My ghost tabs briefly flash on the Start Page before disappearing. Mine are also from around February. Prior to that, I had 50+ from 2020.
Edit: My February ghost tabs have now permanently returned.
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iCloud tabs not syncing
- Thread starter Morac
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Edit: My February ghost tabs have now permanently returned.
I noticed this morning that i have old tabs showing on my iPhone but no tabs showing on iPad.
It’s so odd to me that this feature seldom works reliably.
Just remember occasionally to quit and restart Safari on all devices. That's been fixing any hiccups for me.
Sync stopped working again for me, too. It's actually working for 3 of 5 devices. If I reset iCloud for Safari, sync works for a few hours and then stops again for 2 of the 5 devices.
too many things not syncing correctly for me with latest iOS 15, seriously from iMessages not syncing between the iPad iPhone and MacBook, too bookmarks order. It seems like apple at least in sync has gone to trash as of late. Even having issues where the MacBook finder does not wirelessly find my iPhone correctly. sometimes I have to either restart my phone, or go to airplane mode and back on for it to sync.
Just to say something that I have known for a while, and to sum up this thread: Anyone who thinks that the issue has been fixed, whether because you have tried something or for no known reason, just know that it has not been fixed. The issue has been going on for many years and possibly will never be fixed. If it's working again it is most likely temporary.
Exactly. When there are issues, at least for me, they seem to happen seemingly randomly after an unknown amount of time. This last time, just toggling Safari in iCloud Settings 'fixed' it. The time before that I reinstalled both iOS & iPadOS and left macOS alone. The time before THAT I had reinstalled macOS. In looking at what I've done overall, you'd think I'd be good having reinstalled the OS on all of my devices AND toggled the Safari iCloud option... I've been good so far since this last/third time it's happened, but only time will tell. The fact that this has happened like 3 times in the last 1½ years is what gets me.
I keep have my iCloud tabs disappearing. Turning off and back on the Safari iCloud switch and a restart fixes it temporarily, but they always end up disappearing. It’s super annoying considering I only use two devices, an iPhone and iPad, and there I don’t keep a lot of tabs open on either. Not a super complex situation.
Also, bookmarks that I add on one device doesn’t sync to the other, which is more frustrating than the iCloud tabs. I think I have a link saved only to discover I can’t find it in my bookmarks.
Also, bookmarks that I add on one device doesn’t sync to the other, which is more frustrating than the iCloud tabs. I think I have a link saved only to discover I can’t find it in my bookmarks.
Might the issue here be with content blockers, namely AdGuard iOS?
Reading through many “solutions” here and in other threads, I disabled all of my Extensions (AdGuard, Open in Apollo and Open in Tweetbot) and disabled all 6 of the AdGuard Content Blockers on my iPhone, then force quit Safari.
I then did the same things on my iPad.
Then, I went into iCloud settings and disabled and reenabled Safari, choosing to Keep the data on my device on each iDevice.
Finally, I opened Safari on each device.
Now, everything is syncing/merging again: bookmarks have merged and updated, Tabs are now visible on each device. This did not work previously…only difference is that I’ve now disabled Extensions.
I’ve yet to re-enable any of the extensions, so no Content Blocking is occurring.
Could AdGuard be the issue?
Reading through many “solutions” here and in other threads, I disabled all of my Extensions (AdGuard, Open in Apollo and Open in Tweetbot) and disabled all 6 of the AdGuard Content Blockers on my iPhone, then force quit Safari.
I then did the same things on my iPad.
Then, I went into iCloud settings and disabled and reenabled Safari, choosing to Keep the data on my device on each iDevice.
Finally, I opened Safari on each device.
Now, everything is syncing/merging again: bookmarks have merged and updated, Tabs are now visible on each device. This did not work previously…only difference is that I’ve now disabled Extensions.
I’ve yet to re-enable any of the extensions, so no Content Blocking is occurring.
Could AdGuard be the issue?
The things that you did would have temporarily "fixed" the syncing without touching AdGuard. And there is no way AdGuard can mess with iCloud sync in the first place. There is no place where these two would overlap.
Just wait. The syncing issue will come back. From many years of experience and reading about with this issue, it hits random people, and after it gets a person, it always comes back.
Might as well reenable AdGuard to block some ads.
Understood. It's just that I'd done all of those things, minus disabling the extensions, and they never kick-started syncing before. It wasn't until I did all of those things, but this time adding in the disabling of the extensions, and BINGO - sync started and everything appeared on each device as before.
I'll keep checking. I feel as you do that it's only going be a temporary fix. But, if it sticks...might at least have something to do with Extensions in general, if not specifically AdGuard. I'm just pinpointing AdGuard as the potential culprit because it's the only extension of mine that seeks to block things - content, website access, etc. So, I figure, maybe it's blocking access to iCloud.
