iOS 15.5 just deleted all of my Safari tabs

[!!!]

All 250 tabs. Gone. Thanks Apple. I was actually hoping this update would fix the awful Safari tab history issues where it will frequently remove all of a tab's history while browsing for no apparent reason. Guess I don't have that issue anymore, I don't have any tabs!!! Jesus f***ing Christ, Apple!!!!!!

 

[Slartibart]

just simply reopen from the bookmarks. or do I miss something?

 

[dasthunder]

That’s awful! Here also happened the same. Upgrade done for IOS 15.5 and all tabs in safari main tab view have gone away, 100 of them. All the other tabs in tab groups have been kept! What bug is this Apple?! Never happened before within the updates between iOS 12 to now! How can we recover this tabs? Also the issue that every day now it deletes the tabs opened from last day. What’s happening?
And also the bug that it doesn’t load the preview left in the tab groups… we need to reload each tab again to see what the tab is. Whatever was done have completely messed up Safari. Top annoying. It’s a disaster!

 

[dasthunder]

just simply reopen from the bookmarks. or do I miss something?

That’s nothing to do with bookmarks! If I open a tab that should stay there until I decide I want to close it. Not Safari close it like he wants!

 

[Slartibart]

That’s nothing to do with bookmarks! If I open a tab that should stay there until I decide I want to close it. Not Safari close it like he wants!

Do I understand correctly that you had 250 tabs open in Safari and decided to do the 15.5 system update - an update for which it’s documented that it efffects, besides others things, Safaris foundation and additional functionality - without bookmarking or syncing these tabs?

That’s quite brave, isn’t it?

And not really “Safari close it like he wants!”. If you have an iTunes-backup of your iDevice you might be lucky in recovering these tabs. However any information post backup date will sadly be lost.

 

[Zanton68]

In iOS 15.5 the website preview in tab groups has gone. If I choose the page it will open and the tab will come back, but next time I go into a tab group they are all blank again. Have cleared website settings, rebooted etc

 

[zorinlynx]

Why are you using tabs as bookmarks? Ever since browsers have had tabs I've always seen them as volatile.

 

[AppleWes]

Why are you using tabs as bookmarks? Ever since browsers have had tabs I've always seen them as volatile.

Exactly, and tabs (IMO) bog down the browser itself. There's a reason most pages will reload after sitting in an unused tab.

 

[winxmac]

I did an IPSW upgrade to iPadOS 15.5 and have about 40 tabs open before the upgrade [iPadOS 15.4] but after the upgrade they were still there and nothing was lost... I also did an IPSW upgrade from iOS 15.3 RC to iOS 15.5 RC but I don't have any opened Safari tabs at the time so I don't know if the same would have happened...

iPad 9 and iPhone 7 Plus

 

[PowerPCFan]

If your web history still remains intact you might be able to find some of those pages in the history, although its a long and tedious process.

 

[dasthunder]

Why are you using tabs as bookmarks? Ever since browsers have had tabs I've always seen them as volatile.

And why something that was working awesome with the tabs since IOS 12 have suddenly in this last update 15.5 come to this problem?
What do you mean with volatile… if I have 5x to 6x sites that I go there 5x times a day why should I do bookmarks of it?! Bookmarks is something when I want to go there in a pair of months. This case is that I have the tabs and I don’t want to come to safari and never more see it just because safari have close it!
Nowadays if I leave one tab (and I mean just one tab), for example this forum webpage in the main tabs folder when I come to it the next day then is gone… it clears the tab! Do you say that this is a normal execution of the program? I don’t think so! Or do you say that I need to bookmark this webpage if I want to reopen again?? It’s crazy if someone do that!
If I leave the same forum webpage tab inside a group of tabs the next morning is still there! It doesn’t load the background but is there!
I just can see this as a bug!

 

[dasthunder]

Disappearing Safari Tabs on iPhone or iPad? How to Find Them

Every so often, a seemingly small bug in Apple's operating systems survives the company's annual OS launches and continues to cause users...

www.macrumors.com

 

[Slartibart]

Or do you say that I need to bookmark this webpage if I want to reopen again??

Short answer: Yes.

It’s crazy if someone do that!

Long: No, it is not. Updates, crashes, whatever else might impact on the current state of a program… “current” in this scenario equals “what is actual loaded into RAM” (the latter being “volatile“ as already mentioned by @zorinlynx) and “what’s loaded” equals to the tabs open.

For various reasons an update might impact on this - luckily the solution is an easy one: bookmark them… e.g. in a tab group. At least before doing an update.

