iCloud tabs not syncing

[bw44]

Over 24 hours later and iCloud tabs still isn’t working at all. Tabs open on my iPhone, iPad and Mac don’t show up on any other devices.

Edit: it’s not just iCloud tabs. Nothing in Safari is syncing including bookmarks, iCloud tabs, the start page or iCloud tabs.

Edit 2:

I unchecked Safari in the iCloud settings on all my devices, waited a few minutes and checked them one at a time and everything is working again.

Thanks for this, but it did not correct the problem for me. After I did it, Safari on my MacBook showed an open tab on my ipad that I haven't accessed on any system (Mac, iPhone, or iPad) for months. On my iPad it shows an open tab from my iPhone which is not open on that device. Remarkably, my iPhone shows correctly the tabs open on the MacBook.

You opened this thread in 2020. Zombie tabs have been reported elsewhere for at least that long. This is becoming a farcical feature of Safari.

One question, though: when you turn off Safari in iClouds on all your devices do you reply to "Keep" or "Delete" Safari
data on the device, and when turning Safari back on, do you "Merge" the data with what's on the device? I have been "Keeping" the data for fear of losing something that isn't restored.

Any further suggestions would sure be appreciated!

Edit: I should have added that all my devices are fully up-to-date with macOS 12.3 and iOS.iPadOS 15.4. The MBP is an Intel.

 

[Morac]

Thanks for this, but it did not correct the problem for me. After I did it, Safari on my MacBook showed an open tab on my ipad that I haven't accessed on any system (Mac, iPhone, or iPad) for months. On my iPad it shows an open tab from my iPhone which is not open on that device. Remarkably, my iPhone shows correctly the tabs open on the MacBook.

Try closing the phantom tabs by clicking/tapping and holding and choosing close. After I turned Safari syncing off and on, my iPhone and Mac showed 3 open tabs on my iPad that weren’t there, but I could “close” them by closing them on my iPhone.

I chose keep and merge on my iPhone and iPad. My Mac didn’t ask. That only applies to bookmarks.

 

[bw44]

Try closing the phantom tabs by clicking/tapping and holding and choosing close. After I turned Safari syncing off and on, my iPhone and Mac showed 3 open tabs on my iPad that weren’t there, but I could “close” them by closing them on my iPhone.

I chose keep and merge on my iPhone and iPad. My Mac didn’t ask. That only applies to bookmarks.

Thanks very much. Not sure it fixed the problem because it didn't seem to work right away, but all device tabs in iCloud now seem to be up-to-date! It's odd if the tabs don't keep current, because I've never had a noticeable delay with bookmarks. Here's hoping the problem's history!

 

[Morac]

My bookmarks, tabs, etc stopped syncing again.

I had to uncheck and recheck Safari on my iPhone and iPad again to get it working again. I didn’t need to do that on my Mac

Edit:

A few hours later my iPad stopped syncing. My iPhone was still syncing. The only difference was I rebooted my iPhone after toggling Safari off and on.

This time I turned off Safari, rebooted the iPad, turned it back on. Syncing worked. I rebooted again for good measure and it still worked. I hope it sticks this time as I don’t know why it keeps breaking.

 

[Morac]

I don’t know if this is a side effect from the outage 3 days ago, but I’m seeing varying delays in Safari items syncing.

I have the start page settings set to sync, which uses hidden bookmarks. Normally if I change a setting on one device it updates on the others in a second or two.

I was watching it take over a minute to sync a few minutes ago. It took so long that things got out of sync because I tried toggling settings on multiple devices. At some point it went back to take a few seconds, but there is obviously still performance issues.

That can cause iCloud Tabs to get all kinds of messed up if syncs are missed. It does make me wonder though If toggling off Safari and choosing to not keep bookmarks could be a way of fixing messed up iCloud tabs on iOS 15.


Edit:

I ran a test and turned on reading list in the start page settings on my iPhone at 9:33 pm. The Mac turned on at 9:35 pm and the iPad turned on at 9:36 pm. That’s a 3 minute delay. I turned it off on my Mac at 9:36 pm. iPad turned off at 9:37 pm and iPad at 9:38 pm. Considering it usually updates almost instantly that’s a bad delay.

Edit 2:

I think there’s a bigger problem happening right now. I’m seeing delays syncing reminders and notes and getting throttling messages in Console. I don’t think the March 21 outage was properly resolved.

Edit 3:

Delays seem to have been resolved again. Hopefully for good.

 

[bw44]

I don’t know if this is a side effect from the outage 3 days ago, but I’m seeing varying delays in Safari items syncing.

