Glad to know others have had the same experience. (Misery loves company?) I notice things often DO sync quickly, so I think “Hooray, problem’s solved!” but then it’s not.
Think I’ll give up trying to fix it, too, and just live with it.
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iCloud tabs not syncing
- Thread starter Morac
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Think I’ll give up trying to fix it, too, and just live with it.
Hate to expose my ignorance but what is “handoff”?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.
It's the feature that allows you to start someone on one device and continue on another. For example, if I am looking at a web page on my iPhone, an icon will appear on my Mac dock. If I click on the icon, my default browser will open with that web page that I was looking at on my iPhone. Similar things will happen on supported apps. Both devices need to be screen on at the same time, bluetooth on, and close to each other.
On iOS, go to Settings > General > AirPlay & Handoff.
On Mac, go to Settings > General, then look at the bottom checkbox.
Use Handoff to continue tasks on your other devices - Apple Support
With Handoff, you can start work on one device, then switch to another nearby device and pick up where you left off.
Amazing that Apple struggles badly when it comes to such basic functionality. Their software these days lags far, far beyond their hardware.
I have 3 and sync has been working reliably except for the week the iCloud outages.
Somebody on another thread or earlier on this thread reminded me that you may have to close and re-open Safari on your devices sometimes to get it to sync. It has worked for me very consistently.
I had 50+ for about a year dating back to 2020. Then earlier this year all of those finally disappeared, but I was left with 6 new phantom tabs. Now they are gone because Safari isn’t syncing anymore.
Interestingly, today my iPhone very briefly flashed two iCloud tabs from my iPad. They disappeared, and tabs (and bookmarks and Reading List) still aren’t syncing. I don’t know if they were current tabs because it flashed so quickly.
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Interestingly, ever since I last turned Safari sync in iCloud settings off and back on, sync is working again on all devices and continues to do so.
I also spent a few hours cleaning up my bookmarks, which were total chaos with a lot of dead links, but are now back to a manageable state. Don’t know if that made a difference.
I also spent a few hours cleaning up my bookmarks, which were total chaos with a lot of dead links, but are now back to a manageable state. Don’t know if that made a difference.
same here. disable / enable Safari in iCloud settings seems actually fix the problem
After over a year or so of ‘fixing’ this, my iPhone (iOS 15.5b3) has fallen out of sync with my iPad (also on 15.5b3) and M1 MBP (on macOS 12.4b3). And the syncing between my MBP & iPad now seems to take maybe 10-15+ minutes.
I’ve also noticed that items added to my Reading List on my iPhone aren’t syncing over to macOS or iPadOS. I’m afraid to turn off iCloud in Settings for Safari. I’ll either lose something I probably need and don’t realize at the moment, or I’ll end up having duplicate bookmarks. I’ll try restoring all devices once 15.5 & 12.4 are official.. I’ve been keeping up with this thread, seeing all of the other reported problems. This’ll be the third(?) time now that this has happened to me in the last couple years. Each time, the ‘fix’ is something different.
I’ve also noticed that items added to my Reading List on my iPhone aren’t syncing over to macOS or iPadOS. I’m afraid to turn off iCloud in Settings for Safari. I’ll either lose something I probably need and don’t realize at the moment, or I’ll end up having duplicate bookmarks. I’ll try restoring all devices once 15.5 & 12.4 are official.. I’ve been keeping up with this thread, seeing all of the other reported problems. This’ll be the third(?) time now that this has happened to me in the last couple years. Each time, the ‘fix’ is something different.
Sync suddenly started working again for me!
I’m not sure if it’s just a coincidence, but I reset privacy settings on my iPhone, and now it’s syncing with my other iPhone and my Mac.
Update: I just did this same procedure on my iPad Pro that also was not syncing, and sync started working again!
I’m not sure if it’s just a coincidence, but I reset privacy settings on my iPhone, and now it’s syncing with my other iPhone and my Mac.
Update: I just did this same procedure on my iPad Pro that also was not syncing, and sync started working again!
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So I was having issues again with the tabs not even showing up. I force closed safari went to the iCloud settings and turned off safari synching, kept data on the phone, opened Safari again and went to settings and turned on safari synching again in iCloud settings and chose merge data. Then I went to the app switcher and force closed safari again. After then starting safari again everything works again. Weird stuff but maybe this helps someone.
I just did this across all three of my devices, and it looks to have fixed my Reeding List issue (after choosing to keep items on each device, and then choosing to merge). Although it has not corrected my iCloud Tabs issue.
::Edit::
Looks like my iCloud Tabs issues are fixed now, too. Although the STP doesn’t seem to be included in the iCloud Tabs. Not sure if that’s on purpose or what. Might be a good thing, as to not have duplicates for the same machine, unless there was some way of differentiating them.
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Are these issues related to my issue of my Favorites 'positions' not syncing? For example, if I drag a new favorite to the '10th position' from my Mac, it used to sync fine on my iOS devices. Now, the favorite just shows up in the first position.
It’s somewhat related, but the only way I’ve found to fix that is to find which device has the wrong position data, turn off Safari iCloud and “forget” the Safari data, wait a bit and turn it back on.
If you don’t want to do that, the only alternative is to reorder all the favorites that are in the correct position above the one that’s in the wrong one.