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iCloud tabs not syncing
- Thread starter Morac
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The Senior Support person working with me now is really good at staying in contact and keeping me updated, unusually so for a senior support person. He let me know today over the phone that the iCloud engineers specifically are investigating and attempting to fix this issue. And although there was the obligatory vagueness, I do get the sense from the fact that they are responding to/actively looking at Feedback Assistant reports, plus the engineers' response today, that they are really working on getting this fixed. Moreover, I think it's pretty clear that they have ruled out end user software as the issue, which is why they no longer seem to be asking for user logs, etc. I think it's a matter of waiting for them to make some adjustments to the iCloud server.
In the last couple of days, I considered the possibility that it might have been related to changing my Apple ID email from an ancient Gmail address to an @icloud.com address. Anybody else changed Apple ID email?
No, I'm using the email address (@icloud.com) I signed up with. I've entertained the idea that changing one's Apple ID email address might fix the issue, but haven't tried that. Now it seems that you actually did that around the time you first noticed this issue.
I found this thread by searching on google...
my opened tabs sync fine between my MacBook Air and Mac mini... but on my iPhone, I get phantom tabs for both Macs
opened tabs on my iPhone sync fine to my Macs
hopefully there's a fix for this soon.
my opened tabs sync fine between my MacBook Air and Mac mini... but on my iPhone, I get phantom tabs for both Macs
opened tabs on my iPhone sync fine to my Macs
hopefully there's a fix for this soon.
2 weeks ago, my iPhone XR with iOS 14.2 start to have this sync issue with my M1 MacBoor Air,
XR can't see any safari tabs which opened in my Mac,but my Mac can see all the tabs opened in XR
so i close every tabs in my Mac and XR,wait for 1 min,then open some websites on Mac,
now i can see those tabs in XR, the iCloud tabs seem back to normal again!
XR can't see any safari tabs which opened in my Mac,but my Mac can see all the tabs opened in XR
so i close every tabs in my Mac and XR,wait for 1 min,then open some websites on Mac,
now i can see those tabs in XR, the iCloud tabs seem back to normal again!
Sorry for the late response.
I have a 2009 iMac with High Sierra, a first-gen iPad Air with iOS 12 and a first-gen iPad mini with iOS 9.
The first two seem to sync tabs and bookmarks with no issues. However, neither the iMac nor the iPad can see the tabs created in my mini. Also the mini can't see the tabs created in the iMac nor the iPad Air, and neither can't get the bookmarks I've already got in Safari, even though it can see Safari's history of both the iMac and the iPad Air.
Weird...
I don't want to jinx anything, but this is now working so well that I can see tabs appear and disappear on one device when I open or close them on another, within seconds. Thanks to whoever at Apple got this going again, at least for some of us. (I'm on OS and iOS latest betas.)
I've not had this issue for awhile now, it just started working one day as previously posted. However, when Apple replaced my phone when they broke it under a warranty repair, when I loaded everything back, I had about 100 tabs in Safari open. It's not common for me to have more than one open at a time. That tells me something was backed up in their queue.
It's pretty clear that it's a server-side problem - and one that they don't seem to care enough about to fix for those of us who continue to have a problem. I've moved over to Chrome, where I'll remain at least until the next major software update (12.0?). Zero tab synch issues with Chrome. Apple needs to get it together.
I had the same issue, but I got it working today by doing the following:
- Quit Safari
- Turned Safari iCloud sync OFF in Setttings
- Open Safari
- Quit Safari
- Turned Safari iCloud sync ON in Setttings
Tried this I don't know how many times. It doesn't fix the issue. Glad it did for you, though.I had the same issue, but I got it working today by doing the following:
And now it is working again
- Quit Safari
- Turned Safari iCloud sync OFF in Setttings
- Open Safari
- Quit Safari
- Turned Safari iCloud sync ON in Setttings
One may find GOD, but not a solution to the elusive randomly appearing or persistent iCloud tabs
Don't forget to include how iCloud Photos are sliw to sync. Photos added to library are not showing up on other devices - added an album then looked on other iphones, Apple tv photos app, via web browser.
Has been a joke really for longer than even iOS 14 - lost faith/confidence in Apple along the way.
Has been a joke really for longer than even iOS 14 - lost faith/confidence in Apple along the way.
