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iCloud tabs not syncing
- Thread starter Morac
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I'd also love to find out. I'm back to my Mac mini showing that my MBP has a page open from---
WAIT! It's gone?!? 😆 I'm sure it'll be back. It's a page from Geektyrant about the Black Adam movie. Sometimes it's there and sometimes it's not. I've already tried logging out/back into iCloud, and this has persisted after upgrading from Monterey to Ventura and even after a reinstall of Ventura. None of my other iDevices show this tab, it's just the one Mac showing the other.. Same as before.
If there was just a single file that could be deleted as to force it to repopulate or recreate itself, that would be amazing. For me, though, because it's sometimes there and sometimes not, leads me to believe that this goes further than just deleting a file. and, not to sound harsh, we're on page 62 of a thread dedicated to this issue. I see this problem continuing for a long long time, unfortunately.
I seem to have lost most of the photos on my contacts. They were synced across my devices thru iCloud, and I created a thread about it.. I just thought I'd post a link to it here:
Contact photos are missing.
It is mentioned a few pages earlier in the thread, probably. The file is named "Cloudtabs.db" When I cleared it out, I deleted all the files called "Cloudtabs" in that directory then re-opened Safari. That fixed things.
No file named "Cloudtabs.db" found in the folder location ~/Library/Safari/.
I am running macOS Ventura 13.0.1.
You have to enable the ability to see hidden library and system files. Cmd + Shift + period should do this.
Just adding here that not only did this issue come back for me, but now there's two more iCloud Tabs listed on one of my Macs for another Mac. Initially one started staying there since October, and now I've got two more for a total of three.
Also, I see this file on my Intel Mac mini, but not on my 2020 M1 MBP:
~/Library/Safari/Cloudtabs.db
It's just not in that folder at all. I did try deleting it from my Intel Mac mini, rebooted everything, no change...
In fact, if I right click on any of them and choose to close that Tab, it almost immediately shows up again, sometimes within a second or two.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Also also, for troubleshooting purposes, to those that have been able to delete a file to remove tabs from other devices, are you able to edit these files to ADD iCloud Tabs to other devices? I'm kind of curious how far this back & forth goes...
Also, I see this file on my Intel Mac mini, but not on my 2020 M1 MBP:
~/Library/Safari/Cloudtabs.db
It's just not in that folder at all. I did try deleting it from my Intel Mac mini, rebooted everything, no change...
In fact, if I right click on any of them and choose to close that Tab, it almost immediately shows up again, sometimes within a second or two.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Also also, for troubleshooting purposes, to those that have been able to delete a file to remove tabs from other devices, are you able to edit these files to ADD iCloud Tabs to other devices? I'm kind of curious how far this back & forth goes...
In my case, with some of the tabs showing up almost 1½ months ago, no amount of quitting or rebooting has helped once. I've said this before in one of the prior 62 pages in this thread, but this isn't something we can simply "fix" on our end. Removing a database file or editing some config file might "help", and I use that term loosely, but since these are "iCloud Tabs" and not local, any changes made locally will most likely resort back to the iCloud Tabs instance, boom- problem is back.
I tried that too...removing Cloudtabs.db. Even though I was able to delete that (and it stayed deleted, at least for a time), it had no effect. Nice thought by @Phantom iCloud tabs, though.
Still have many old iCloud tabs. In my specific case, it's about 30 old tabs (they're increasing!). It's my Mac that has the problem, and specifically in relation to my iPhone. It does have the 7 new, current tabs from my iPhone, plus the 30 old ones. And it shows my iPad correctly. I really think @gank41 might be correct - that this is happening out on the server and there may be little local we can do about it.
I know I said some time ago that I'd just given up on this, but clearly it seems I haven't. Tried Firefox briefly, where the sync seemed to work better, but then I realized there was no way to stop ads easily with it on the iPhone and iPad - only the Mac. The ads were so bad I realized that Safari was the better option for now.
I think it would be nice to just continue this thread forever
as long as the problems persist as a kind of protest so that this minor scandal will be visible for as long as the macrumors servers exist...a historical record. I really want Apple to fix its iCloud problems.
I know I said some time ago that I'd just given up on this, but clearly it seems I haven't. Tried Firefox briefly, where the sync seemed to work better, but then I realized there was no way to stop ads easily with it on the iPhone and iPad - only the Mac. The ads were so bad I realized that Safari was the better option for now.
I think it would be nice to just continue this thread forever
as long as the problems persist as a kind of protest so that this minor scandal will be visible for as long as the macrumors servers exist...a historical record. I really want Apple to fix its iCloud problems.
That’s what I’m saying. And considering the large number of folks having this issue, I would disagree with it being an “account issue” and more of a “platform issue”.
