I have the same problem and it becomes a nightmare now. All my favorites are messed up and the more I move them, the more it becomes totally unusable especially on my Mac when I access my favorites with keyboard shortcuts.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
iOS 15.4 Safari Bookmark/Favorities position sync issue
- Thread starter idark77
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
It makes one question the point of Apple's status board if this doesn't at least get a yellow light.
I think that has more to do with whether the server is up or down, not whether the feature is buggy -- and it has always been buggy for many years to various degrees. Since it is doing very well messing up our bookmarks and tabs, I think the server is up.
I agree that the Safari iCloud stuff has always been a bit buggy, but it's definitely taken a dive for a lot of people in the last few weeks.
In the type of language you see on that kind of status board, it might say something like "Reliability of Bookmarks & Reading List syncing is currently degraded".
In the type of language you see on that kind of status board, it might say something like "Reliability of Bookmarks & Reading List syncing is currently degraded".
Last edited:
I had this issue. In my case, things seemed to sync fine between my iPad and iPhone. It was only when my Mac was on and using Safari that things would get messed up across my devices.
I ended up disabling Safari syncing for all my devices, deleted the Bookmarks.plist file from my Mac, and then turned Safari syncing back on only for my Mac. I rearranged things to look good, and then turned syncing back on my iPhone and iPad. Things have been working fine since then. I don't have that many bookmarks compared some others, so your YMMV. (Be sure to export your bookmarks first, or you can recover them from iCloud.com if you accidentally lose them.)
Based on my personal experience, I feel like it was my Mac's Safari bookmarks that was borked, and ultimately pushing a corrupted version around in the cloud whenever Safari was being used on my Mac. If you have a Mac, does the issue still persist on your other devices if your Mac is turned off? Is there anyone that has the bookmark syncing/order issue that doesn't have a Mac?
I ended up disabling Safari syncing for all my devices, deleted the Bookmarks.plist file from my Mac, and then turned Safari syncing back on only for my Mac. I rearranged things to look good, and then turned syncing back on my iPhone and iPad. Things have been working fine since then. I don't have that many bookmarks compared some others, so your YMMV. (Be sure to export your bookmarks first, or you can recover them from iCloud.com if you accidentally lose them.)
Based on my personal experience, I feel like it was my Mac's Safari bookmarks that was borked, and ultimately pushing a corrupted version around in the cloud whenever Safari was being used on my Mac. If you have a Mac, does the issue still persist on your other devices if your Mac is turned off? Is there anyone that has the bookmark syncing/order issue that doesn't have a Mac?
I have tried this and it didn't work for me. But from what I have seen online it does work for some people so it's worth a try.
I just re-arranged my bookmarks on my iPhone and it synced to my iPad and Mac perfectly. Not sure if it fixed itself or Apple did something server side..
Thanks for the tip. I tried what you suggested and it works so far. Took me a while to setup everything. My setup includes a MacBook, a windows pc running the iCloud bookmarks extension for chrome and an iPhone. All bookmarks stay in order now no matter what I do and bookmarks are synced across all 3 devices.
Issue seems to be back for me. Bookmarks dont sync between iPhone and mac. They do sync between computers.
Is not syncing and not syncing in same order a same issue? I did what iStorm said and it worked for me. I never had not syncing issue, my issue was messed up order of bookmarks.
So I did what iStorm suggested and everything was working fine for about an hour. Now anything I bookmark on my iPhone does not sync to my MacBook and vice versa. When I do save a bookmark on my MacBook it saves on the MacBook only but stays in order. When I save a bookmark on my iPhone it doesn't even save, I have to close the safari app and open it again to save on the iPhone only. The only way I can get bookmarks to sync across iOS and macOS is to disable safari syncing in the iCloud settings and then reenable it on my iPhone. Im glad at least my bookmarks stay in order now. Hopefully this gets fixed in the next update.
Ya just got the Mac Studio and set it up.
Bookmarks I added prior to about month ago are there and everything since then is missing.
iPad and iPhone on 15.4.1 are syncing.
iCloud tabs, history and bookmarks are not syncing from devices to Mac 12.3.1
Bookmarks I added prior to about month ago are there and everything since then is missing.
iPad and iPhone on 15.4.1 are syncing.
iCloud tabs, history and bookmarks are not syncing from devices to Mac 12.3.1
My new experience …
1. Arranged my 4035 bookmarks as I wanted, on my main Mac.
2. On two other Macs and three mobile devices I turned off Safari iCloud synch, and deleted bookmarks on devices.
3. Went back to main Mac and found ALL bookmarks had been deleted! WTF!? Why should all bookmarks on all devices be deleted just because they were deleted on other devices? It is nonsense, and demonstrates that something is very wrong on the Apple servers.
