Old iPhone iCloud tabs show up in Mac Safari

iCloud tabs are just broken. Tabs persist and don't update, you can't delete them. You delete them and they come back. You can log out and back in, remove Safari from iCloud and re-add it, reboot, re-install, safe mode, it doesn't matter it all just stops working again, or continues not to work.

Some devices can see tabs from some other devices but not visa versa, it's a complete mess, and has been for well over a year, through several updates, with no action to fix it.

Same issue here. I’ve tried turning iCloud off for safari on all devices, clearing history. When I turn safari back on in iCloud the old tabs show up which are not open on the iPhone at all.

I have a similar issue: I have an iMac, iPhone X and iPad Air 2.

Last week, after I initialised the iPad, suddenly several old iCloud Panels (from the iMac) started to appear on my iPhone and iPad, I am able to delete them on iPhone and iPad only with Safari closed on iMac but, as soon as I open Safari again, the panels also reappear.

I initialised also the iMac and the problem seemed solved but today I have a new persistent iCloud panel (only on the iPad, the iPhone is OK) of a website I opened this morning on the iMac.

Again, I can delete it but when I open Safari on the iMac it reappears almost immediately.

I have the same issue and have yet to find a fix: My iPad recognizes 20+ old tabs on my iPhone around last November (I can tell because it includes fall recipes and a Black Friday sale).

I’ve tried closing and turning off Safari from iCloud sync on both devices, then I removed all the tabs manually from my “iPhone” through my iPad’s safari, then re-synced my devices. As soon as I reopen Safari on my iPhone, they pop back up again. Quite literally: I can have Safari open on both devices, swipe to close a tab on my iPad’s Safari, and it immediately reopens a moment later.

I have an old tab from mac book pro appearing my iPhone. Have tried everything mentioned above but the tab keeps reappearing. I’m guessing it’s something to do with the software rather than iCloud, whether that be macOS or iOS I don’t know.

I gave up trying to fix it. I suspect logging out of iCloud may resolve it for the tabs reported from my iPhone (which are all from late-2020). However, I have a lot of credit cards, and in the past Amex has thrown up a security flag when I've tried to add them back, so I want to avoid that. I know I'll probably upgrade my iPhone next year, and this issue will be resolved. (I also had this problem with tabs from my old iPad, but I upgraded it, and they went away for that device.)

I've been working on this for a month with Apple. For me it's old iPad tabs that appear on my desktop. We've tried everything I've read here including bumping it up to the engineers who reset Safari in iCloud. Still no resolution.

This issue (somewhat) fixed itself recently.

I had 50+ old tabs from late 2020 that I could not remove. I gave up a while back trying to fix it. I recently tried closing them again, and they stayed closed!…mostly. So I have successfully closed the tabs from 2020, but there are now six recent tabs that I cannot get rid of, so…progress?

Thank you!! This solved my issue too.

Sadly, this fix was just temporary. All the iCloud tabs came back eventually. :(

This seems to have worked for me.

life saver