I'm so glad Apple is creating memojis of its top executives instead of fixing the basic functionality of their web browser.
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iCloud tabs not syncing
- Thread starter Morac
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Wow they’re promising a pretty enhanced version of syncing across devices. Fingers crossed it’s less troublesome than these 1,177 posts indicate.
I have this issue but it's I think a bit different. I don't use Safari much on my iMac (I prefer Chrome on it, as I think it handles some pages ad blocking better). But I have at least 60 tabs on the Mac's Safari showing up for both my iPhone and iPad, and those tabs all are from late 2020 and early 2021. They aren't open on my devices, and when I clear on the Mac they just reappear.
Tab syncing works perfectly fine on the iPhone and iPad however, and even correctly shows the open iOS Safari tab.
Which device do I need to sign out of and sign back in? I've signed out on my phone several times during this time for other reasons so that's clearly not helping.
Tab syncing works perfectly fine on the iPhone and iPad however, and even correctly shows the open iOS Safari tab.
Which device do I need to sign out of and sign back in? I've signed out on my phone several times during this time for other reasons so that's clearly not helping.
Man, you all weren’t kidding. I noticed my MacBook Air tabs as seen on my iPad and iPhone were constantly showing two tabs that I knew were closed. They reappeared instantly when I tried to swipe them closed.
Opening Safari on the MacBook Air, I noticed hundreds of “ghost tabs” listed for my iPhone and iPad, and they’d reappear each time I deleted them.
I tried toggling Safari on and off in iCloud on all devices, I deleted the Safari folder from my user library on the MacBook Air, and I deleted history and all cookies. No luck.
Then I saw the post on forwarding the clock to July. I did that only on the MacBook Air, and it worked. I could delete the ghost tabs. Thanks!
Running iOS 14.6 and Big Sur 11.4.
Opening Safari on the MacBook Air, I noticed hundreds of “ghost tabs” listed for my iPhone and iPad, and they’d reappear each time I deleted them.
I tried toggling Safari on and off in iCloud on all devices, I deleted the Safari folder from my user library on the MacBook Air, and I deleted history and all cookies. No luck.
Then I saw the post on forwarding the clock to July. I did that only on the MacBook Air, and it worked. I could delete the ghost tabs. Thanks!
Running iOS 14.6 and Big Sur 11.4.
Just a FYI. Setting the time forward is only if you are impatient. You can also just wait a few weeks and get the same result. In other words, eventually the fix will hit everyone.
Morac I don't think so. I've left my tabs for weeks and its still showing up. In my case they haven't deleted by themselves. Swiping to delete them causes all safari tabs of all my devices to dissepear. And then it comes back again.
The issue is definitely with iPhone and perhaps a corrupted cache. However I can't be bothered to wipe my iPhone. I suppose I'll have to continue until the next iPhone comes out.
Interesting to see if anyone on the beta of iOS 15 has this fixed or has it made it worse given a lot more tab functionality (like grouping) might not sync since its using the same mechanism.
The issue is definitely with iPhone and perhaps a corrupted cache. However I can't be bothered to wipe my iPhone. I suppose I'll have to continue until the next iPhone comes out.
Interesting to see if anyone on the beta of iOS 15 has this fixed or has it made it worse given a lot more tab functionality (like grouping) might not sync since its using the same mechanism.
Interestingly, I tried to forward the time on my iPhone and iPad, but the toggle for turning off setting the time automatically was disabled.
Just doing it on the MacBook Air worked for me.
The iPhone and iPad tabs were in sync with each other.
Just doing it on the MacBook Air worked for me.
The iPhone and iPad tabs were in sync with each other.
This is not about your devices and not user hardware dependent, so trying any workarounds won't help. Apparently, it's something on the server-side belonging to the Apple network that caches the old data from a particular subset of iDevices with iOS 13 and later, Catalina and later, and Safari 13 and later. I recently re-installed Mojave while troubleshooting another issue and the installer installed Safari 12. I had never upgraded from iOS 12. iCloud tabs syncing works perfectly which wasn't the case with Safari 13 where iCloud Tabs showed empty space and I decided to stop at this point: I have no intentions to update to a software that ruins things instead of improving them. I use Firefox on all of my iDevices as well and there syncing works as it should in Safari no matter what. All I have to say, there's no fix at all unless you have iOS 12 and Mojave running (as of June 14 2021).
Please go back to one of my earlier posts about how I had fixed my issue. My Mac was showing incorrect tabs on both my iPhone and iPad, and restoring both devices fixed it. After restoring, I open Safari on both devices and all of the erroneous tabs that my Mac was showing were all of a sudden there, and I was able to close each tab out and those corresponding iCloud tabs on my Mac close almost immediately after closing them on my iPhone and iPad. Don’t tell people not to update just because you are having a certain scenario. If you would have gone through all of the comments here, you’d see that even may fix didn’t fix it for other people, yes it may be a server side issue but it seems to be getting resolved for a number of people. Yes, there are still people that haven’t been able to get this resolved, but a lot of people have.