Shot in the dark, I know...
Yep. Stopped working after a day. All right then, done wasting my time with Safari.
I’m off to try Firefox, to see if it’s possible to have a mobile browser that can functionally (and continually) provide tab and bookmark sync between iDevices. Firefox Sync works great on desktops.
Aaaaaand…Firefox Sync sucks too. At least, between MacOS and iOS.
I have what may be a fix for some of you. Beginning in March, right after there were two iCloud outages, two of five devices stopped syncing Bookmarks, Reading List, or iCloud Tabs. Everything I tried temporarily resolved the issue, but after a few hours sync would break again.
The two devices where sync broke are an iPad Pro and an iPhone 12 Pro. The devices that were syncing correctly are an iPhone 12 Pro Max, a MacBook Pro, and a Mac Studio.
Earlier this week, I backed up my iPad, put it into DFU mode, and restored it with my Mac. This wiped the iPad, including the OS, and re-imaged it. I then restored my backup. Interestingly, prior to putting it into DFU, I tried logging out of iCloud on it about five times. Each time I’d have to force restart because it hung. I think it was getting hung up on removing iCloud Keychain, which may be related to the sync issues. I gave up trying to logout. Once I restored the backup, I was able to log out of iCloud and delete the Keychain. I then signed back in.
So far, sync is still working between the iPad and the MBP, Mac Studio, and 12 Pro Max.
If things look good in about another week, I’ll DFU my 12 Pro as well. (The only reason I haven’t yet is because re-adding credit cards to Apple Pay is a pain. On more than one occasion Amex has blocked me from adding them back, which then required calls to Fraud Services.)
The two devices where sync broke are an iPad Pro and an iPhone 12 Pro. The devices that were syncing correctly are an iPhone 12 Pro Max, a MacBook Pro, and a Mac Studio.
Earlier this week, I backed up my iPad, put it into DFU mode, and restored it with my Mac. This wiped the iPad, including the OS, and re-imaged it. I then restored my backup. Interestingly, prior to putting it into DFU, I tried logging out of iCloud on it about five times. Each time I’d have to force restart because it hung. I think it was getting hung up on removing iCloud Keychain, which may be related to the sync issues. I gave up trying to logout. Once I restored the backup, I was able to log out of iCloud and delete the Keychain. I then signed back in.
So far, sync is still working between the iPad and the MBP, Mac Studio, and 12 Pro Max.
If things look good in about another week, I’ll DFU my 12 Pro as well. (The only reason I haven’t yet is because re-adding credit cards to Apple Pay is a pain. On more than one occasion Amex has blocked me from adding them back, which then required calls to Fraud Services.)
Here's what worked for me step by step. It's only been an hour since it started working so I might lose it as it happened with many others.
I have a Mac, iPhone and iPad. My Mac and iPhone's Safari programs were seeing each other's tabs. The iPad was not visible by either of them, and the iPad wasn't seeing them as well.
- Mac: turn off iCloud Safari sync, wait a minute, re-enable. No restart of the device or Safari.
- iPhone: turn off iCloud Safari sync, wait a minute, re-enable. No restart of the device or Safari.
- iPad: turn off iCloud Safari sync, restart the device, re-enable iCloud Safari sync, restart the device.
At that point there was still no dice. However I also opened Safari on my iPad, force-closed it, reopened it, waited a minute and voila -- suddenly it was seeing my Mac and iPhone tabs, and they started seeing it as well.
So I'll echo another poster who said that you also have to restart Safari for the entire thing to start cranking.
I'll also add I use 1Blocker's firewall on the iPhone and the iPad -- and I have a PiHole attached to my router and that blocks like 26% of all DNS queries. Even with that however, so far no issues.
Hopefully I don't forget to report back after a bit of time about whether the tab syncing keeps working or not.
I have a Mac, iPhone and iPad. My Mac and iPhone's Safari programs were seeing each other's tabs. The iPad was not visible by either of them, and the iPad wasn't seeing them as well.
- Mac: turn off iCloud Safari sync, wait a minute, re-enable. No restart of the device or Safari.
- iPhone: turn off iCloud Safari sync, wait a minute, re-enable. No restart of the device or Safari.
- iPad: turn off iCloud Safari sync, restart the device, re-enable iCloud Safari sync, restart the device.
At that point there was still no dice. However I also opened Safari on my iPad, force-closed it, reopened it, waited a minute and voila -- suddenly it was seeing my Mac and iPhone tabs, and they started seeing it as well.
So I'll echo another poster who said that you also have to restart Safari for the entire thing to start cranking.
I'll also add I use 1Blocker's firewall on the iPhone and the iPad -- and I have a PiHole attached to my router and that blocks like 26% of all DNS queries. Even with that however, so far no issues.
