iCloud tabs not syncing

[donawalt]

I am back to having one problem. iPhone says Mac has two old tabs open, plus the ones it legit has. I tried closing those two by swiping on my iPhone, and they immediately show up again. My Mac and iPad report the other two devices correctly. I tried closing Safari on my iPhone, and restarting, with no luck.

 

[Phantom iCloud tabs]

I am back to having one problem. iPhone says Mac has two old tabs open, plus the ones it legit has. I tried closing those two by swiping on my iPhone, and they immediately show up again. My Mac and iPad report the other two devices correctly. I tried closing Safari on my iPhone, and restarting, with no luck.

Trying signing out of iCloud then back on on your phone.

 

[donawalt]

Trying signing out of iCloud then back on on your phone.

That seems to have worked, thanks!

 

[hoodafoo]

anyone having problems with Reading List not syncing but tabs are?

 

[Phantom iCloud tabs]

anyone having problems with Reading List not syncing but tabs are?

I just checked, and my reading list is syncing fine.

 

[thewhitehart]

I’m still having problems with stuck tabs on my MacBook Air, despite following most of the advice on this thread I think.

I’m not having much confidence in their tab groups feature now. I can imagine that’ll be a royal mess if they can’t fix this.

 

[antiprotest]

This is a common problem.

For me, I've had two tabs on my Mac that were closed months ago, but they still show up on my iCloud tabs list. No way to remove them. I've tried all the suggestions I can find online. They're just there now...waiting for SIRI to scan, hash, and send when Apple decides to match web history next.

 

[Phantom iCloud tabs]

I’m still having problems with stuck tabs on my MacBook Air, despite following most of the advice on this thread I think.

I’m not having much confidence in their tab groups feature now. I can imagine that’ll be a royal mess if they can’t fix this.

Did you try deleting the CloudTabs.* files in your Safari directory?

 

[alayal]

Did you try deleting the CloudTabs.* files in your Safari directory?

I did and it did not work. I have the same 2 tabs from months ago...

 

[gank41]

So, I’ve had a macOS (Big Sur) iCloud tab showing up in my iPhone on iOS 15 for maybe two months now. I just restored my iPhone on the 15RC and now everything is syncing up accurately.

 

[garethjs]

so you mean you setup as new or did you just update from beta 8 to RC?

 

[gank41]

so you mean you setup as new or did you just update from beta 8 to RC?

I was already on iOS 15 RC, and just did a backup & restore from iCloud. Now I’m no longer seeing this phantom iCloud tab. I know there’s a lot in this thread, but I “fixed” this before by restoring my iPhone. Same situation: seeing an iCloud tab on my iPhone 12 Peo for my M1 MBP That wasn’t open, and hasn’t been for many months now.

 

[garethjs]

Cool. I was hoping that upgrading to iOS 15 this monday would take care of this I guess not. I always clean install anyways so will do with iPhone 13

 

[Phantom iCloud tabs]

I was already on iOS 15 RC, and just did a backup & restore from iCloud. Now I’m no longer seeing this phantom iCloud tab. I know there’s a lot in this thread, but I “fixed” this before by restoring my iPhone. Same situation: seeing an iCloud tab on my iPhone 12 Peo for my M1 MBP That wasn’t open, and hasn’t been for many months now.

Yes, as I have said repeatedly, signing out and then back into iCloud on an iPhone will remove phantom iCloud tabs from that device's list of open iCloud tabs from other devices.

 

[Leschy]

Yes, as I have said repeatedly, signing out and then back into iCloud on an iPhone will remove phantom iCloud tabs from that device's list of open iCloud tabs from other devices.

I can absolutely confirm. I had one zombie iCloud Tab from my Macbook Pro always shown on my iPhone 12 Pro, but not on my iPad (what was correct). Sign out from iCloud, restart iPhone, sign in, zombie iCloud Tab is gone.

 

[papbot]

I can absolutely confirm. I had one zombie iCloud Tab from my Macbook Pro always shown on my iPhone 12 Pro, but not on my iPad (what was correct). Sign out from iCloud, restart iPhone, sign in, zombie iCloud Tab is gone.

Ok, I’ve been waiting till the release of 15 before doing anything drastic. But looks like my 20 phantom tabs on my iPad Pro will still be there afterwards. So just signing out of iCloud on the one device - my iPad - and back in will clear the phantoms that are shown, which supposedly are from my iPhone?

I am curious though, I’m getting the new 13 phone next week and wondered if activating the new one that replaces the old one would have any effect. But probably not, in addition to the phantoms on the iPad there is no sign of any actual tab from the phone even if I have some open. It’s as if everything is syncing between the 2 devices except for tabs. The phone will show open tabs from the iPad but the iPad won’t show any tabs from the phone other than the phantoms.

