave and Firefox are also unaffected.

Checking whether you have MacOS Monterey or Safari 15

To check whether you have Monterey:

Click the Apple menu in the corner of your screen, then choose About This Mac. You should see the macOS name, such as macOS Monterey or macOS Big Sur, followed by its version number (see https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT201260 for more details)

To check whether you have Safari 15:

In Safari, click the Safari menu, then About Safari. You will see the Safari version number.

Do I need to change anything?

If you do not have MacOS Monterey and you do not have Safari 15	You do not need to change anything.
If you use Chrome, Firefox, Edge or Brave to play RealBridge	You do not need to change anything.
If you have macOS Monterey and you use Safari to play realBridge	You should change the settings as in the next section.
If you have another version of macOS, with Safari 15	If you are having audio or freezing problems, you should change the settings as in the next section. If you are not having any problems, there is no need to change anything.

Settings changes for Safari

If you have upgraded to Monterey, and you wish to continue to use Safari for RealBridge, you should apply this settings change.

If you have Safari 15 on another version of macOS 15, and you are having problems, you should apply this settings change.

This is the procedure:

Open Safari and go to Safari > Preferences. Go to Advanced, and check the box next to Show Develop menu in menu bar.
Close the Preferences window. You will see that you have a new menu called "Develop".
Go to Develop > Experimental Features.
Scroll down and uncheck the line which says WebRTC Platform Codecs in GPU Process.
Go to Develop and click Empty Caches. (You won't see anything happen, but it will have emptied Safari's cache of temporary files.)
Quit Safari then restart Safari.

If you later install a newer version of macOS, you may find that you have to do this again.

For step-by-step instructions with images, see this video

If you have difficulty with this procedure, or if you still have problems even after doing it, please contact support@realbridge.online for assistance.