iPhone Safari grays out back button 15.4

[Pirate!]

In ios 15.4 I’ve been noticing that Safari will randomly turn my back button gray and I can no longer go back to the previous page. I can’t isolate what may cause it, but it’s getting pretty annoying. It also has been refreshing the page I’m on if I click a button/link on a website instead of going wherever the link should. For example, I’ll be on the Mac Rumors home page, I’ll click the forum button, but the home page refreshes and I don’t get taken to the forums. When I click a second time, the correct action is taken. (Note, this has been happening on all sorts of sites, I don’t even remember if it was actually on this site or not; but the back button going gray has occurred here and other places).

Has anyone else noticed this?

 

[scud42]

I’ve noticed this a ton since upgrading! Seems like it happens all the time on Google search results.

Can recreate it fairly often using the steps below:

1. Search Google for something using your address/search bar in Safari
2. Choose one of the search results, visit the page, and click back (it seems to occur more often when you click back before the page fully loads.
3. After going back to your Google results the browser sometimes will automatically redirects you forward again to the page you were already on.
4. Now your back button is reset back to inactive, even though you can still see those previous pages in your history.


Here’s a rough video of it happening:

. After my third time clicking the iPhone link on the Google results, and clicking back, you can see the redirect forward and loss of back button.

 

[Ralfi]

Yeah I’ve had this & I think it’s to do with Safari IOS & Safari iPadOS working in sync, so let’s say you have a group of custom tabs on iPhone which are mimicked on the iPad.

When you browse on one device & let’s say navigate away from the Macrumors home page before ending your session, then you resume your Safari session on the iPad (which initially had the Macrumors Home Screen on it) but then click away from it, I think Safari syncs with the iPhone, glitches, & restores your prior page & clears your tab history.

It’s been very annoying & because it coincided with a change of modem in my case, I thought my brand new modem was somehow to blame, but it’s happened all this week when I’ve brought my iPhone & iPad with me to the hotel I’m staying in, hence why I started thinking something else was up.

Edit…

I’ve also been able to recreate the bug with the above method via Google searches.
?

 

[Runs For Fun]

Same thing has been happening to me lately. Both iOS and iPadOS. It happens more frequently on Google search results but I’ve had it randomly happen on other sites as well.

 

[Pirate!]

Yeah I’ve had this & I think it’s to do with Safari IOS & Safari iPadOS working in sync, so let’s say you have a group of custom tabs on iPhone which are mimicked on the iPad.

When you browse on one device & let’s say navigate away from the Macrumors home page before ending your session, then you resume your Safari session on the iPad (which initially had the Macrumors Home Screen on it) but then click away from it, I think Safari syncs with the iPhone, glitches, & restores your prior page & clears your tab history.

That is an interesting observation. I do have several tab groups going, but I haven’t used my iPad in a week or a little over. I’m still experiencing the problem, even on the standard group tab.

It does seem to happen most frequently when I open a new window to start a new browsing session, but that is not the only case.

I checked my iPad and I do have Safari opened, but not to a custom group. I also have safari opened on my iMac, but, again, not to a custom tab group.

And, more likely than not, I don’t go from one drive to another looking at the same website. I think there may still be something more going on here.

I just tried it again via google, searched for something, clicked on 4-5 links that showed up. After the 5th one, no more back button functionality (button itself grayed out, no swipe right). I did not run into the auto-go back in that quick test.

 

[Ralfi]

Just had it happen twice when clicking on notifications here on Macrumors.

And, more likely than not, I don’t go from one drive to another looking at the same website. I think there may still be something more going on here.

The same websites appear on multiple devices when you have that setting enabled (can’t remember the name of the setting), so I suspect one of the triggers for this bug is the devices syncing up after you navigate away from the page on one device - maybe Safari takes you back to the page that’s still open on the other device, the page that was originally synced between devices.

For eg.

iPad - page A
iPhone - page A

iPhone - navigate from page A to B…sync bug occurs…iPhone reverts back to page A as it syncs with iPad.

Edit…
This is the setting I was referring to…

- https://support.apple.com/en-au/guide/safari/ibrwa2d73908/mac

Edit…

This is happening a lot more now.
?

 

[jonnyb098]

This is a tab group issue in the latest update. It only happens in tab groups. I talked to apple this week and they are well aware of the problem and working on a fix thankfully. The only thing to temporarily stop the tabs from crashing and such is to turn off safari in iCloud settings.

They‘re also aware that most people are missing frequently visited sites (or they fail to update) and also working on that.