This does not fix my issue. I'm seeing a TON of open iPhone iCloud tabs open in Safari on my Mac when I have zero pages open in Safari at all on my iPhone. Like, it's just showing a huge list of items now instead of the one or two pages I've got open. Handoff has been inconsistent, too. FWIW it's showing correctly from my iPhone to/from my iPad. It's just macOS that's showing incorrect info, and this was right after installing macOS 11.3 build 20E5210c.I had the same issue, but I got it working today by doing the following:
And now it is working again
- Quit Safari
- Turned Safari iCloud sync OFF in Setttings
- Open Safari
- Quit Safari
- Turned Safari iCloud sync ON in Setttings
OK, this is a new one, at least for me: After months of iCloud tabs working fast and great among my three devices (iPhone Xs, M1 MBA, older iPad Pro, all running latest beta OS), multiple entries for my MBA show—only on my iPhone. On my iPad, the M1 tabs are perfect, and all the other tabs are listed properly and currently on all devices. But my iPhone always includes three of each of my formerly pinned MBA tabs, along with whatever is current.
I've unpinned those MBA tabs and restarted all devices. I guess turning off iCloud for Safari is next, but not sure if that should be on my MBA or my iPhone. (PS: Not sure if it's relevant, but I'm on the latest Safari Technology Preview on my MBA.)
I've unpinned those MBA tabs and restarted all devices. I guess turning off iCloud for Safari is next, but not sure if that should be on my MBA or my iPhone. (PS: Not sure if it's relevant, but I'm on the latest Safari Technology Preview on my MBA.)
I’m on the most recent betas of iOS/iPadOS 14.5 along with macOS 11.3 b5, and my MBP shows I’ve got about 30+ tabs open in Safari on my iPhone. Which I don’t. My iPad and iPhone both show their open tabs correctly. Both my iPhone & iPad show one open tab in Safari on my MBP that isn’t open, and doesn’t show any open tabs that actually ARE open. It’s broken. I’ve submitted Feedback for this a few times, too.
It's an annoyance—but getting duplciates is way better than not getting them.
Just adding my experiences here, if helpful for anyone else. This problem has been present for me for months, but last weekend, I finally got around to trying to debug it. Once late in 2020, Safari on one of my iOS devices showed stale synced tabs, I tried to close one of them and then all the tabs disappeared. Since that day, Safari tabs syncing through iCloud has not worked for me (no tabs appear on any of my devices), although Bookmarks and Reading List appear to sync fine for me.
Last weekend, I used a new iCloud account and tested it on a factory reset 2013 MacBook Air and a factory reset iPhone XS; this was on Saturday Mar 20. Both devices were running latest non-beta OSs (which was iOS 14.4.1 as of last Saturday and macOS 11.2.3). With a new iCloud account, iCloud tabs syncing works exactly as expected (as others have mentioned, I did need to close Safari on iOS for the synced tab to show up on the Mac).
I then factory reset both devices again and logged in with my normal/regular iCloud account and the syncing still didn't work (no tabs appear on either device); so clearly it's working for some accounts and not for others, and it's unclear to me what exactly the problem is or the difference between those accounts.
I then talked to Apple Support about this over the phone, which obviously made me go through a dumb check list (e.g. make sure Safari syncing is enabled under iCloud settings, duh, etc.), then escalated to a more senior support rep who submitted a ticket. They later called and had me run some diagnostic application to generate a set of log files which I sent to them. The more senior rep indicated that they're aware that this issue is many other people as well and were working on it.
TBH, I didn't really expect much follow through, but the rep did call me back on Wednesday and say there should be an update in "a day or two" to fix the problem. There was the iOS 14.4.2 update released after that phone call, but AFAIK that is purely a security fix, so I didn't expect that to fix this issue, and it doesn't look like it has; and syncing still doesn't work for me. I then emailed them to say that despite the 14.4.2 update nothing's been fixed even though it's been more than the "day or two" that they promised. That rep responded (over email) that "They recently pushed out server side corrections specifically for the service. I would advise to keep your software up-to-date if the issue doesn’t self resolve." I'll plan to send them another email in a week or so by when I expect they will have still probably done nothing about it, but just sharing in case helpful to anyone else.
Hard to believe being able to access Safari tabs on another device is such a complicated problem (Firefox seems to have it figured out?)... but I guess Apple's organizational priorities these days are more about making terrible TV shows or whatever instead of actually fixing bugs for products its power users actually use.