I have the start page settings set to sync, which uses hidden bookmarks. Normally if I change a setting on one device it updates on the others in a second or two.

I was watching it take over a minute to sync a few minutes ago. It took so long that things got out of sync because I tried toggling settings on multiple devices. At some point it went back to take a few seconds, but there is obviously still performance issues.

That can cause iCloud Tabs to get all kinds of messed up if syncs are missed. It does make me wonder though If toggling off Safari and choosing to not keep bookmarks could be a way of fixing messed up iCloud tabs on iOS 15.


Edit:

I ran a test and turned on reading list in the start page settings on my iPhone at 9:33 pm. The Mac turned on at 9:35 pm and the iPad turned on at 9:36 pm. That’s a 3 minute delay. I turned it off on my Mac at 9:36 pm. iPad turned off at 9:37 pm and iPad at 9:38 pm. Considering it usually updates almost instantly that’s a bad delay.

Edit 2:

I think there’s a bigger problem happening right now. I’m seeing delays syncing reminders and notes and getting throttling messages in Console. I don’t think the March 21 outage was properly resolved.

Edit 3:

Delays seem to have been resolved again. Hopefully for good.

I really appreciate the update on this - I checked a few times this afternoon when I was using three devices and I thought it was all OK. But maybe I just didn’t notice delays. (And I don’t sync Notes and Reminders.) At least since updating to OS 12.3 and iOS 15.4 I haven’t seen any zombie tabs from months ago. Hopefully that’s been fixed!

 

[Beachlover516]

I don’t know if this is a side effect from the outage 3 days ago, but I’m seeing varying delays in Safari items syncing.

I have the start page settings set to sync, which uses hidden bookmarks. Normally if I change a setting on one device it updates on the others in a second or two.

I was watching it take over a minute to sync a few minutes ago. It took so long that things got out of sync because I tried toggling settings on multiple devices. At some point it went back to take a few seconds, but there is obviously still performance issues.

That can cause iCloud Tabs to get all kinds of messed up if syncs are missed. It does make me wonder though If toggling off Safari and choosing to not keep bookmarks could be a way of fixing messed up iCloud tabs on iOS 15.


Edit:

I ran a test and turned on reading list in the start page settings on my iPhone at 9:33 pm. The Mac turned on at 9:35 pm and the iPad turned on at 9:36 pm. That’s a 3 minute delay. I turned it off on my Mac at 9:36 pm. iPad turned off at 9:37 pm and iPad at 9:38 pm. Considering it usually updates almost instantly that’s a bad delay.

Edit 2:

I think there’s a bigger problem happening right now. I’m seeing delays syncing reminders and notes and getting throttling messages in Console. I don’t think the March 21 outage was properly resolved.

Edit 3:

Delays seem to have been resolved again. Hopefully for good.

I have turned Safari on and off on multiple devices since Sunday and sometimes it seems to resolve, but now history is not syncing for sure.

 

[Leschy]

I had to disable safari in iCloud settings on all devices. Restarted all devices turn safari on in iCloud settings. Now safari tabs are in sync and hopefully they will stay ??
Problems seem to be related to the latest iCloud backend problems

Update: over night, iPhone shows no iCloud tabs in the morning. disabled safari in iCloud settings only on iPhone, reboot. Now everything seems to working fine over all three devices. Will keep an eye on it and report

 

[Morac]

iPad lost Safari sync again today. I had to toggle Safari iCloud off and on again to get it back. iPhone and Mac were fine.

 

[Pyrazol]

iPad lost Safari sync again today. I had to toggle Safari iCloud off and on again to get it back. iPhone and Mac were fine.

Same for me, but on my iPhone. It’s a shame that it’s not even directly visible that sync isn’t working, you have to manually check to make sure it’s still working properly...

 

[Morac]

Same for me, but on my iPhone. It’s a shame that it’s not even directly visible that sync isn’t working, you have to manually check to make sure it’s still working properly...

For me I check by toggle reading list on/off on the start page since everything in Safari stops syncing.

 

[Morac]

iPad lost Safari sync again today. I had to toggle Safari iCloud off and on again to get it back. iPhone and Mac were fine.

Happened again less than 7 hours later. This is really annoying. This time I told it to delete my bookmarks when I toggle Safari off. Not sure if that will make a difference. They came back.

 

[verdi1987]

This is really frustrating. If I toggle syncing off and on, sync briefly works but breaks again shortly afterwards.

