Safari frequently visited sites missing and open tabs not syncing

Question

Safari frequently visited sites missing and open tabs not syncing

I have a Mac, iPad, and iPhone and I have two issues with Safari 15 across my devices

On my iPad, the frequently visited sites disappeared sometime after the iOS 15 upgrade. Settings show they are supposed to be visible and toggling Frequently Visited off and back on makes no difference. My iPhone doesn't have this issue.

Also on my iPad and iPhone, they show tabs supposedly open on my Mac that haven't been open in months. If I close the tabs from the iPad or iPhone, they just re-appear the next time I use it so I have no way to get rid of them. This issue is obviously on the Mac end, it's not syncing to iCloud correctly. I have tried turning Safari syncing to iCloud off and back on but there's no change.

MacBook Pro 13″, macOS 11.6

Posted on Oct 5, 2021 6:51 AM

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Answer 1

dembow

Level 1

53 points

May 22, 2022 12:24 PM in response to zsolt147

Yes! This is finally fixed in 15.5. Thank you Apple.

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Answer 2

slaaice

Level 1

8 points

Feb 2, 2022 5:02 PM in response to Scotts_Tots

Bug's still there.

No frequently visited sites.

Old "zombie" tab from Mac iCloud Tabs keeps showing on iPhone. Clearing data, deleting Safari folder, logging out, closing this tab multiple times doesn't help. Renaming devices doesn't help. Safe mode didn't help.

Mac's "iCloud tabs" also is out of sync. Checkmark on toolbar "show iCloud tabs" often disappears and reappears only after rebooting.

The problems only started with iOS 15.

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Answer 3

Mar 3, 2022 6:53 AM in response to Michael Loader

Same issue. As a workaround, I added my most used sites to my Reading List, and moved the Reading List to the top of the new tab page. That way when I click in the address bar I can at least access those sites quickly.

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Answer 4

Mar 14, 2022 11:38 AM in response to ArtemisVII

I added my frequently visited sites under Favourites bookmark. This is a workaround you people can use

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Answer 5

myeaisha

Level 1

0 points

Apr 13, 2022 9:26 AM in response to Michael Loader

Go open a new tab click the plus sign bottom left scroll down to edit and you should see a list of what you want to be viewed when opening a new browser.

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Answer 6

rkristof

Level 1

12 points

May 16, 2022 11:23 AM in response to Michael Loader

in 15.5 fixed finally!

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Answer 7

Oct 18, 2021 7:59 PM in response to heshie1

I found another iCloud sync issue and I hoped that fixing it would fix this issue, too, but no such luck. I discovered that my Mac wasn't syncing some files to iCloud - the downloads directory was out of sync. I had to turn iCloud sync off on my Mac and then back on (and I backed everything up first to be safe). It appears to have fixed that problem but it had no impact on the Safari setting sync issues. However, based on the dates of the files that hadn't synced I believe both problems started at the same time.

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Answer 8

Nov 2, 2021 2:03 PM in response to Reason2Smile

No. The engineers thought they had it fixed but it's still broken. I got a new Mac yesterday and we wanted to wait and see what happened and it has the same problem as the old Mac, so either corrupted data was transferred or it's corrupted in iCloud. The ticket is still open.

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Answer 9

Mar 20, 2022 8:02 AM in response to Reymark

Same here, but I’m staying on 15.3.1 for the time being in case something more nasty turns up in 15.4 (there’s nearly always some new fail introduced at each Apple OS Update, the last few years).

i found my solution. I now use Firefox on all my gear, and now my Frequently visited Pages work. Firefox has always worked - for years and years - and it also syncs with my PC/Windows machines and my Android 12 smartphone too. What’s there not to like?

If Apple cannot even get their own hardware and their own soft/firmware to play nice, one has to wonder, if things will become worse and worse and… worse in the future; just as in recent Apple history through the last few years.

And as one migrates from not-really-working-that-well Apple app’s, the Apple locking factor becomes less and less important. I’m not even using iCloud anymore (I have a far better and far more reliably working “iClout” setup working now; far less hazzle since just before Covid turned up. Apples antics are becoming somewhat problematic ;-)

Regards

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