I have the same problem, except with 2015MBP13 on Monterey 12.5 / Safari 15.6. It has been syncing to my iphone on iOS 15.6.
I hadn't applied updates to the Mac for a while, so went from 12.1 to 12.5. com.apple.safari.history started going bananas after I installed 12.5. Perhaps not a properly crafted piece of software ...
Disabling iCloud sync has stopped the problem, and cooled down my sweating thighs.
MacBook Pro 13″, macOS 12.5
1 - Restart in Safe Mode. This will perform a Disk Repair, clear cache files and only load Apple Software, extensions and fonts. The boot up will be slow and can take some time - Normal.
2 - Does the issue present in this mode ?
3 - Sometimes a Safe Boot followed by a Normal Boot will just put things right.
4 - If not - there could be something in the main User Account playing up. To further isolate this - Set up users, guests, and groups on Mac. Then log out of the Main User account and log into the dummy account and test again if the issue persists.
5 - If the issue is present in the dummy account - then, this appears to be a System Wide issue on the computer.
6 - If after performing each of the above steps in the order that have been presents and still have issues - please advise for possible further assistance.
1 - Restart in Safe Mode. This will perform a Disk Repair, clear cache files and only load Apple Software, extensions and fonts. The boot up will be slow and can take some time - Normal.
2 - Does the issue present in this mode ?
3 - Sometimes a Safe Boot followed by a Normal Boot will just put things right.
4 - If not - there could be something in the main User Account playing up. To further isolate this - Set up users, guests, and groups on Mac. Then log out of the Main User account and log into the dummy account and test again if the issue persists.
5 - If the issue is present in the dummy account - then, this appears to be a System Wide issue on the computer.
6 - If after performing each of the above steps in the order that have been presents and still have issues - please advise for possible further assistance.
Lessen learned ?
Moving from Monterey 12.1 ( 21C52 ) Released Dec 13, 2021 ) and directly to Monterey 12.5 ( 21G72 ) Released July 20, 2022 is a major step up .
It may required some time for the Syncing process of Safari on the computer to catch up with all the under the hood changes.
I transferred the MBPro to a new MBAirM2 two weeks ago. Until yesterday, there was no sign of the problem. Now Safari.History is again taking >75% while Safari is running.
The easiest thing is to turn of iCloud sync for Safari onthe MBAir. It's not really that important to have it on all the time. If I need a sync, I can flip it on and off.
I would suggest that this is a bug.
No further action needed
Good work there and if this works for this computer, even better.
Though the assertion " I would suggest that this is a bug. " maybe not totally founded.
If the new computer is going to be the Apple Silicon M1 / M2 Equipped Computer - would suggest Only Migrating the User Account and nothing more.
Some have had success and others have been left with a mess when Migrating everything.
1 - Apple Silicon with Monterey macOS 12 Only Support everything 64 bit and there is no workaround.
2 - Issues that may exist on the older computer will be migrated to the New Computer. This would badly pollute the new Original and Pristine installation of the new OS.
And point 2 above maybe that was the cause of this issue and possible other issue that may crop-up in time
Indeed, but that’s now more than two weeks ago, and, as of ten minutes before my first post it was still happening, so I would suggest a bug rather than just catching up.
Problem recurs in Monterey 12.5
