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iCloud tabs not syncing

Morac said:
Is anyone having a problem syncing iCloud tabs?


Last night I noticed that when I went to the tab list in Safari on my iPad Pro 11 it showed a tab opened on my iPhone 7 Plus that I had closed earlier that day. I thought maybe I hadn’t closed it, but I checked and I did. I tried removing it on my iPad Pro, but it kept coming back. I tried restarting both devices, but that didn’t do anything. I then powered on an old IPad Air 2 on the same iCloud account and checked Safari there and there were no tabs listed for other devices.

At that point I started opening tabs on various devices and closing Safari and then closing the tabs. Eventually all 3 devices showed no tabs opened on other devices.

This morning they are all completely wrong again. My iPhone shows 1 tab opened on my Pro, which has no tabs open. My Pro shows 1 tab from my Air that has no tabs opened. My Air shows 3 tabs opened on my Pro. All the tabs were things I had opened last night.

I tried opening and closing tabs and nothing seems to resolve this. I even tried toggling Safari off and on in the iCloud settings on my Air 2, but that just removed the iCloud tabs and then brought them back. As such the problem seems to be with what’s stored in iCloud.

Any ideas?
Click to expand...
I currently can't see any iCloud tabs list of any other device, a nice feature when it works really, open your tabs on the device of choice, get back home continue on the Safari on Mac desktop, etc.

On my side I just realized the whole section has just disappeared, clicking on the double overlapping squares on safari would show tons of tabs of each of the devices that have running safari tabs open... all that is just gone. Not a single device is listed there.

Yesterday there was a massive outage on some services that even opening apps on a Mac would take minutes (it turns out that opening apps triggers a server call if it finds internet and this whole system was bugged). I wonder if this is all related.

The dependency on online services is getting out of control me things.

EDIT: Wanted to add that I'm on the latest Catalina and latest Safari available for that one.
 
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I have also had issues with iCloud Tabs. Now I got my new iPhone and restored from a back up and suddenly that phone has probably well into 100 tabs open 😱 I had to clear my history to get rid of them all. Not sure what happened there.
 
Same issue here with iOS 14 on an iPhone XS and macOS Big Sur on a 2015 MBP 15. The iCloud tab section sometimes shows tabs opened a while ago on the other device and sometimes show tabs that I have closed on the same device many times.
 
I decided to contact Apple Support. They were unaware of this issue, but said they’d open a ticket with engineering. I suggest others chat or call in.
 
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same problem here. iOS / iPadOS 14.2 with macOS 11.0.1. Safari history sync and iCloud tabs are broken. I think the problem isn't Big Sur related, I remember seeing wrong tabs with 10.15.7. Must a problem with Apples server infrastructure, I think.
 
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The ‘big wigs’ at Apple in their Special Event keynotes like to tell us how they love their Macs and iPhones and iPads, etc. and the synergy between them all being able to move from one device to the next seamlessly. This has been an issue for a week now. They evidently don’t use the Safari iCloud tabs feature otherwise they’d have noticed it by now and I’m sure it would have been passed down to their engineers immediately and been fixed already..!
 
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How have they not fixed this yet? What's going on at Apple these past few days?

I wonder if it's related to the outages they had yesterday.
 
I am having the same issues with my iMac, iPhone, and two iPad Pros. I must have manually closed the same three "open" iMac Safari tabs (as shown on the iPhone) at least half a dozen times today and they keep coming back. The issue goes across all devices in each direction.
Wasted two hours with a couple of Apple support nitwits and a supervisor who was just as clueless. None of them were aware of any such issue. Used to work fine...just in the last few days.
 
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Morac said:
I decided to contact Apple Support. They were unaware of this issue, but said they’d open a ticket with engineering. I suggest others chat or call in.
Click to expand...

So I realized I never got a case email, so I assume the support guy didn’t do anything.
 
Morac said:
So I realized I never got a case email, so I assume the support guy didn’t do anything.
Click to expand...

