iCloud tabs not syncing/working

I thought this was fixed, but the Safari Tabs on my Mac are still not closing properly. They do just fine most of the time, and then out of the blue I’ll see a ghost tab from my Mac show up in iCloud Tabs on iOS. The weird thing is, my iPhone may show that ghost tab in iCloud Tabs, but not my iPad. Or vice-versa.

In either case, trying to delete that ghost tab over iCloud causes it to reappear a moment later. The only way to make it disappear is to close Safari and switch to a different browser for a week (or two?). If you use Safari Technology Preview, that’s easy enough. Just switch back to the standard Safari. Once Safari experiences that issue, switch back to Tech Preview.

Tabs from my iPhone and iPad sync just fine, and appear with no ghost tabs on any other device.

That’s exactly the issue I’ve been dealing with. I’ve been traveling a lot lately, so I close Safari before I leave, remotely close the ghost tabs, and by the time I get home, I can safely reopen Safari without the tabs coming back. But within a few days, new ones show up, and the only way to make them go away is to close Safari for a few days, and close those tabs remotely. Switching between Safari and Tech Preview helps if you can’t go a few days without your computer, but it’s still a major irritation. It only affects Safari on the Mac, too.

I had to reset my iPhone recently, and upon restoring from backup, about 20 tabs from December of last year reopened when I launched Safari. They clearly haven’t fixed all the iCloud Tabs issues we’ve been experiencing since November.

The support staff and engineers have been giving everybody a run-around on this issue for the past half year at least. I'm sure there are internally circulating memos about this problem. And if I had to guess, the changes they made for Safari v. 14 that coincided with this feature breaking were a transition-point to the tab-group syncing feature to be introduced in macOS 12 and iOS 15. In the meantime they have been at a total loss as to how to get the under-the-hood tech to work for syncing tabs in the older way we are all familiar with.

https://www.apple.com/support/systemstatus/

not showing any issues but yet, there are plenty with iCloud tabs

Better to send feedback to Apple.

Mine would work on 4g but not on WiFi. So it solved my particular problem.

Thank you for posting this. I have the same issue running the latest version of Catalina and iOS 14.2 on an iPhone 12PM.

At the risk of distracting - because it may or may not be related - but I also keep getting told my phone can't connect to my computer without a software update. The connection seems to be allowed despite the message, but no explanation is available as to which device needs an update, and what the update would be to (Big Sur?).

Has anyone found a solution?

This is really annoying as I've tried all the known solutions, and it's preventing me to do my research, I have certain tabs open on my phone/iPad that I need to access via my Mac, but of course this is not possible. This was working fine yesterday, and today as I sat down to write, I can no longer see the iCloud tabs.

All softwares are up to date on all my devices.

Same issue, wish I had found this prior to spending over an hour of pointless chat time with apple support !!!

They failed to acknowledge it being a problem and end the chat as resolved after they went thorough all the various stuff already done.

My issue is with the new Iphone Pro Max 14.2.1, no icloud web page sync of the pages on my Macbook 10.15.7 or iPad Pro Max 14.2

It is an iCloud sync issue, my Macbook and iPhone show on my iPad, but out of date / ones no longer open > even afire clearing all data and they refreshed !!!!

The phone & iPad did appear on the MacBook but after clearing data on the iPad and phone have gone again.

Come on Apple sort it please :-)

Same here. On MacBook Pro “Big Sur” takes two clicks to activate safari sync iCloud. I think we will have to wait for a fix in future updates.

My iCloud tabs on iPhone, iPad & MacBoook Pro are there somedays and disappear the next.

When toggling on/off safari in iCloud in “Big Sur” it takes two clicks to activate, also noticed that when toggling off, you should be given an option to delete Safari data held on this device? At present I am not given this option! So bookmarks, reading list and tabs do not get deleted as they used to?

Resetting network settings made no difference to my iPhone 7, iPad mini 4 & MacBook Pro.

Sometimes iCloud tabs appear, sometimes they dont. Most of the time they are out of symc with a delay of many hours.

Maybe next update will fix it.

Same.

OS 10.15.7

iPhone & iPad on iOS 14.2

Happened recently, w/ an update.

I've tried rebooting the devices, closing safari, force-quitting safari, etc, etc, etc.

iCloud tabs turned on on all devices.

Same, same, as everyone else. Mines been non functional for almost two weeks now. My iPhone holds the majority of my “open tabs” (50+ open), and I usually pull them up later on my iPad or one of my iMacs (work or home). Until mid last week, about half of my iPhone tabs (the oldest ones) were available on my iMac, and no new tabs would show up. The iPad got zero. Now all my devices get no tab syncs.

Of course all devices are updated and I’ve tried all the recommended fixes:

iPad Pro 11”

iPhone 8

two 27” iMacs

I have this issue also on my, iCloud tabs just stopped working on all my devices:

iPhone 11 Pro Max

iPad Pro 11-inch

MacBook Pro 16

All running on the latest OS.

Tried turning iCloud tabs off/on in Setting, but it doesn't help.