Hopefully I don't forget to report back after a bit of time about whether the tab syncing keeps working or not.
I have several iPads as well as 2 macs and an iPhone. Today, I had an issue with my history and tabs not syncing across my devices, but it was 1 iPad that had the issue. I finally bookmarked all the tabs and saved a tab group from the Safari on the device that wasn’t syncing to the others, closed all of the open tabs and it seems ok for now.
However, I did all of the following prior to the last step mentioned above, so not sure if any or all of these steps were actually “mandatory“ in making this happen:
1) Turned off Safari under iCloud in settings, did this several times.
2) Closed down multiple windows that were open in Safari
3) Force quit Safari a few times
However, the last step of closing all of the open tabs and reopening Safari seem to fix it. At least for now.
UPDATE: 5/24/22
Not syncing again, worst than yesterday. History, reading lists, favorites, tab groups, pretty much everything.
However, I did all of the following prior to the last step mentioned above, so not sure if any or all of these steps were actually “mandatory“ in making this happen:
1) Turned off Safari under iCloud in settings, did this several times.
2) Closed down multiple windows that were open in Safari
3) Force quit Safari a few times
However, the last step of closing all of the open tabs and reopening Safari seem to fix it. At least for now.
UPDATE: 5/24/22
Not syncing again, worst than yesterday. History, reading lists, favorites, tab groups, pretty much everything.
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@Beachlover516 and any others still having sync issues, please see my post here. Syncing is now working reliably after I did a DFU restore. Before that, “fixes” only lasted a few hours. I first tested with my iPad Pro, and after two weeks it is still syncing. After I confirmed sync was reliably working on my iPad, I did the same with my iPhone. I have five devices syncing properly (2 Macs, 2 iPhones, 1 iPad).
Lots of people are having this issue. We shouldnt have to all DFU restore devices because Apple can’t figure out safari …..a browser that’s been around for over a decade
Checking in 10 days later, the solution for me that I posted above is still effective (and I didn't have to repeat it; only done it once). iCloud tab syncing and bookmark syncing still work on all my 3 devices. Apparently my problem was linked to having to disable+enable it on all devices and then restart Safari.
iOS 15.5 mostly fixed my issues but now shared links and frequently visited isn’t updating on ipad. Everything was fine i thought till today….
No, it shouldn’t be necessary, but you can either wait (probably forever) for a fix or fix it yourself. I went for the complete wipe since the simpler workarounds never stuck. Maybe a simple logging out of iCloud would fix it. Others have had success with toggling; that didn’t work for me. I was done trying minor workarounds, so I just went for the wipe, which takes no longer than 30 minutes. (You can restore your backup after the wipe.) It worked and continues to work. It also fixed my phantom tabs.
End of last year I started having problems with iCloud Tab syncing. Many months later Apple changed the behaviour and they sort of fixed it. Tabs on an iPhone or iPad would only sync to other devices closing Safari (by swiping home, actually killing the app is not necessary) So:
On an iPhone or iPad, browse to a Site in Safari, close the browser. The Tab will become visible on other devices (iPhone, iPad & Macs).
However, recently this behaviour has changed again. Namely, I've noticed it only becomes visible on iPhones and iPads, but not on the Mac.
I've tried all of the above mentioned by others... Nothing worked.
But here's the thing that does work. Relaunch Safari on the Mac -> Tabs appear.
So...
If you have a site open on your iPhone and haven't closed Safari then it won't sync. Close Safari on your iPhone and it will sync. However, if Safari is open on your Mac it won't show the tab. Relaunch Safari and there ya go. To lessen the pain of re-launching your browser, quit Safari by pressing CMD+OPTION+Q (this will restore your open tabs when you relaunch Safari).
This really sucks. It must be a bug in Safari. I hope it gets fixed in Safari 15.5 or 16 (probably 16 since they're working on all the new stuff).
On an iPhone or iPad, browse to a Site in Safari, close the browser. The Tab will become visible on other devices (iPhone, iPad & Macs).
However, recently this behaviour has changed again. Namely, I've noticed it only becomes visible on iPhones and iPads, but not on the Mac.
I've tried all of the above mentioned by others... Nothing worked.
But here's the thing that does work. Relaunch Safari on the Mac -> Tabs appear.
So...
If you have a site open on your iPhone and haven't closed Safari then it won't sync. Close Safari on your iPhone and it will sync. However, if Safari is open on your Mac it won't show the tab. Relaunch Safari and there ya go. To lessen the pain of re-launching your browser, quit Safari by pressing CMD+OPTION+Q (this will restore your open tabs when you relaunch Safari).
This really sucks. It must be a bug in Safari. I hope it gets fixed in Safari 15.5 or 16 (probably 16 since they're working on all the new stuff).