icloud tabs are not syncing in big sur

i realized yesterday, that the tabs from my macbook are not syncing to my iphone and ipad.


now i also saw that my "mobile" tabs are not on the mac anymore.


i have tried the following:


- restart of Safari on all affected devices

- restart of all affected devices

- disabling iCloud sync for Safari on all devices.

MacBook Pro 13″, 11.0

Posted on Nov 19, 2020 1:17 PM

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56 replies

Nov 19, 2020 2:04 PM in response to m_arx

Im now experiencing exactly the same problem - my iPad & iPhone tabs were originally showing on big sur safari and when I clicked to close one of the ones showing as open on my iPhone the whole lot disappeared from big sur safari


Tabs are now not sync'ing across my iPhone and iPad now either. On all three devices only the tabs open in those instances of Safari are there, and none of the usual lists below showing open on the other devices.


As with the original poster I've tried all the advice given online for this issue i.e. toggling safari sync on and off under iCloud settings on all three devices, force quitting all device instances of safari & signing in and out of iCloud on all devices. All to no avail.


Nov 28, 2020 7:05 AM in response to totalfreedon

Same here, still mostly broken. They come back after hours, but if I close a tab on my iPhone, all of the synced tabs will disappear from my Macs. It's definitely broken on their side, and I can't believe it's taking this long for them to see/resolve this. This clearly isn't a priority for them. It's frustrating for those of us who WANT to use Safari on our Macs, iOS, and iPadOS devices.


Apple Support called me back yesterday, and we went through some more verification of what's broken. He said that he's going to take this back to the iCloud team, so we'll see what happens.

Dec 14, 2020 3:38 PM in response to Tsaxman

I updated my iPhone, iPad, and Macs to the latest OS updates, released today. Still not working, which I expected given that others are having problems on Macs running Catalina as well.


I did inform Apple of this, and the response was that the iCloud engineering team is still working on this. Given that this is an issue on a variety of operating system versions, I don't think a software update on the client is going to be required for any fix from Apple to take effect. Seems that this is entirely on the iCloud side.


I have to admit this is really disheartening. I strongly prefer to use Safari on my Apple devices for a variety of reasons, but the biggest are that it is simply the fastest on macOS, among the most private, the best on battery life, and the seamless synchronization between my Macs and iOS/iPadOS devices (when it works). The fact that this problem has been outstanding for over a month is very frustrating. I mean, why can't they just get this right? Mozilla can do it for Firefox without outages like this. Google can do it for Chrome. Even the history/tab syncing in the Microsoft Edge beta browsers is more reliable than this. I'm not expecting 100% uptime, but over one month is absurd for a company with resources like Apple. Ridiculous.

Nov 30, 2020 2:03 AM in response to m_arx

And here's one more with the same problem.


It started shortly before I updated to Big Sur. Annoying then, but I thought the update would fix it. Well, it hasn't. Sometimes the open tabs on my Mac and iPhone will be visible on the other device (although not necessarily reflecting their current state but some earlier version), sometimes there seems to be no syncing at all. The history itself syncs most of the time.


Just like all of you I tried the usual tricks, too – to no avail.


It's annoying as **** because it's a feature I regularly use. I also don't understand why Apple isn't treating this more seriously. The sync between all devices and their trouble free interaction are main selling points of devices and services alike. What's the point in investing in the Apple ecosystem when stuff doesn't work together?!


Dec 8, 2020 10:49 AM in response to kadeemharper

Been following this thread, and others like it on MacRumours. I know its a icloud issue, as i restored an earlier version of safari from my TimeMachine backup.

Firstly, icloud tabs appear and seem to work. When quitting safari, and going back into it, iCloud tabs are broken.

They appear some time later, on my iPad and iPhone. When deleting history - it seems if i delete from my imac, it wont delete from either my ipad r iphone.

I've reinstalled both is 14.2 on both ios devices, and still it seems to break.

On Big Sur, it will work, for a while then it breaks again.


A friend is having the same issue, but, he's running Catalina.


Definately a bug somewhere - cmon Apple, sort something out.



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icloud tabs are not syncing in big sur

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