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Safari "From iPhone" showing old tabs that have been closed.

russell_314

russell_314

macrumors 604
Original poster
Feb 10, 2019
6,870
10,593
USA
On my new iMac when I open a Safari tab it has a "From iPhone" part that is supposed to show currently open tabs on my iPhone. The problem is it's not showing the currently open tabs but 38 tabs that were open and closed before I even had the iMac.

Also on my iPhone Safari doesn't show the tabs open on my Mac. There is a little cloud icon next to the name of my Mac at the bottom but no tabs show.

Both iPhone and Mac are updated to the latest OS

I've unchecked iCloud on the iPhone then clicked "Delete from my iPhone". I've also turned off iCloud for Safari on the Mac. Doing either or both removes the whole "From iPhone" section but it comes back with the outdated tabs when iCloud is turned on for both.

I've cleared both history and website data on both the iPhone and Mac. I've also restarted both the iPhone and Mac. I've forced closed Safari on the Mac and swiped up on Safari on the iPhone.

The only thing I can think of is somehow the iCloud data for the iPhone is corrupt but I don't see a way to delete it. Even with iCloud sync for Safari on the Mac off when I turn on iCloud sync on the iPhone for Safari it says there is existing data and asks to Merge or Cancel. Cancel just doesn't turn on iCloud sync and Merge just merges with the corrupt data I guess. There has to be a way to delete Safari data on iCloud and I'm just overlooking it.

Maybe I'm on the wrong track with the corrupt iCloud data and it's something else?
 
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VKondakoff said:
I have similar issue: Safari on my Mac is showing a bunch of old closed tabs for my iPad. Unfortunately, I was unable to find a way to fix this.
Click to expand...

Maybe it's something that will be patched. How long have you had the issue? I just noticed it but that doesn't mean it wasn't there longer.

It's just a minor annoyance for me since Safari isn't my main browser. I use it to pay bills or banking but anything else it's Firefox. The new tab button is in the correct place and you can have proper extensions.
 
This is not about your devices and not user hardware dependent, so trying any workarounds won't help. Apparently, it's something on the server-side belonging to the Apple network that caches the old data from a particular subset of iDevices with iOS 13 and later, Catalina and later, and Safari 13 and later. I recently re-installed Mojave while troubleshooting another issue and the installer installed Safari 12. I had never upgraded from iOS 12. iCloud tabs syncing works perfectly which wasn't the case with Safari 13 where iCloud Tabs showed empty space and I decided to stop at this point: I have no intentions to update to a software that ruins things instead of improving them. I use Firefox on all of my iDevices as well and there syncing works as it should in Safari no matter what. All I have to say, there's no fix at all unless you have iOS 12 and Mojave running (as of June 14 2021).
 
Last edited:
TrenttonY said:
isnt there a little 'x' on the icloud tabs on the Mac?
Click to expand...
There is...

But it's quite annoying to close over 100 tabs all the time.

And they're coming back... Something seems to be broken. And from a privacy standpoint it does not cast a good light on apple!
 
Still having this issue in (almost) December 2021. Closing the tabs on the Mac doesn't matter; they still come back. It's the same resilient 3 tabs for me.

I think completely logging out of iCloud on the Mac, then restarting the Mac, then logging back into iCloud, might be worth trying? It seems like that might clear some caches? Idk though, I'm just guessing and haven't tried it yet.
 
Long time bug across Apple devices.

forums.macrumors.com

Safari 15 iCloud tabs still showing open when closed

Long time bug, bunch of threads on that across devices and OSes. I've been seeing that for a while. Small sampling: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/icloud-safari-tabs-not-syncing-on-new-iphone-13.2315066/...
forums.macrumors.com forums.macrumors.com

I've been seeing it for a while on my iPhone. Nuclear option would be to do a wipe, but have not tested that as that's not an important feature for me (I've turned off iCloud tabs).
 
russell_314 said:
On my new iMac when I open a Safari tab it has a "From iPhone" part that is supposed to show currently open tabs on my iPhone. The problem is it's not showing the currently open tabs but 38 tabs that were open and closed before I even had the iMac.
Click to expand...
I have the same issue - Safari on my brand new MacBook Pro 16" M1 Max is showing about 20 old closed tabs from over a year ago that are "From iPhone". I erased the history from both devices and rebooted both but that didn't work; I also turned off "Handoff" on both devices, rebooted both then turned "Handoff' back on and that didn't work either. Extremely annoying...
 
They said, "wait for Big Sur which hopefully ends this glaringly shameful years-long blunder". We're now past that imaginary timeline.
 
I have the same issue too, I transferred form my old iPhone 7 iOS 14.8.1 to the new iPhone 13 Pro iOS 15.2.1 updated to 15.3, then the “From iPad” (my iPad mini 5 iPadOS 15.3) keep showing tabs I closed long ago, about a year, even when I try clear all browsing data, cache, cookies, turn off and on the iCloud Safari, delete the old iPhone 7 iCloud backup and of course, manually clear the list by deleting those one by one (more than 50 tabs) they keep coming back.
 
astnph said:
clear all browsing data, cache, cookies, turn off and on the iCloud Safari, delete the old iPhone 7 iCloud backup and of course, manually clear the list by deleting those one by one
Click to expand...
I tried all of this and took it a step further: I renamed my iPhone and MacBook. Then I did all of this again. Didn't work.

When I get a chance, I'm going to reset both devices as new, do a fresh software install, and see if starting from scratch might work.
 
Savage said:
I tried all of this and took it a step further: I renamed my iPhone and MacBook. Then I did all of this again. Didn't work.

When I get a chance, I'm going to reset both devices as new, do a fresh software install, and see if starting from scratch might work.
Click to expand...
It’s iCloud Tabs so I think it could be Apple server’s issue, you might want to clear you iCloud too (even though I don’t know how to figure that thing), and I do think about a hard software reset, however it’s the last thing I want to do, I rather leave the issue as it be.
 
The iCloud tabs on both my iPhone and iPad are gone this morning, even though I have turned it on, both don’t show any tab opening on other devices, anyone else?
 
Hi everyone, I just come to update that everything is back to normal now, I didn’t do a thing :)
 
I've had this issue on an M1 Mini since I bought it last May. It shows many old tabs for my iPhone, iPad and MBP.

I've tried many of the workarounds but the tabs always come back. I decided to install Monterey today as I think it's probably fairly stable at this point, but the problem persists.

I've tried pretty much everything short of the nuclear option but I have no intention of trying that after seeing a few posts where it's made no difference. The machine was setup as new when I got it anyway.
 
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