 

[Realityck]

All 250 tabs. Gone. Thanks Apple. I was actually hoping this update would fix the awful Safari tab history issues where it will frequently remove all of a tab's history while browsing for no apparent reason. Guess I don't have that issue anymore, I don't have any tabs!!! Jesus f***ing Christ, Apple!!!!!!

Got enough memory for 250 tabs?

 

[!!!]

Got enough memory for 250 tabs?

Not sure what you mean. iOS automatically drops older webpages from RAM as needed.

 

[silllli]

I’ve lost all tabs that are not in a tab group for the second time in the last couple of weeks. Pretty annoying.

(The tabs in tab groups stayed. But the Safari iCloud sync seems to be quite buggy anyways.)

 

[Piripoeri]

Same here, all tabs gone! Horrible bug, happened two times. I discovered after being out of battery it happens. My partner had the same thing. Hope it will be fixed soon.

Normally I leave all interesting tabs open until the max of 500. Have been doing this for years. Has never been an issue with memory.

 

[silllli]

I had up to 500 tabs open as well before—no performance problem.

 

[The1Biz]

All 250 tabs. Gone. Thanks Apple. I was actually hoping this update would fix the awful Safari tab history issues where it will frequently remove all of a tab's history while browsing for no apparent reason. Guess I don't have that issue anymore, I don't have any tabs!!! Jesus f***ing Christ, Apple!!!!!!

I've never understood why people do this. If it's that important, just bookmark it and come back later.
If it crashes and has to restart, you're probably going to lose everything you had open anyway.

Leaving tabs open is like tempting fate to screw you.

 

[silllli]

I've never understood why people do this. If it's that important, just bookmark it and come back later.
If it crashes and has to restart, you're probably going to lose everything you had open anyway.

Leaving tabs open is like tempting fate to screw you.

I do it out of convenience and it worked for the last 10 years. Technically there is no difference between a list of tabs and a list of bookmarks. Neither should be lost.

 

[The1Biz]

I do it out of convenience and it worked for the last 10 years. Technically there is no difference between a list of tabs and a list of bookmarks. Neither should be lost.

I see it very differently. I've just learned over the years with iOS system and Safari random restarts and occasional crashes that bad stuff happens and you can't depend on tabs open. Bookmarks are at least a stable record. You can also backup via your computer or iCloud them for safety if it's really important.

Honestly if you made it 10 years without anything bad happening, you're very lucky. I remember there was one iOS version at the tail end of the 3G lifecycle (the second released iPhone) where the phone would randomly shut down for no reason. Once you go through that, you don't leave things to chance.

 

[Slartibart]

I do it out of convenience and it worked for the last 10 years. Technically there is no difference between a list of tabs and a list of bookmarks. Neither should be lost.

Well, technically there is quite a difference between 100 bookmarked websites or having these websites opened in individual tabs in your browser. 🤓
Regarding a difference between saved tab groups versus bookmarks - that does seem functionally similar, doesn’t it?

 

[silllli]

I see it very differently. I've just learned over the years with iOS system and Safari random restarts and occasional crashes that bad stuff happens and you can't depend on tabs open. Bookmarks are at least a stable record. You can also backup via your computer or iCloud them for safety if it's really important.

Honestly if you made it 10 years without anything bad happening, you're very lucky. I remember there was one iOS version at the tail end of the 3G lifecycle (the second released iPhone) where the phone would randomly shut down for no reason. Once you go through that, you don't leave things to chance.

That sounds bad and I can understand that you take precautions. Still I think this should work as expected. I guess Apple thinks the same since they encourage working with many tabs opened by introducing tab groups. I also guess they don’t intend to lose any of these. (Interestingly enough only “local device” tabs were lost, the ones in a group stayed—maybe I should simply stop using these local device tabs.)

 

[silllli]

Well, technically there is quite a difference between 100 bookmarked websites or having these websites opened in individual tabs in your browser. 🤓
Regarding a difference between saved tab groups versus bookmarks - that does seem functionally similar, doesn’t it?

Of course, but we are not talking about the content of a tab crashing but the list of open tabs being lost—so on that level (keeping track of a list of URLs) they are very similar.

And regarding the tab groups: yep, I think so too.

 

[The1Biz]

I've been to the Genius bar enough times with iOS issues over the years, and it was always recommended to reboot your phone once a week. In practice I never do that, maybe a few times a year outside of updates when its forced, and uptime is generally very good. I know enough now though, if it's mission critical, you need to back it up because a crash is always a possibility.

Tabs historically have never been a stable way to keep data.