Good advice to contact Apple, I've been on the phone with them this morning and spoken to quite a few people. Nice chap followed along with screen sharing to see the problem in action and has lodged a ticket. I have a case number. Owing to the timezones and weekend etc it may be a few days. But hopefully a fix is on the horizon.
 
I think I started getting these issues at around the time I upgraded to iOS 14.2. It is probably a backend issue though, as my Mac’s iCloud tab has also been broken since then without upgrading.
 
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13paul13 said:
The ‘big wigs’ at Apple in their Special Event keynotes like to tell us how they love their Macs and iPhones and iPads, etc. and the synergy between them all being able to move from one device to the next seamlessly. This has been an issue for a week now. They evidently don’t use the Safari iCloud tabs feature otherwise they’d have noticed it by now and I’m sure it would have been passed down to their engineers immediately and been fixed already..!
Click to expand...
Here is another ecosystem issue. Present since ios 14 beta 1 and not fixed till 14.2 release. I have to restart my phone each time I get out of my car.
Now I noticed that my icloud tabs sync broke down... Unbelievable.

No calls on Apple Watch after usin… | Apple Developer Forums

developer.apple.com developer.apple.com
 
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13paul13 said:
The ‘big wigs’ at Apple in their Special Event keynotes like to tell us how they love their Macs and iPhones and iPads, etc. and the synergy between them all being able to move from one device to the next seamlessly. This has been an issue for a week now. They evidently don’t use the Safari iCloud tabs feature otherwise they’d have noticed it by now and I’m sure it would have been passed down to their engineers immediately and been fixed already..!
Click to expand...
For what is worth, compared to maybe other company big wigs using other companies products, pretty much like the instagram celebrities fiasco promoting the use of a specific Android phone or a specific shoe brand while being spotted on their other daily photos with an iPhone or a completely different shoe brands:
I can actually see the executives at Apple using almost 100% Apple products only and giving hellrain to employees when they want to handoff their iPhone safari page to their top mint Mac at home and the thing doesn’t work.
 
Zlobus said:
Here is another ecosystem issue. Present since ios 14 beta 1 and not fixed till 14.2 release. I have to restart my phone each time I get out of my car.
Now I noticed that my icloud tabs sync broke down... Unbelievable.

No calls on Apple Watch after usin… | Apple Developer Forums

developer.apple.com developer.apple.com
Click to expand...
The reliance on backend services and online tethering for everything is getting seriously out of control. I understand that it comes from a place of good intentions and all mostly, but it’s flimsy and a catastrophic when this weak link breaks.
The yesterday’s notarization online checkup outage had us rebooting our Macs thinking they just broke and taking 20mins to fully reboot at times... that bad.
 
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jianglai said:
I think I started getting these issues at around the time I upgraded to iOS 14.2. It is probably a backend issue though, as my Mac’s iCloud tab has also been broken since then without upgrading.
Click to expand...
It started for me when I updated my Mac to latest version of Catalina, 10.15.7.

EDIT: now when I think about it maybe it did start with 14.2 update. Maybe I just noticed it with Mac update. It was day or two difference between two updates.
 
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I have several hours into this before winding up here! Everything on my end is correct. iCloud's backend is corrupt. I have the latest iOS and Big Sur. Tabs do not sync and waiting for Apple to fix because end users cannot do it!
 
Not only is iCloud tabs syncing not working properly, it appears that Podcast and Books are not working reliably either. Now, Podcast does not seem to sync what I am playing on one device to others. Books does not sync books I added on the Mac to the iPhone, but syncs what I added on the iPhone to the Mac.
 
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I’m glad I’m not the only one experiencing this. iCloud tabs are old and Safari history is not syncing across devices. Bookmarks are ok though.
 
im experiencing the same thing, mostly noted the issue after updating to Big Sur. hasn't been an issue with my iPhone X on iOS 14 and Catalina. recently upgraded to an iPhone 12 and Big Sur yesterday and noticed the issue soon after. it appears to be syncing old tabs (a day or so behind). ive already tried turning safari off an on again in igloos settings on both the phone and the computer, no luck.
 
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