Safari bookmarks will not sync to iPhone

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Level 1

87 points

Safari bookmarks will not sync to iPhone

I have just under 100 Safari bookmarks on my Mac. They are set to sync via iCloud. My iPhone (which has no bookmarks in Safari) is also set to sync Safari bookmarks with iCloud.

Problem: When I turn on Safari syncing in iCloud, none of the bookmarks from my Mac show up on my phone.

Troubleshooting steps...

- Log out and then log in to iCloud on both devices

- Toggle Safari syncing on iCloud on both devices

- I select "Merge" when when logging in to iCloud on my iPhone.

- I make sure both devices have good internet connection (speeds range from 15-150mbps download to 5-75mbps) and a few days to sync between logging out/in (tested on 3 different wifi networks for 8+ hours a day for 3+ weeks)

I saw lots of threads about this from around the time of the release of iOS 6 (2012), but I have not seen any threads that mention this issue occurring between OS X 10.11 and iOS 9 (2015). So I have not found any threads with solutions to my issue.

Any advice would be appreciated.

iPhone 5s, iOS 9

Posted on Dec 26, 2015 5:18 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

xser Author

Level 1

87 points

Mar 29, 2016 10:20 AM in response to xser

After 4 weeks of this, I fixed this by doing the following:

- Back up iPhone (to Macbook)

- Restore iPhone and set up as new (i.e., do not restore from backup)

- (Log in to iCloud when prompted during setup)

- (Once using phone): Do an iCloud backup. (Settings > iCloud > Backup > Back Up Now)

- Go to Settings > iCloud and turn off Safari (Choose "Delete..." when prompted)

- (Wait until delete is complete)

- (Wait until backup is complete)

- Turn off iPhone

- Turn on iPhone

- Go to Settings > iCloud and turn on Safari (Choose "Merge" when prompted)

My bookmarks showed up in seconds (I have about 100 bookmarks and I am on wifi with about 15mbps speeds.)

What's Weird: I've tried this multiple times over 4 weeks (and the folks at the Genius Bar tried all of this as well) and this is the first time it worked.

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Answer 2

PhilWh

Level 1

18 points

Mar 18, 2016 11:39 AM in response to xser

I did these steps and that still didn't work. 😠 I've been at this for about 5 hours now and have tried about everything. This just happened yesterday out of the blue. All of my Bookmarks as well as Reading List are gone and I can't seem to get them to sync again with what's on my MacBook. I did the same troubleshooting steps you did. I guess I can just follow this post in hopes someone has another solution but I found the same thing that you did; that all the other posts are from around 2012 so those didn't really help.

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Answer 3

xser Author

Level 1

87 points

Mar 18, 2016 12:06 PM in response to PhilWh

Sorry to hear that, PhilWh. These steps didn't work me the first few times either — which might indicate that the solution is not about the steps but something else. I hope someone comes up with a more robust solution for you (and others).

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Answer 4

PhilWh

Level 1

18 points

Mar 29, 2016 10:19 AM in response to xser

After my last post I had actually noticed that my iPhone and iPad WERE in sync but would not sync with my Macbook, which I still can't explain. I called Apple the other day (about an hour long phone call) and eventually talked to a Senior analyst who also couldn't figure out how to fix the issue and said he would transfer this to Engineering.

However, I just now watched all my bookmarks syncing on my iPad, iPhone and Macbook. Maybe this got fixed with 9.3, although at first it still didn't sync...I upgraded last week in hopes that would fix this issue and it didn't seem to. I just now had my Mac, iPad and iPhone all turned on, all with Safari loaded and all of a sudden all of the bookmarks just synced. I did nothing out of just having all of the devices turned on (which I haven't done yet). I've been checking this issue every day and it has not been working until just now.

I continued testing this further (poking at fate) with adding and deleting bookmarks and it seems to continue to sync now. So, other than updating to 9.3, it seems to have corrected itself.

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