iCloud tabs not syncing/working

I'm having a similar problem. The tabs *are* syncing correctly from my MacBook Pro (16") OS 11.4 to my iPhone 11Pro iOS 14.6. My iPhone tabs are syncing correctly to my Mac and to my iPad Pro (11", 2021, iPadOS 14.6). My iPad tabs are syncing correctly to both of the other devices.

What's really odd is that, not only are my Mac tabs not syncing to my iPad, but I have *old* tabs showing where the new ones should be, some dating back 8 months. On top of that, I can't get rid of them. I swipe, click the red Close button, the tab disappears for about 2 seconds, and then it magically reappears. The list has about 30 of these tabs in it and never changes.

I called tech support and spoke to a Senior Advisor, who has referred the issue to the engineers. Holding my breath now.

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.

coming up on 2/3 - 3/4 of a year now with this not working. I finally broke down and called Apple a couple months ago. there was lots of activity initially with the tech calling me back with new questions from the engineers. Then....silence. Nothing now for weeks and weeks. Making matters worse, the tech didn't give me any way to follow up. No reference or case number to use if I were to call back. So life goes on without a feature I used to use multiple times every day. Of course, this isn't the biggest problem facing the world. But it sure is annoying that Apple can't fix this quickly, or it seems at all!

It used to just work. Now, it just doesn't. Guess Apple is turning into Microsoft.

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.

I hear your frustration.

Just a few days ago, I upgraded from macOS Catalina to macOS Big Sur. I was hoping (and also not expecting) that this would somehow resolve my iCloud tabs issue. My issue is that on my Mac laptop, very old iCloud tabs for my iPhone will show up and can't be deleted. The issue is only on my Mac laptop. This same issue doesn't show up on my iPad.

Well, the upgrade went smoothly but the problem on my Mac still remains: old iCloud tabs for my iPhone cannot be deleted; they magically re-appear each time.

It seems to me that somehow locally on my drive, there's some old corrupted preferences file that Safari keeps referring to? Maybe? I have already deleted preferences, cookies, history, etc. in ways that I know how and the issue keeps re-appearing.

So I seem to have found a solution, though time will tell.

For the "offending" device (e.g., in my case, it is on the Mac Safari that is showing old iCloud tabs for the iPhone), I logged off iCloud on the iPhone, meaning I signed out of iCloud from the iPhone. Yes, I know, even though it doesn't seem to be the iPhone that is causing the "offence". Then I re-signed in to iCloud on my iPhone. So far, the iCloud tabs are synced properly.

I guess what this may have done is totally delete all iPhone tabs from iCloud and maybe all local cached copies too. Then, by re-signing in to iCloud from the iPhone, iCloud began with a new set of iPhone cached iCloud tabs. At least, that seems like a logical explanation.

I have an update. What I noted above didn't fully work for me.

After I logged off the iPhone from iCloud, then re-logged on, the problem no longer was experienced on the Mac. But, the problem appeared on the iPad side! And I also noticed that instead of just having old iPhone iCloud tabs show up on the iPad, it was showing one old Mac iCloud tab too!

What I ended up doing was first to make sure on Safari, all my local windows are closed and deleted all reading lists and history. Then, I logged off iCloud from all my devices: iPad , iPhone, and Mac. I also made sure that when asked, I opted NOT to keep copies of any data, trusting that it would be in the cloud.

Then I waited a few minutes.

Then, I first relogged on to iCloud on my phone also having to re-add back all my Credit/Debit and ID cards. Then, I logged the iPad to iCloud and once that was done, went to the Mac to also do the same. All of this took considerable amount of time because my setup isn't as simple as just logging on to iCloud and be done with it. There are certain things I make sure don't sync, and I use a different AppleID for media, books, and podcasts so those have to be set up differently.

But for now, that seems to work. Basically what I was trying to do was from the iCloud end, ask it to basically remove all Safari information it had except the bookmarks. I wish there is an easier and less "destructive" way to do all of this. Having to log off of iCloud is a big pain for me.

Me too. I randomly decided to check my phone a couple days ago and just like that, iCloud tabs are back. No announcement, no follow up from Apple support. Seem to be functioning fine now on all devices.

Hi, I came here because I'm having the same problem, on iPadOS and iOS 14.7 - multiple ghost tabs from my iPhone 12 Pro that when deleted, come right back, even though the iPhone itself has no tabs open. So, the problem seems to be ongoing. Glad it's not just me.

Misery loves company, right? ;) I'm still having the problem, but mine are ghost tabs on my iPad from my Mac; iPhone is working fine. The issue has been escalated to the engineers, but it's been a few weeks now with no further word.

I spoke with Apple tech support today. They acknowledged the issue and said it should be fixed with the next IOS and Mac OS  updates.

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

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

See the article and thread https://support.apple.com/en-in/HT203519

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/251928886

For those who haven’t make sure you report it to Apple - https://www.apple.com/feedback/

Same issue here across the following devices:

• MBA 13
• iPhone 11 Pro
• iPhone 8
• iPad

iCloud tabs not working