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I could be wrong, but I think the phantom tabs only tend to occur when I close the only tab in a macOS Safari window from within iOS Safari. Closing a macOS Safari tab from within iOS Safari doesn't seem to turn it into a phantom, as long as there are other tabs still open in the same macOS Safari window at the time.
This sounds like it’s it. I know for a fact I did this with at least some of my phantom tabs, if not all.
 
I’ve found that the iCloud tab option doesn’t show up in Safari 15 on the Mac if there are no iCloud Tabs regardless if it can connect to the cloud server or not. It’s pretty easy to see.

With no tabs open on other devices open that menu and see the option is missing. Open a tab on an iPhone or iPad and return to the Home Screen. In a few seconds the tab should show up at the bottom of the Safari start screen on the Mac (when it’s syncing in real time which may require a reboot) and at that point the iCloud tabs display option will appear. On the iPhone/iPad go back to Safari, close the tabs and go to the Home Screen. On the Mac, the tab will disappear as will the option to enable displaying iCloud tabs.
Thanks for this tip. I opened an iPad tab, and the feature returned on my Mac and on my iPad. However, I've had several tabs open on my iPhone the whole time, and the feature wasn't listed on my Mac. I've closed the iPhone tabs and opened a new one, and still nothing between Mac & iPhone. :mad:
Update: turning private relay off seemed to fix the issue. Now I have turned it back on… And we’ll see what happens.
 
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New issue I've discovered

1. Reboot iMac running safari 15.0 and then open safari to the main screen.

2. Open tabs on iPhone or iPad within seconds infront of me iCloud tab appears on safari for Mac.

3. Close tab on iPhone or iPad within seconds iCloud tab disappears.

Perfect until...

4. A couple of hours later (I'm suspecting after the iMac sleeps and re-awakes), perform the same action and tabs do not sync with safari.

5. Close safari on iMac and re-open and tabs that were open on other devices appear immediately

6. Close that tabs on iPhone or iPad and tabs do not close

7. Close Safari on iMac and re-open and iCloud tabs are gone.

8. Reboot iMac and they happen on the automatically without you needing to close safari

I had 10 tabs opened this morning on my iPhone, I used my iMac after waking it and the 10 tabs were there.

I finally got down to closing the 10 tabs on my iPhone and the tabs still stuck around on safari 15. I opened 5 tabs on the Mac and it appeared immediately on the iPhone so the sync was still happening just that safari on the Mac wasn't updating the list.

Then I close safari on the Mac and opened it and the iPhone tabs were gone.
 
New issue I've discovered

1. Reboot iMac running safari 15.0 and then open safari to the main screen.

2. Open tabs on iPhone or iPad within seconds infront of me iCloud tab appears on safari for Mac.

3. Close tab on iPhone or iPad within seconds iCloud tab disappears.

Perfect until...

4. A couple of hours later (I'm suspecting after the iMac sleeps and re-awakes), perform the same action and tabs do not sync with safari.

5. Close safari on iMac and re-open and tabs that were open on other devices appear immediately

6. Close that tabs on iPhone or iPad and tabs do not close

7. Close Safari on iMac and re-open and iCloud tabs are gone.

8. Reboot iMac and they happen on the automatically without you needing to close safari

I had 10 tabs opened this morning on my iPhone, I used my iMac after waking it and the 10 tabs were there.

I finally got down to closing the 10 tabs on my iPhone and the tabs still stuck around on safari 15. I opened 5 tabs on the Mac and it appeared immediately on the iPhone so the sync was still happening just that safari on the Mac wasn't updating the list.

Then I close safari on the Mac and opened it and the iPhone tabs were gone.
Same here.
 
That’s been an issue since Safari 15 was released last month. I’m hoping it will be fixed when Monterey is released.
It's an annoying bug. That said, the transition to Safari 15 has been INFINITELY smoother than the transition to Safari 14, which resulted in millions not having iCloud tabs for months -- some, like me, for about 7 or so months!
 
I dare not try but is tab group syncing working well lol?

Yes and no.

It has the same issue as iCloud syncing where it works inbound for awhile after the Mac is rebooted and then stops working. Unlike the iCloud syncing, quitting Safari and starting again doesn’t resolve this. Only a reboot does.

Outbound syncing from the Mac always works, which has the annoying side effect of any changes to a tab group made on an iPad or iPhone being overwritten by a stale tab group from a Mac.

So I guess the answer is no, it doesn’t work well.
 
I have an entire device missing from my iCloud tabs. My new iPad Pro M1 can "see" the tabs from my MacBook Pro, iPhone 13 Pro, and iPad mini. The other devices, though, cannot "see" tabs from my iPad Pro. Any ideas on how to get a missing device to show up?
 
Just wanted to note that there's still a bug within iCloud tabs with Safari 15 that sometimes labels websites with the incorrect page title, though the URL is correct. For instance, browsing to Twitter and then clicking on notifications and then on favorites will result in "notifications" rather than "favorites" being sent to iCloud tabs. But if you click on the iCloud tabs link, you will still be kicked over to "favorites" despite the incorrect label.
 