 

[Populus]

I am curious though, I’m getting the new 13 phone next week and wondered if activating the new one that replaces the old one would have any effect. But probably not, in addition to the phantoms on the iPad there is no sign of any actual tab from the phone even if I have some open. It’s as if everything is syncing between the 2 devices except for tabs. The phone will show open tabs from the iPad but the iPad won’t show any tabs from the phone other than the phantoms.

No, this doesn’t work that way. If you have X tabs on your iPhone, Y tabs on your iPad and Z tabs on your mac, and you buy a new iPhone (or just formatting your old iPhone) the tabs of your newly configured iPhone won’t replace neither the X tabs of your iPhone nor your Y or Z tabs of the other devices. The N iCloud tabs of the newly configured iPhone will appear along with the X, Y and Z tabs.

After a month of not using that old iPhone (wether because you just wiped it or sold it or threw it away) those X tabs will disappear. If you just formatted it and configured it, a month later the X tabs will disappear, leaving you with the N, Y and Z tabs.

Maybe I made it a bit difficult to understand, but the TL;DR of it would be that a newly configured device (after formatting it) won’t replace the tabs it had with the old installation, those old tabs will remain there along with the tabs of you current installation until, after some time, they will vanish. Same with an old iPhone and a new one, the new one doesn’t replace your old one. Your only solution to make those tabs disappear is removing your old device from your iCloud account.

I’ve formatted iPhones iPads and macs many times and this is how iCloud tabs behave, when there are no syncing issues of course.

 

[Leschy]

Ok, I’ve been waiting till the release of 15 before doing anything drastic. But looks like my 20 phantom tabs on my iPad Pro will still be there afterwards. So just signing out of iCloud on the one device - my iPad - and back in will clear the phantoms that are shown, which supposedly are from my iPhone?

yes thats the way it worked for me.

You have to sign out / sign in of / to iCloud on that device which is showing the zombie tabs. So if your iPad is showing zombie tabs from your iPhone you have to log out of icloud on your iPad

 

[Leschy]

What’s really frustrating when you sign out of iCloud, is to restore iCloud Photos. It seems taking time forever….

 

[donawalt]

Alas I am back with 2 old stuck tabs from my MacBook Pro. Everything else is working fine between it, iPhone, iPad. Tried turning off and on Safari iCloud syncing on MacBook Pro, deleting all data, they are still there - most likely stuck up in iCloud. Maybe in 30 days they will go away <sigh>. Come on Apple, fix this!!!!!!

 

[antiprotest]

Alas I am back with 2 old stuck tabs from my MacBook Pro. Everything else is working fine between it, iPhone, iPad. Tried turning off and on Safari iCloud syncing on MacBook Pro, deleting all data, they are still there - most likely stuck up in iCloud. Maybe in 30 days they will go away <sigh>. Come on Apple, fix this!!!!!!

I've had two stuck tabs for more than 6 months now. No way to delete. Tried everything, including using terminal to make Debug menu appear in Safari and forcing iCloud sync.

 

[donawalt]

I am looking forward to seeing this bug continue when I update to the new OS versions this week lol.

 

[Morac]

I've had two stuck tabs for more than 6 months now. No way to delete. Tried everything, including using terminal to make Debug menu appear in Safari and forcing iCloud sync.

The simplest way is to change the time on your device ahead 3 weeks, then go and delete the stuck tabs. They should now be gone (you can confirm by killing Safari and restarting). Once that’s done simply set the time back to automatic. I’ve done this around 4 times (both iPad and iPhone) and it’s always worked.

A few caveats:
- reminders will completely freak so when I do this I disable iCloud reminders before changing the time and enable again afterwards.
- the device will complain it hasn’t been backed up in awhile. Just dismiss the warning.
- I’ve been told activity rings get messed up if using an Apple Watch, so it may make sense to power the watch off first or unpair it.


Completely unrelated to this, I’ve seen a number of being on the iOS 15 RC saying iCloud tabs don’t sync, so this will still be a periodic issue under iOS 15.

 

[Phantom iCloud tabs]

Alas I am back with 2 old stuck tabs from my MacBook Pro. Everything else is working fine between it, iPhone, iPad. Tried turning off and on Safari iCloud syncing on MacBook Pro, deleting all data, they are still there - most likely stuck up in iCloud. Maybe in 30 days they will go away <sigh>. Come on Apple, fix this!!!!!!

You are not stuck with it. As we've been discussing for the past page of posts, the way to fix this is to sign out of iCloud on the device displaying the phantom tabs, then to sign back into iCloud. The phantom tabs will be gone. If for some reason you don't wish to sign out of iCloud and back in, then yes, you are stuck with it. But I really don't think that's Apple's fault.

 

[Phantom iCloud tabs]

I've had two stuck tabs for more than 6 months now. No way to delete. Tried everything, including using terminal to make Debug menu appear in Safari and forcing iCloud sync.

If it's on an iPhone or iPad, sign out of iCloud, reboot, and then sign back in. If it's on a Mac, then delete the CloudTabs.* files in the Safari directory.