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Missing open Safari MacBook Pro tabs on iPhone & iPad (iCloud w/ Safari enabled)

I have a MacBook Pro, iPhone, and iPad. All are running the latest non-beta OS software. I have iCloud enabled on all devices with Safari sync enabled under iCloud.


For whatever reason I can see all open Safari tabs on all my devices from my MacBook Pro, but my iPhone and iPad refuse to display my open MacBook Pro Safari tabs. Both my iPhone and iPad can see each other's open Safari tabs.


What's odd is that if I add/delete a bookmark from any of the three devices that bookmark is successfully synced across all three devices!


Any idea what might be culprit? I've tried disabling/reenabling Safari sync in iCloud on all devices.

iPhone 11 Pro

Posted on Jul 30, 2020 2:39 PM

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Posted on Aug 1, 2020 3:37 PM

Good and bad news. The issue has nothing to do with signing in and out of iCloud and I'm now able to reproduce the issue and fix at will.


To have my open Safari tabs on my MacBook Pro reappear on my iOS devices I had to close all of the open Safari tabs on the MacBook Pro and then force close Safari on the MacBook Pro. I then opened Safari on the MacBook Pro, at which point all prior tabs gone, and restored my tabs manually. The tabs then showed up on my iOS devices.


However, these steps shouldn't be neccessary. I'm guessing that there's a bug with Safari on the MacBook Pro or perhaps with Safari on iOS. I do keep a lot of tabs open on my MacBook Pro so that also could be an issue, but then again I can fix the issue for awhile and have them show on the iOS device.


I'll try to bring this to the attention of support somehow.

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Aug 1, 2020 3:37 PM in response to Psychor

Good and bad news. The issue has nothing to do with signing in and out of iCloud and I'm now able to reproduce the issue and fix at will.


To have my open Safari tabs on my MacBook Pro reappear on my iOS devices I had to close all of the open Safari tabs on the MacBook Pro and then force close Safari on the MacBook Pro. I then opened Safari on the MacBook Pro, at which point all prior tabs gone, and restored my tabs manually. The tabs then showed up on my iOS devices.


However, these steps shouldn't be neccessary. I'm guessing that there's a bug with Safari on the MacBook Pro or perhaps with Safari on iOS. I do keep a lot of tabs open on my MacBook Pro so that also could be an issue, but then again I can fix the issue for awhile and have them show on the iOS device.


I'll try to bring this to the attention of support somehow.

Jul 30, 2020 3:09 PM in response to zinacef

zinacef wrote:

On the iPhone and iPad, one would usually see those tabs listed at the bottom of Safari on those devices, and not necessarily already opened, if that makes sense.

When I go to view open tabs on my iPhone or iPad I see, at the bottom of the screen, the other iOS device listed with respective open Safari tabs. This is where the open Safari tabs from my MacBook Pro should also show up. But nothing MacBook Pro related shows up on my iOS devices. Thanks.

Jul 31, 2020 3:38 PM in response to zinacef

So I signed out and back into iCloud on my MacBook Pro and my iPad. I'm leaving my iPhone out of this for now.


No change - I still can't see the MacBook Pro listed when I click the tabs buttons and scroll to the bottom in Safari on my iPad. But on my MacBrook Pro I still see the iPad and iPhone listed and their open tabs.


WTH is going on here! 😔

Missing open Safari MacBook Pro tabs on iPhone & iPad (iCloud w/ Safari enabled)

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