Short of signing out of iCloud, I tried several things that didn't work. Changing the date worked for a while but the problem eventually returned. I even turned off Safari in iCloud on all my devices for 15 days with no joy. I don't know if it's been posted in the more than thousand prior posts in this thread but what eventually did work for me was AlanFlemingUK's solution on Apple Communities. I moved the com.apple.Safari.####.plist file located in ~/Library/Containers/Safari/Data/Library/Preferences/ByHost to the desktop, rebooted and killed the zombie tabs on all my devices. Several days later they have not returned on my iPhone, iPad or Mac. Safari tabs continue to sync in near real time and no more zombies have appeared.
 
I was having an issue where an entire device (a new M1 iPad Pro)was not showing up at all on any of my other devices. I tried switching safari syncing off in the iCloud preferences, logging in and out, changing the date and time, force rebooting… nothing worked.

What ended up working for me was closing all the safari tabs on the iPad. Waiting a minute, then force quitting safari. For good measure, I then rebooted the iPad. Once it restarted, I opened a few tabs. The iPad finally started showing up on other devices and seems to be working fine now.

In order to not “lose” my tabs, I simply bookmarked them or saved them to Notes so I could re-open them afterwards if I wanted to.

I know the above may not work for everyone, and may not work for those who have phantom tabs showing up or other syncing issues. But I wanted to at least share what my problem was, what I tried, and what ended up working — just in case it’s helpful to anyone else.
 
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New issue I've discovered

1. Reboot iMac running safari 15.0 and then open safari to the main screen.

2. Open tabs on iPhone or iPad within seconds infront of me iCloud tab appears on safari for Mac.

3. Close tab on iPhone or iPad within seconds iCloud tab disappears.

Perfect until...

4. A couple of hours later (I'm suspecting after the iMac sleeps and re-awakes), perform the same action and tabs do not sync with safari.

5. Close safari on iMac and re-open and tabs that were open on other devices appear immediately

6. Close that tabs on iPhone or iPad and tabs do not close

7. Close Safari on iMac and re-open and iCloud tabs are gone.

8. Reboot iMac and they happen on the automatically without you needing to close safari

I had 10 tabs opened this morning on my iPhone, I used my iMac after waking it and the 10 tabs were there.

I finally got down to closing the 10 tabs on my iPhone and the tabs still stuck around on safari 15. I opened 5 tabs on the Mac and it appeared immediately on the iPhone so the sync was still happening just that safari on the Mac wasn't updating the list.

Then I close safari on the Mac and opened it and the iPhone tabs were gone.
just curious are you running iCloud privacy relay? I disabled it on all my devices and rebooted and no more iCloud tabs sync issues even after a few hours. 24 hours and no issues. Fingers crossed.
 
The iCloud tab feature has been replaced by the new tab groups feature on iOS 15 and Safari 15, right? I’m no longer seeing the iCloud tabs. However, all my tab groups are synced across all my devices, which is pretty cool!
 
The iCloud tab feature has been replaced by the new tab groups feature on iOS 15 and Safari 15, right? I’m no longer seeing the iCloud tabs. However, all my tab groups are synced across all my devices, which is pretty cool!

iCloud tabs are still there, they just show up in a different place. They are now on the Safari start page.
 
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iCloud tabs are still there, they just show up in a different place. They are now on the Safari start page.
Yep. I don’t use tab groups so I can’t speak to their syncing but iCloud open tabs sync very well across my devices. Almost immediately now, far better than before ios 15.
 
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iCloud tabs are still there, they just show up in a different place. They are now on the Safari start page.
The iCloud Tabs are also listed under the Cloud ☁️ icon in the bar across the top along with any other enabled extensions.
 
I don’t see that in iOS or MacOS
Not on iOS, but you don’t see this icon in Safari for macOS?

39E4EEFD-A7CF-4A70-A6F2-D013C0323D9B.jpeg
 
Currently on the latest versions of iPadOS 15 and iOS 15 and my iCloud Tabs are not showing up on the start page of either device anymore (they used to). I double-checked everything and can’t find a reason. My tab groups aren’t syncing between the 2 devices either.

”Shared With You” is working fine, though.

Pretty sure I remember the syncing getting really slow and outdated before it disappeared entirely.
 
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I don't have this problem anymore because I've switched to Chrome again on desktop :D I still use Safari on my iPhone.
 
Don't want to jinx anything, but my phantom tabs seem to have been exorcised in the latest Monterey update. Or was it the iOS update? Or are they about to come back now that I've summoned their spirits...?
 
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I upgraded to iOS 15.2.1 and ended up with a stuck iCloud tab on my iPhone. I haven't had that happen since upgrading to iOS 15.

The usual work around of setting the time ahead more than 2 weeks worked. I turned off iCloud reminders first so they wouldn’t get screwed up, but screen time got messed up and won’t show other devices now.
 
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