 

[Jaw3000]

I've had zombie Safari iCloud tabs off and on for the past year and a half almost, across different Macs and OS versions (always Mac, never iOS). The zombie tabs would also only appear on one Mac, not other Macs or iOS devices on the iCloud account - which indicated some local bug/corruption on that Mac with the issue, and not iCloud itself. Toggling iCloud or Safari syncing never fixed the issue. Neither does right-clicking>close tab. The zombie tabs would always come back on the affected Mac - and only the affected Mac.

Recently, I found a "cloud tab" file in my Safari data folder, and I noticed deleting this and restarting fixed the issue when it cropped up. However, this file no longer appears to be created or utilized under MacOS 12.3, and deleting the existing file (from 12.2) no longer has any effect. There appears to be no way to fix this now, other than restoring and resetting the entire Mac. If you set up a clean Mac, the zombie tabs are gone and don't come back - until the problem happens with new zombie tabs again!

 

[verdi1987]

I've had zombie Safari iCloud tabs off and on for the past year and a half almost, across different Macs and OS versions (always Mac, never iOS). The zombie tabs would also only appear on one Mac, not other Macs or iOS devices on the iCloud account - which indicated some local bug/corruption on that Mac with the issue, and not iCloud itself. Toggling iCloud or Safari syncing never fixed the issue. Neither does right-clicking>close tab. The zombie tabs would always come back on the affected Mac - and only the affected Mac.

I was also afflicted with zombie tabs. I had 50+ tabs from late 2020 that would just reappear if I closed them. A couple of months ago all those old tabs finally disappeared, but I had six new zombie tabs that wouldn't go away. Finally, those tabs have not returned, but my bookmarks and reading list have stopped syncing entirely.

 

[Phantom iCloud tabs]

I've had zombie Safari iCloud tabs off and on for the past year and a half almost, across different Macs and OS versions (always Mac, never iOS). The zombie tabs would also only appear on one Mac, not other Macs or iOS devices on the iCloud account - which indicated some local bug/corruption on that Mac with the issue, and not iCloud itself. Toggling iCloud or Safari syncing never fixed the issue. Neither does right-clicking>close tab. The zombie tabs would always come back on the affected Mac - and only the affected Mac.

Recently, I found a "cloud tab" file in my Safari data folder, and I noticed deleting this and restarting fixed the issue when it cropped up. However, this file no longer appears to be created or utilized under MacOS 12.3, and deleting the existing file (from 12.2) no longer has any effect. There appears to be no way to fix this now, other than restoring and resetting the entire Mac. If you set up a clean Mac, the zombie tabs are gone and don't come back - until the problem happens with new zombie tabs again!

Cloudtabs.db, and it is still there.

 

[Jaw3000]

Cloudtabs.db, and it is still there.

Yes, Cloudtabs.db. Erasing this prior to 12.3 and restarting seemed to fix my zombie tabs.

But on 12.3, if you erase the file (leftover from 12.2?), it is not recreated, at least on my M1 Mac; and it no longer fixes the problem, which is why I don’t think it is utilized anymore on 12.3.

 

[Morac]

Yes, Cloudtabs.db. Erasing this prior to 12.3 and restarting seemed to fix my zombie tabs.

But on 12.3, if you erase the file (leftover from 12.2?), it is not recreated, at least on my M1 Mac; and it no longer fixes the problem, which is why I don’t think it is utilized anymore on 12.3.

I just verified that the CloudTabs.db file in my /Users//Library/Containers/com.apple.Safari/Data/Library/Safari folder does update when cloud tabs update on my M1 MBA running 12.3.1.

If yours isn’t being created either Safari iCloud is turned off (or broken) or the SafariBookmarksSyncAgent process isn’t running or having problems. You probably can’t delete it while Safari iCloud is enabled. Not without issues. You could also try watching it in Console.

Note if tab groups sync (which are stored in SafariTabs.db), then it’s likely there’s a problem in iCloud.

 

[Jaw3000]

I just verified that the CloudTabs.db file in my /Users//Library/Containers/com.apple.Safari/Data/Library/Safari folder does update when cloud tabs update on my M1 MBA running 12.3.1.

If yours isn’t being created either Safari iCloud is turned off (or broken) or the SafariBookmarksSyncAgent process isn’t running or having problems. You probably can’t delete it while Safari iCloud is enabled. Not without issues. You could also try watching it in Console.

Note if tab groups sync (which are stored in SafariTabs.db), then it’s likely there’s a problem in iCloud.

