icloud tabs are not syncing in big sur

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.

As everyone else has stated, ever since updating to Big Sur, I have been unable to access iCloud tabs from one device on another device. A lot of people seem to be having this issue, not sure why apple hasn’t fixed this yet

So, some good news. I just heard back from the Apple support tech who I have been working with. He informed me that Apple engineering is aware of this issue, and they are working on a fix. No ETA was provided, but I'm glad that it at least reached their desks.

I have the same issue. Today, my Macbook's Safari showed the tabs for my other devices for a few seconds... before once again, going blank and only showing the tabs open on the laptop. Very frustrating.

Same problem here. I have a case open with Apple about it, and I worked with a support tech yesterday. iCloud Bookmarks sync is working fine, but iCloud tabs is badly broken. There's also this forum on MacRumors:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/icloud-tabs-not-syncing.2266397/

I suggest that everyone ping Apple Support on Twitter with this issue and raise this with them. They really need to go to the iCloud engineering team to get this sorted. I prefer to use Safari on my Apple devices, but it's troubling that they can't seem to keep this feature working.

Same here. I tried everything. Turning off syncing, log out, log it. Nothing helps. I have a problem with syncing across all devices: Mac, iPad, iPhone. I was wandering if the issue is connected with Big Sur update but seeing it this thread, I’m sure.

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.

For me, the syncing is intermittent. Sometimes, the tabs in iPhone and Ipad appears in my iMac and sometimes, it just empty. However, like just now, there is sync from tabs in iMac to my Ipad but not iPhone. This is so frustrating.

alonewitheverybody wrote:

For me, the syncing is intermittent. Sometimes, the tabs in iPhone and Ipad appears in my iMac and sometimes, it just empty. However, like just now, there is sync from tabs in iMac to my Ipad but not iPhone. This is so frustrating.

This is exactly the behavior I'm experiencing as well. After a few hours, all of my devices will be in sync. Once I start closing tabs on any of my devices, things start getting funky and randomly disappear.

For now, I'm switching over to Firefox. It works on all platforms (I use macOS, iOS, iPadOS, and Windows 10 every day), the cloud services always work, there are more extensions and themes available, and if you go into about:config, there are tons of other customization options. I know that it doesn't perform as well in benchmarks as Safari or Chrome or Edge, but in actual use, you really cannot see any of this. They've also made great strides in battery life since v70 (https://mozillagfx.wordpress.com/2019/10/22/dramatically-reduced-power-usage-in-firefox-70-on-macos-with-core-animation/).

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?!

FWIW, this has been a problem for me the past few weeks. The solution I just tried was disabling Safari sync in iCloud, waiting a few seconds, and then re-enabling it.

Didn't even need to restart Safari (surprisingly...)

Why it's flaky, I don't know. I'm running 11.1 beta...

Hope this helps!

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.

Thanks, that saves me having to report it, which can be time-consuming.

Here's a workaround for some people: if iClouds tabs show on your phone, open it on your phone, then air drop it to your Mac. Not as convenient, but can get you out of a jam.

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.

Another one of the annoying bugs that come with an update. Likely not a popular enough feature to have been noticed in the testing.

In my case the issue is not that big of a deal since I moved to Chrome as my main browser a while ago and the fixes on there seem to come much faster.