Last weekend, I used a new iCloud account and tested it on a factory reset 2013 MacBook Air and a factory reset iPhone XS; this was on Saturday Mar 20. Both devices were running latest non-beta OSs (which was iOS 14.4.1 as of last Saturday and macOS 11.2.3). With a new iCloud account, iCloud tabs syncing works exactly as expected (as others have mentioned, I did need to close Safari on iOS for the synced tab to show up on the Mac).
I then factory reset both devices again and logged in with my normal/regular iCloud account and the syncing still didn't work (no tabs appear on either device); so clearly it's working for some accounts and not for others, and it's unclear to me what exactly the problem is or the difference between those accounts.
I then talked to Apple Support about this over the phone, which obviously made me go through a dumb check list (e.g. make sure Safari syncing is enabled under iCloud settings, duh, etc.), then escalated to a more senior support rep who submitted a ticket. They later called and had me run some diagnostic application to generate a set of log files which I sent to them. The more senior rep indicated that they're aware that this issue is many other people as well and were working on it.
TBH, I didn't really expect much follow through, but the rep did call me back on Wednesday and say there should be an update in "a day or two" to fix the problem. There was the iOS 14.4.2 update released after that phone call, but AFAIK that is purely a security fix, so I didn't expect that to fix this issue, and it doesn't look like it has; and syncing still doesn't work for me. I then emailed them to say that despite the 14.4.2 update nothing's been fixed even though it's been more than the "day or two" that they promised. That rep responded (over email) that "They recently pushed out server side corrections specifically for the service. I would advise to keep your software up-to-date if the issue doesn’t self resolve." I'll plan to send them another email in a week or so by when I expect they will have still probably done nothing about it, but just sharing in case helpful to anyone else.
Hard to believe being able to access Safari tabs on another device is such a complicated problem (Firefox seems to have it figured out?)... but I guess Apple's organizational priorities these days are more about making terrible TV shows or whatever instead of actually fixing bugs for products its power users actually use.
THIS. It is so obviously this. With all the troubleshooting and info I've been able to gather, there's no doubt in my mind that this is an issue that affects only some iCloud accounts, and that it is a server-side issue. It's quite literally outside of the control of the people experiencing it. It is, in fact, an issue that iCloud engineers need to fix. But unfortunately, it seems they really can't be bothered. Which I guess is why I can't be bothered to use Safari at present.
Unfortunately, I have to agree with most of this. I’ve been using Edge a little more now, but I’m still heavily invested in my Safari Reading List to give it up all together. If Handoff worked better I’d stick with Safari all the time, but ugh. Yes. Sorry, this has been frustrating me for quite a while now.
Totally understandable. It's incomprehensible to me how supposedly top-drawer engineers at Apple could fail to fix such a simple feature for months and months, apart from the unedifying conclusion that they really don't care and think they have better things to do with their time (perhaps break some other features that used to work?). People who spend premium prices on Apple products to invest in their ecosystem of services deserve better, and the deterioration of Apple's support and software QA over the past several years is quite frankly disgraceful.
I hate to say it, but Apple tends to primarily fix problems that affect a large number of people. They will completely ignore cloud problems until they reach the point a large number of people.
I can think of 2 examples: the app update issue and the Apple TV Up Next issue.
The app update issue was a problem where apps on all devices associated with an Apple ID simply wouldn’t update. There was no way to update an app short of deleting (or offloading) it and reinstalling. The number of people affected by this started off relatively small, but grew by large numbers each day until a very large number of people were affected. From the time I first experience it till it was fixed took a month. Apple never acknowledged it was an issue.
The Apple TV Up Next issue was a problem where all your iTunes movies purchases would reappear in your Up Next list every week. That and all watched shows would come back. It basically made the Up Next list useless. This took several months to fix and it still sometimes has issues with watched shows returning (though not all watched shows). Again Apple never acknowledged this as an issue.
Another example of a problem that was never fixed was one where one of the iCloud keychain passwords was corrupt as it had no username or web site associated with it. I could delete it off a local device, but the deletion wouldn’t sync to iCloud so it always came back. This was never fixed in the 8+ years since I reported it. I finally accidentally fixed it myself, by turning off iCloud Keychain on all my devices which deleted the entire cloud keychain.
Basically though the Apple Engineers can’t be bothered to troubleshoot, let alone fix problems that only affect a handful of users. The “senior” advisors will gather data on it, but they are really just customer support and aren’t engineers or programmers.