I lost all safari tabs after updating to ios 13. How can i restore them?

Yep, this is one of the most annoying “features” (cough!) of iPadOS 13. Tabs continuously get lost, because Safari keeps moving tabs into their own separate windows. It’s absolutely ridiculous and annoying,

A quick fix for this is:

1. Go into Safari
2. Press and hold down on the double-square icon in the upper righthand corner.
3. Choose “Merge All Windows”.

Try double-clicking the home button, then. You will probably find two Safari windows. The newer one to the right can be closed; tap on the other one to bring up your tabs. I’ve had to do this several times now and it works fine. I think it happens when I trigger the creation of a new window rather than a new tab. Apple engineering may want to fine tune the usability of this, perhaps by adding a widget in the tab/address bar that will list the active windows.

This happened to me, and it turned out my tabs where safe and sound in another window.

Since iOS13, you can have multiple windows of the same app (it's like if you had more than one Safari app). Just double tap home to display all the open windows and look for another Safari window, it should have all your tabs.

I made a copy of the advise just in case

”

Scott Rose

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iCloud

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Nov 8, 2019 7:58 PM in response to eburck102

Yep, this is one of the most annoying “features” (cough!) of iPadOS 13. Tabs continuously get lost, because Safari keeps moving tabs into their own separate windows. It’s absolutely ridiculous and annoying,

A quick fix for this is:

1. Go into Safari
2. Press and hold down on the double-square icon in the upper righthand corner.
3. Choose “Merge All Windows”.

“

Hello eburck102,

Welcome to Apple Support Communities! I understand you lost your Safari tabs after updating your iPad. I'm happy to assist you in any way possible. While there is no way to restore those tabs, you can view your history of sites you've visited. This will give you an idea of what tabs you may have had open.

Start by opening Safari, tap on the "book" icon at the bottom of the screen. Next tap the "clock" icon at the top of the screen. This will be your "History" tab.

Best Regards.

I understand your pain, unfortunately there's currently no fix.

the keyword here is the "slide-over" feature.

I had this very issue as soon as I updated to the iPadOS 13, I searched all over online and chatted with an Apple support. There is no way to recover the lost open tabs. It seems like just poor user experience in the way "slide-over" was designed.

I have since then lost three more times all of my open tabs to this very design flaw, since how easily a floating Safari "slide-over" can be accidentally triggered by a slightly longer press in hyperlinks.

Here's two way I found can help reduce the chance of accidental loss:

1 - periodically save/bookmark all open tabs.

or

2 - disable / turn-off multitasking in Setting > General > Multitasking & Dock

Best of luck!

OK so while your browser is open bring up the task bar tap the Browser icon it will show you all your open Safari windows on top on the right hand side you have re-open all closed windows I’ve had the same problems as you I tapped re-open close windows and found 10 different windows amongst them my original window with all my tabs

You can also tap & hold on the Safari icon in the dock, and choose “Show All Windows”. Then you’ll see all of your missing tabs, spread out across multiple different windows.

Well, as research is clearly an important task for you - and you seemingly associate a single “project” with an open window (instance) of Safari - try out this simple workflow...

Save Session

When you are taking a break from your session, you can easily save your all the open tabs for this session in a single step. To do so, touch-and-hold the book icon to the left of the address bar, and from the menu that appears choose the second option - Add Bookmarks for n Tabs (where n = the number of open tabs in this Safari window/instance); a New Folder dialogue will appear - give it a suitable name - and Save.

Close your window if you wish - or just treat this as saving where you are so far. Saving the state of the window saves all your open tabs.

Restore Session

To restore a saved session, with a Safari window open (any window will do), open a new window; a page will appear with all your saved Favourites shown as individual icons. You will notice that your page of favourites includes one or more grouped sets of thumbnail icons (i.e., folders), one or more of which will have the folder name that you chose in the step above.

Touch-and-hold the folder icon that corresponds with the session that you wish to restore - the folder will expand and show an actions menu; choose the second option Open in New Tabs.

Now, all the tabs (and associated tab histories) will open in the new Safari Window - just as they were when you saved them. The new Safari window, with restored tabs, can be manipulated just like any other Safari window within iPadOS.

You can have as many saved sessions/folders as you like - all with unique names. So you could, for example, save your research project at various stages or times - ready for immediate recall at will. This save/restore process is very powerful - and is completely independent of the other mechanisms within Safari to restore closed windows or individual tabs. The saved sessions will persist and be synchronised with iCloud, like any other saved Favourite, until such time as you delete them.

I use this simple mechanism all the time - to manage individual (open) browsing sessions between, work, research and domestic - easily switching between them as needed. This process also protects you from the frustrations of an accidentally closed Safari window (or multiple windows).

I hope you find these tips helpful.

You may find this article helpful - it contains a lot of information that specifically addresses the issues that you have experienced.

https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-250002077

I hope it proves to be useful.

I just had this problem and accidentally stumbled across the solution, hold down on the safari icon and select open all windows. Then in the top corner you can select the option to restore all tabs. I was having a heart attack until I got them back, almost lost like four years worth of tabs

I don't know if it'll help but here's what I've got.

I had Mojave on my MacBook and iOS 12 on my iPad and everything was synchronising well until desktop Safari update which as I've learned needed iOS 13 on mobiles to synchronise again. So I did upgrade the iPad to iPadOS 13.3 and additionally restored to factory settings which has set a new (default one) name for the device. I forgot to save my tabs of course so I thought there were gone forever. Then I've upgraded my MacBook to Catalina and checked that synchronisation is working again.

To my surprise opening the "tab overview" view on my iPad Safari today (few days after all the upgrades took place) I saw at the bottom list of all my tabs last seen on my iPad iOS 12 system (well they actually could be present after upgrade to iPadOS 13.3 but I didn't check that and did the factory reset right after the upgrade). What is curious they are listed under my iPad's old name.

Double click on your Home button (see david.menefee’s post in this thread). All your prior open Safari tabs (and other recent activities) will appear as separate small images in a grid. Swipe to see all of them. Make sure to open a prior tab in which you can see the multiple tabs along the top. Click that page image to open it, and all the tabs that were open at the time will be there. Problem solved.

Thanks to david.menefee.

I was gust on the phone with Apple because my Notifications weren’t working. He said to install the latest update - because it “resolves bugs and fixes.” Sloppy work from Apple for not catching this -and not knowing how to solve it. There is a formal Apple reply to this question, saying “While you cannot restore open tabs,” and suggesting to go to history. People doing research with many open tabs will have to go through each individually. That’s not a solution for losing 200 tabs, and Apple should not offer such a 1990s level solution.

Did you read the linked article? I believe you’ll find many helpful answers there!

https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-250002077

I was able to get mine back. If you type in a site that you had up in your lost tabs, there will be a header that says “SWITCH TO TAB”

click on the website under that heading.

I was able to bring up everything that I had before.

I hope it works for you.