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iCloud tabs not syncing
- Thread starter Morac
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Oddly, I've been able to fix the "realtime" syncing with Safari cloud tabs. I was having to quit Safari and reopen it to get them to sync, but what seems to have worked is to NOT use the "Personal (default)" profile. I've created a second profile, which you can bring over your bookmarks to when you create a new one, your tab group favorites will sync with bookmarks but side bar tab groups will start fresh. I also hated that it adds a label to the top menu bar that displays the name of your new profile to let you know you are not in the default one, and you can't get rid of it, but I fixed that by changing the name of the profile to a single space from the spacebar.
I've not gone back to the default profile, assuming it still is problematic, but with this new profile I've not had any of the previous issues with tabs! not sync, or zombie tabs or missing. Only issue I still have (but it's across any profile) is that iCloud tabs no long stay in the tab order from the device to the cloud view. Use to like that order of the tabs would sync.
The issue remains -- the .db files Safari uses update, but the browser does not refresh them automatically for you to view. You have to close and re-open Safari for the refreshed iCloud tabs list to appear. This is clearly a (rather simple?) software issue in Safari 18.x. You can re-install Sonoma (with Safari 17.x) and this feature works as intended again.
Yep, almost the same time I saw an iCloud open tab displayed on my phone. So far they’ve never shown up unless I restarted the device or force quit Safari; I had done neither for several days. However the “open” tab that was shown (from my iPad) had been closed a day or two before on the iPad. I actually had no open tabs on the iPad. This was a one time thing and I haven’t seen it again since Thursday. But something may be going on behind the scenes.
Still not working for me on my mac. I still have to force quit safari and re open it for the tabs to show up.
Just curious, does everyone who created a safari profile still have no issues after all of the updates?
I have overall created 5 Safari profiles and am again having this issue. There is no true 'fix' for this. Whatever anyone does, eventually it'll happen again.
no problem with a dedicated safari profile so far. without an added profile it still doesn't work
I have just noticed within the last couple days that open tabs, on my ipad, are appearing on my phone. There are also a couple of previously closed tabs showing as well, but this is the first time in ios 18 that iCloud Tabs are kinda working. I’ve never created another profile so that has nothing to do with it. I’ve not yet seen this work the other way around - open tabs on my phone appearing on my ipad.
It's still not syncing for me unless I quit Safari and run it again. I just tested this today on my iPhone, iPad and Mac. I'm assuming the tabs are syncing, but it doesn't update until Safari is restarted. I'm not sure why this still hasn't been fixed as of iOS 18.3.1 / MacOS 15.3.1.
It does now work in 18.4. However, not completely. The open tabs will appear on all my iOS devices, but on my phone even previously closed tabs from my iPad reappear, along with currently open tabs. Oddly enough, I don’t get closed tabs from my phone reappearing on my iPad. So it’s partially fixed, but the behavior is quite confusing.
Is this with the "Default" profile or a new one you created? I've never enabled Profiles, so I'm still using the default one which hasn't synced since 17.x.
On a side note, even back when it worked occasionally close tabs would get stuck on one of my devices. This used to be a pain to resolve, but at some point Apple fixed it so it can be resolved by toggling Safari off in iCloud settings and choosing to remove everything from the device. Wait about a minute and toggle it back on and the closed tabs should now be gone.
I’ve never messed with profiles. This is with all default settings. I’ll try the Safari iCloud toggle to see if that changes anything but currently those phantom tabs only appear on my phone; the iPad only displays actual open tabs on the phone.
You would want to toggle Safari off on your phone then. You don’t need to do anything on your iPad.
Thanks, that also seems to have triggered the ability to close an open tab in Safari on one device from Safari on the other device by long pressing and tapping the Close option. That also had not worked since iOS 18.0. After toggling Safari off/on in iCloud on my phone, choosing to delete everything from the phone as you suggested, I went to 4 different sites, on my phone, leaving those 4 tabs open. Then about 20 minutes later, I launched Safari on my iPad, and those 4 open tabs from the phone were displayed. And, again, not since 18.0 was released, I was able to actually close 2 of them from the iPad. I checked on my phone, and as soon as I launched Safari, the 2 tabs I had selected to close disappeared. So it does seem that 18.4 fixes this issue though some tweaking may be necessary to get it all synced properly.
I look forward to this feature *finally* working again, halfway into the development cycle. Apple's QC has been horrendous for some time now, especially on the software and services side.
Same thing happened a couple years ago with notification “dismiss” sync between iOS and watchOS. It took them over 4 months to fix notifications on Apple Watch after breaking them for no good reason on a new OS version that didn’t change notifications in any appreciable way.
The part that baffles me is that they are seemingly making no meaningful changes to these features between major iOS releases, but clearly doing some kind of backend work to refactor or “improve” code or performance. Yet, when they introduce a breaking change, it takes 6+ months and 3-4 more releases before they get around to fixing it.
It’s just wild to me that this stuff is being tinkered with in the first place, but the changes are clearly sailing through QA with show-stopper bugs that render the feature functionally or completely useless.
I say, if they want to do this stuff, there’s no excuse for shipping with major bugs and then leaving them to linger until version x.4 a half year later. These things need to be caught during beta testing, or at worst fixed in an x.0.1 release a week or two later. Otherwise, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
It used to be that people said to wait until the x.1 update when a new major iOS release comes out. Then it was x.2. Now iOS is basically broken for 6 or 7 months out of the year. It’s gotten to the point where I hate when a new major iOS release comes out as I know it will take at least a half a year until my devices are working as well as they were pre-update. It’s not just obscure features either, they broke the Mail app in iOS 18 and didn’t fix it until iOS 18.3.
I expect iCloud tab syncing will break again in iOS 19 because that just seems to be the way things work over at Apple these days.