4. Panicked! Turned off all the other devices.
5. Found out that you can sign in to iCloud and retrieve deleted bookmarks. I did it, but it took ten attempts before it actually worked. That is how I know I have 4035 bookmarks …
6. As soon as they were retrieved, and downloaded to main Mac, I exported all bookmarks as an html file (something I will do on a weekly basis from now on).
7. Slowly turned on other devices and enabled safari synch.
8. Carefully watched and assessed the situation.
9. Added a new bookmark on one of the mobile devices. It was added to the bottom, and not the top, and was then added to other devices in the right place!
I continue to observe keenly, and hope some kind of sanity has been restored. But knowing how screwed up the Apple server is, I am not optimistic.
1. Arranged my 4035 bookmarks as I wanted, on my main Mac.
2. On two other Macs and three mobile devices I turned off Safari iCloud synch, and deleted bookmarks on devices.
3. Went back to main Mac and found ALL bookmarks had been deleted! WTF!? Why should all bookmarks on all devices be deleted just because they were deleted on other devices? It is nonsense, and demonstrates that something is very wrong on the Apple servers.
4. Panicked! Turned off all the other devices.
5. Found out that you can sign in to iCloud and retrieve deleted bookmarks. I did it, but it took ten attempts before it actually worked. That is how I know I have 4035 bookmarks …
6. As soon as they were retrieved, and downloaded to main Mac, I exported all bookmarks as an html file (something I will do on a weekly basis from now on).
7. Slowly turned on other devices and enabled safari synch.
8. Carefully watched and assessed the situation.
9. Added a new bookmark on one of the mobile devices. It was added to the bottom, and not the top, and was then added to other devices in the right place!
I continue to observe keenly, and hope some kind of sanity has been restored. But knowing how screwed up the Apple server is, I am not optimistic.
ok finally just saw this, thought it was just me, positions in bookmarks not same play on Mac, iPad and iPhone lol I can't believe this is even a issue for apple
After I did what iStorm said it worked for him my bookmarks started to sync and everything was fine.
Next day I noticed that iCloud tabs weren’t syncing at all, not even tab groups. I didn’t have time to deal with that so I just ignored it. Next day I noticed that there were no bookmarks anymore on my iPhone, it was all empty.
Turning off Safari iCloud sync on Mac didn’t do much but repeating that on iPhone returned all bookmarks and started to sync iCloud tabs.
More then a week has passed since then and everything works just fine.
Next day I noticed that iCloud tabs weren’t syncing at all, not even tab groups. I didn’t have time to deal with that so I just ignored it. Next day I noticed that there were no bookmarks anymore on my iPhone, it was all empty.
Turning off Safari iCloud sync on Mac didn’t do much but repeating that on iPhone returned all bookmarks and started to sync iCloud tabs.
More then a week has passed since then and everything works just fine.
Anyone try iOS 15.5 beta 4 to see if this has been fixed or if this is just going to be broken until iOS 16 releases?
I did read that 15.5 fixes the missing frequently visited website list on iPhone Safari if that's any consolation.
I did read that 15.5 fixes the missing frequently visited website list on iPhone Safari if that's any consolation.
I only installed 15.5 on one device so its impossible to know if it will sync correctly between devices. On the beta device the bookmarks seems to be unaffected but when I add a new bookmark on another device its not added on the beta device so we'll see when the public release comes out.
Just an update, I deactivate Safari on iCloud on each individual devices, chose the option to not conserves any local data, then re-enable it and so far it fixed the problem for me. I can move bookmarks on one device and it sync accordingly on all my other devices.
Finger crossed that it stay that way.
Finger crossed that it stay that way.
Be careful doing this. It is what I did, and the result was the deleting of all bookmarks everywhere - even online. I had to use the iCloud bookmarks retrieval system to get them back.
If you do opt for this method, be sure to export all of your bookmarks to your computer before you start. It’s a crap shoot- maybe you will get lucky, or maybe ALL bookmarks EVERYWHERE will be deleted. The one device I didn’t delete them from was nonetheless wiped clean, as were iCloud bookmarks.