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iCloud tabs not syncing
- Thread starter Morac
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That’s the problem I’ve been having along with this. My Safari Reading list is also out of sync.
You need to go to your iCloud settings, deselect Safari, and when it asks if you want to delete Safari data, select "yes." That will clear off the file that is incorrectly reporting an open tab on other devices.
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It's hilarious and sad that four years later this bug is still a problem.
And if this wasn't annoying enough, I'm n ow having sync issues on my reminders!!! Complete or amend a reminder on one device, it doesn't sync across to the other devices!!!
I've been having this only on the Mac for some time. If I change the time of a reminder, it'll update on all of my other devices within about 5 seconds. Except the Mac, where I have to launch the app to get the notification to go away and time to refresh.
Everytime there's a software update, I have hopes these issues will be fixed 😔
I am 99 percent sure that the ghost tabs are caused by MacOS. As soon as I create a new Safari profile and set this new profile also in iOS, the tabs are immediately synchronized without any problems. I suspect that some error has sneaked into the "MacOS Safari profile" or that old data relating to tabs is not being deleted properly there.
I'll have a look at which files are causing problems at file system level and keep you up-to-date.
I'll have a look at which files are causing problems at file system level and keep you up-to-date.
FWIW, any time I've "fixed" this issue, it tends to be macOS that gets screwed up. My iPhone and iPad are both showing the correct open iCloud Tabs across all devices, including macOS. Although on two Macs, iCloud Tabs are totally borked. On ALL devices, I'm unable to change/edit/add/delete any bookmarks or anything from my Reading List.
So, I just figured out the following faster than I thought:
In the Safari folder /Users/USERNAME/Library/Safari there is a file with the name "RecentlyClosedTabs.plist". This file contains all the relevant information we need and a quick check with a text or hex editor shows all the old tab names that have normally already been closed in the Safari user front end.
I suspect that this file is constantly synchronized with iCloud in the background. No wonder why old ghost tabs are then displayed on our iPhones / iPads again and again.
The question is why the lines / websites in this file are not deleted when a tab is closed in the frontend of Safari. In my opinion, this is definitely a Safari or MacOS bug.
Please apologize that "german" is set as the system language in my screenshots. But I think the most important aspects are clearly visible.
Greetings
In the Safari folder /Users/USERNAME/Library/Safari there is a file with the name "RecentlyClosedTabs.plist". This file contains all the relevant information we need and a quick check with a text or hex editor shows all the old tab names that have normally already been closed in the Safari user front end.
I suspect that this file is constantly synchronized with iCloud in the background. No wonder why old ghost tabs are then displayed on our iPhones / iPads again and again.
The question is why the lines / websites in this file are not deleted when a tab is closed in the frontend of Safari. In my opinion, this is definitely a Safari or MacOS bug.
Please apologize that "german" is set as the system language in my screenshots. But I think the most important aspects are clearly visible.
Greetings
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I have! I've also had this issue for a few years. I've had it "fixed" a number of ways, but eventually it still happens. At one point I had an earlier page from THIS thread stuck as a phantom tab, and that was just outright hilarious.Have you created a new Safari profile? Please also note my last recent post.
Ummm.... yeah.. So... Like, JUST NOW, all of my Bookmarks and Reading Lists from all devices just reconciled and updated. I've done nothing to initiate this or change anything. I noticed some new bookmarks populate on one of my devices and then everything just started syncing up. SO weird. And I'm sure it'll break again, as this isn't the first & I'm sure not the last time this has/will happen.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
so I have my iPad now as well. I had to travel for work the other day and had to tether my Mac to the iPhone. Later that night I noticed the iPhone had again formed 2 ghost tabs from the Mac that was closed by me whilst I was working remotely.
So I looked at my iPad and there were no ghost tabs.
Clearly iOS on the phone is where the problem lies since the iPad didn't suffer from the same issue of not having the tabs closed accordingly.
So I looked at my iPad and there were no ghost tabs.
Clearly iOS on the phone is where the problem lies since the iPad didn't suffer from the same issue of not having the tabs closed accordingly.
Well, in my case the issue seems/seemed to be with my Intel Mac mini. My iPad, iPhone, and M1 MBP have all been showing the current iCloud Tabs, but all devices have been unable to sync any bookmarks or Reading List additions. Now everything seems to be working fine for me. I even tried the safari Tech Preview and everything is working there, too.
As of some time this week, I’m no longer seeing any of my devices syncing up anymore. At least I was able to get all of my Bookmarks synched across devices. I’ve exported my Reading List, so at least I can get at that elsewhere. Just can’t rely on Safari working. I mean, it works great! Until it doesn’t.
Appears to be broken again in iOS 18. I got a box on my Mac asking me if I wanted to enable iCloud tabs even though they’ve been enabled for years. I choose yes and then I saw the open tab from my iPhone on my Mac and iPad. I close it on my iPhone and closed Safari and it still showed as open on the other two devices. In addition no open tabs synced across. I ended up force quitting Safari on all 3 devices which got rid of the phantom tab from my iPhone, but no new tabs are syncing.
With any open tabs on one of my devices I have to force quit Safari on the other device and those tabs will be shown. If I don’t force quit Safari they won’t appear no matter what else I do.
This is just infuriating.
It was working perfectly in iOS 17.6.1 (after suffering through half of the year of iOS 17.x with various iCloud tabs issues).
It is absolutely baffling that they keep re-breaking it, even when there’s nothing about it that changed or needed to change.
It was working perfectly in iOS 17.6.1 (after suffering through half of the year of iOS 17.x with various iCloud tabs issues).
It is absolutely baffling that they keep re-breaking it, even when there’s nothing about it that changed or needed to change.