This is interesting. I was referring to the ~/Library/Safari folder, not in ~/Library/Containers. On my late-2021 MBP on 12.3 (and now 12.3.1), I can disable Safari iCloud syncing, delete the entire user 'Safari' folder, restart, and re-enable Safari iCloud syncing. The complete Safari folder is recreated, with the exception of the CloudTabs.db file. New iCloud tabs are syncing fine across devices, but the zombie tabs are still there on the MBP (along with new tabs). Bookmark/history sync works fine. Everything works as it should, with the exception of the zombie tabs from my iPhone that are shown on the MBP only. My iMac does not show them. This whole system was clean-installed a few weeks ago on 12.3.0.

Also interesting. In my ~/Library/Containers folder, I do not even have the 'com.apple.Safari' folder you mention - I only have:
'com.apple.Safari.BrowserDataImportingService'
'com.apple.SafariFoundation.CredentialProviderExtensionHelper'
'com.apple.SafariPlatformSupport.Helper'

 

[Morac]

This is interesting. I was referring to the ~/Library/Safari folder, not in ~/Library/Containers. On my late-2021 MBP on 12.3 (and now 12.3.1), I can disable Safari iCloud syncing, delete the entire user 'Safari' folder, restart, and re-enable Safari iCloud syncing. The complete Safari folder is recreated, with the exception of the CloudTabs.db file. New iCloud tabs are syncing fine across devices, but the zombie tabs are still there on the MBP (along with new tabs). Bookmark/history sync works fine. Everything works as it should, with the exception of the zombie tabs from my iPhone that are shown on the MBP only. My iMac does not show them. This whole system was clean-installed a few weeks ago on 12.3.0.

Also interesting. In my ~/Library/Containers folder, I do not even have the 'com.apple.Safari' folder you mention - I only have:
'com.apple.Safari.BrowserDataImportingService'
'com.apple.SafariFoundation.CredentialProviderExtensionHelper'
'com.apple.SafariPlatformSupport.Helper'

Odd. My Mac originally came with Big Sur. Maybe it’s a leftover from that, though I don’t know why it would be used if it didn’t exist in Monterey.

Do tab groups sync? That’s also in that directory along with the start page items.

I found the CloudTabs.db location by using the fs_usage command to watch what SafariBookmarksSyncAgent was read/writing to when I opened tabs on my other devices.

 

[AppleMango]

I had issues with the tabs last year, it nearly broke me.
Then eventually it was fixed after spending way too much time with helpless AppleCare-Support by software updates.

BUT NOW I've noticed it stopped working ?. I hate that!

So I tried your mentioned tips again, toggled it off, restart, toggled on - iPad and iPhone seems to work!
PLEASE let it stay that way or can't we have a signal maybe in future software where it reports what's not working ... :S

Many thanks!

 

[bw44]

As of today I’m still experiencing almost every problem described in this thread. Have tried all techniques to fix things except for the ones requiring confidence with modifying system files. (Doesn’t seem like this should be needed if something “just works!”) The problems don’t all occur at once but just when I think everything is working, one or another pops up.

Now there are problems with the order of my favourites (both folders and individual URLs) and continued failure of the Reading List to sync.

Have nothing to contribute to a solution - just a whine. Sorry.

iOS 15.4.2; iPadOS 15.4.1; macOS 12.3.1

 

[antiprotest]

As of today I’m still experiencing almost every problem described in this thread. Have tried all techniques to fix things except for the ones requiring confidence with modifying system files. (Doesn’t seem like this should be needed if something “just works!”) The problems don’t all occur at once but just when I think everything is working, one or another pops up.

Now there are problems with the order of my favourites (both folders and individual URLs) and continued failure of the Reading List to sync.

Have nothing to contribute to a solution - just a whine. Sorry.

iOS 15.4.2; iPadOS 15.4.1; macOS 12.3.1

FWIW I've always had problems with iCloud tabs, for years, to the point that I have disabled them and pretend the feature does not exist.

But bookmarks and reading list syncing have always been perfect for me -- until recently. Now they don't update, or they appear in wrong order.

I have also tried many things to fix. For now I have given up and will try to live with it.

It is very disappointing.

 

[verdi1987]

FWIW I've always had problems with iCloud tabs, for years, to the point that I have disabled them and pretend the feature does not exist.

Can you disable iCloud Tabs independently of Bookmarks and Reading List? Or do you simply ignore/hide them?

 

[antiprotest]

Can you disable iCloud Tabs independently of Bookmarks and Reading List? Or do you simply ignore/hide them?

No you can't disable only icloud tabs. Before ios 15, they used to show up at the end of the tabs view. Since ios 15, I can put them on the start page. So when I decided to give up on them I toggled them off on the start page on mac and ios and that's it. Then I just pretend they don't exist.

Now if I am looking at one web page on a device and want to continue on another device I just depend on handoff. That works fine if I only need to do this for one page + if the devices are near one another + both have screen on.