Tabgate has many manifestations, from phantom tabs to no tabs showing to outdated tabs showing. Some people have found fixes for their systems or workarounds. Some people have found these fixes are only temporary, lasting anywhere from a few days to a few months. Nevertheless, the fact remains that Apple has a server-side, platform-wide issue with the tab syncing feature in Safari. It has had this issue for at least the past seven months. Hopefully the new iOS/macOS updates in September/October will bring this shameful episode to a close.
I'm not going to go back to "one of your earlier posts" without knowing exactly where the post is. There's 1000s of posts and going through each of them is beyond any worthlessness.
If you read carefully (which looks like you didn't) I didn't tell not to update. I shared what was a long running issue after the Safari 13 update for High Sierra, Mojave and Catalina back in 2020 which hit users of iOS 12 and iOS 13 losing iCloud tab syncing when all of a sudden Apple changed system requirements for this feature. That spurred another long thread on ASC iCloud Tab Syncing Not Working (Apple Support Comm.)
Apparently, they implemented a new URL encryption model used for encrypting synced tabs between Safari on numerous iDevices but without backward compatibility, bringing up a very confusing mix of what is and is not supported if you're running iOS B, iOS A and macOS A, macOS B Set up and use iCloud Tabs (Apple Support Article). Until then the feature was stable, more or less. There's a heap of problems people are enduring since.
On a side note, please, don't tell other people what to tell and what not. This is an open forum so I'll decide on my own.
And a lot of people haven't. You're overzealous.
You seem pretty adamant in your statement about there being no fix at all unless you have iOS 12 and Mojave. But then telling me to not tell other people what to do? Advising folks to just stay on an earlier less secure OS or even to downgrade to that earlier OS would be pretty asinine.
That's rich. Having faith that this issue CAN be fixed, because mine and a large number of others have, doesn't make me overzealous. There were plenty of things some folks did earlier on in these pages that didn't work at one point and DID at another.
Yes. This is the same problem HomeKit developers have due to each iDevice having their own Unique ID. It's not ALL server-side, though. That Unique ID has to match up with the Device in question, which is why it's been such an issue for so many people for so long. Not just an "Apple will fix their issue" issue. Again, after restoring my iPhone & iPad, I opened Safari on both devices to see all of the tabs that my Mac was showing. I was able to close them all out and everything's been perfect since. I've had a number of other folks here DM me thanking me for the help as what I had explained in a prior post solved their issues.
And back to this:
Of course this is an open forum 😆 Don't tell other people what and what not to do?!? We're all literally wanting each other's help here. We all come here looking for help, asking for help, looking for what others have done to resolve their issues.
....SO anyway, for any folks that say they tried restoring and it didn't help, was it on something earlier than macOS 11.4 and earlier than iOS 14.6? Because I also tried on some of the other earlier versions of iOS 14 and macOS 11, and it didn't work. Then on the early macOS 11.4 & iOS 14.6 betas I tried a restore again, and immediately opened Safari on my iPhone and about 30 tabs were there waiting for me to close. Just sayin'...
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Thank you for this quick fix! It worked for me just now. I'd been dealing with a handful of pesky phantom tabs for about 2 months, they were driving me crazy!
Anyone here daring enough to try iOS 15? I wonder if anything else is fixed or not
THANK YOU! I had the phantom tabs problem on my iPhone XR since… a month and a half, maybe even 2 moths. I advanced the date to July 1st, and BOOM, no phantom tabs anymore!!!
I also had this problem for the past few months on my iPhone 12 Pro… it was showing old tabs for my Mac mini and MacBook Air.
Change the date to July 1st on my iPhone. I tried to delete some old tabs… they reappeared a few seconds later. I set the date to automatic and went to bed. A few hours later I get up… check safari… and all old tabs are fine.
Thank you for this trick!
Change the date to July 1st on my iPhone. I tried to delete some old tabs… they reappeared a few seconds later. I set the date to automatic and went to bed. A few hours later I get up… check safari… and all old tabs are fine.
Thank you for this trick!
I have always laugh over this thread here. But 2 days ago i have made a fresh mac os install. And there in safari are 4 month old icloud tabs from iphonne and i cant delete them there coming back all the time. What can i do ?
My iphone is at the moment and use ios 15 on my iphone i dont see old tabs.
Turning off icloud safari on all devices dont help.
My iphone is at the moment and use ios 15 on my iphone i dont see old tabs.
Turning off icloud safari on all devices dont help.
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for me, at least for now, this date forward trick worked for me!!! I spent hours trying to fix it and calling support was of course no help. Im up to date on my iPhone iOS 14.6 iPhone 11 and Mac OS 11.4 MacBook Pro 2020 Intel
Spoke too soon again. ~10 phantom tabs, closed yesterday. I had to set my iPhone to July 15 to make them disappear.