My CloudTabs* files were last modified a year ago, while the iCloud Tabs displayed in Safari, while out of date, are far newer than that. I deleted the CloudTabs* files and they haven't been recreated. I think Apple stopped using them. My guess is that iCloudTabs and Tab Groups are using the same "mechanism" under the hood now. I couldn't find any files for Tab Groups, though.
Update: It looks like the files are now stored in ~/Library/Containers/Safari/Data/Library/Safari/Cloudtabs.db
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Whoa, it worked! I've had no luck with anything for many months.
Following advice from both @eas and @Phantom iCloud tabs, I looked for the file CloudTabs.db again. It was in this folder: ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Safari/Data/Library/Safari. I used the Terminal app and searched my ~/Library folder with this command:
find . -name "*CloudT*"
In fact, there are three similar files in here - the other two are called CloudTabs.db-shm & CloudTabs.db-wal - but I only deleted CloudTabs.db. What prompted this was some discussion above about an older version of this somewhere that hadn't been touched in a long time - think I noticed that last time I tried. I noticed the CloudTabs.db in this directory was freshly updated.
I deleted it, and restarted Safari. Now everything on my Mac (running Ventura) matches my two iOS devices. (Also, the files gets regenerated after you reboot at some point.) Fingers crossed - thanks, folks!
Following advice from both @eas and @Phantom iCloud tabs, I looked for the file CloudTabs.db again. It was in this folder: ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Safari/Data/Library/Safari. I used the Terminal app and searched my ~/Library folder with this command:
find . -name "*CloudT*"
In fact, there are three similar files in here - the other two are called CloudTabs.db-shm & CloudTabs.db-wal - but I only deleted CloudTabs.db. What prompted this was some discussion above about an older version of this somewhere that hadn't been touched in a long time - think I noticed that last time I tried. I noticed the CloudTabs.db in this directory was freshly updated.
I deleted it, and restarted Safari. Now everything on my Mac (running Ventura) matches my two iOS devices. (Also, the files gets regenerated after you reboot at some point.) Fingers crossed - thanks, folks!
I've had 4 ghost tabs from my iPhone showing up in Safari on my Mac for months now. I took a bat to the problem...I copied my personal files from my Mac to an external drive, erased all settings and content on my Mac, and started fresh. So far so good.
I just noticed something odd. Here's what I'm working with:
iPad Pro 2018
M1 MBP 2020
iPhone 14 Pro Max
(all on current OS and also tried updating iPhone to 16.4b2)
For a few months, my iPhone has shown that my MBP has a few iCloud Tabs open, when it does not. My iPad doesn't show any of my MBP iCloud Tabs at all, and my MBP DOES show my iPhone & iPad's iCloud Tabs accurately. To ME, that looks like the MBP is fine, and then the problem seems to be somewhere between iOS & iPadOS. Maybe? Well, what I just noticed that is odd, is that if I leave Safari Closed/Quit, I'm able to close those phantom tabs on my iPhone, and then they look to stay closed. If I don't touch my MBP all day, those phantom tabs stay gone. BUT, as soon as I open Safari on my MBP, even just to the blank Safari start page that's not even a page at all, the phantom tabs almost immediately appear again on my iPhone right as Safari's opened on my MBP. I'm able to replicate this 100%. In fact, after updating to 16.4b2, I gained another phantom tab bringing the now total to 4.
I'm happy others have seemed to get this fixed, but what's happening on my end might shed some light in what other's are experiencing. And considering we're on page 62 now, I've seen a few folks claim before to have fixed this, only for it to happen to them again later. I'm convinced this isn't something we can "fix". Has to be fixed by Apple, and that's worrisome.
FB11976762 & FB12045859 if it matters to anyone else.
iPad Pro 2018
M1 MBP 2020
iPhone 14 Pro Max
(all on current OS and also tried updating iPhone to 16.4b2)
For a few months, my iPhone has shown that my MBP has a few iCloud Tabs open, when it does not. My iPad doesn't show any of my MBP iCloud Tabs at all, and my MBP DOES show my iPhone & iPad's iCloud Tabs accurately. To ME, that looks like the MBP is fine, and then the problem seems to be somewhere between iOS & iPadOS. Maybe? Well, what I just noticed that is odd, is that if I leave Safari Closed/Quit, I'm able to close those phantom tabs on my iPhone, and then they look to stay closed. If I don't touch my MBP all day, those phantom tabs stay gone. BUT, as soon as I open Safari on my MBP, even just to the blank Safari start page that's not even a page at all, the phantom tabs almost immediately appear again on my iPhone right as Safari's opened on my MBP. I'm able to replicate this 100%. In fact, after updating to 16.4b2, I gained another phantom tab bringing the now total to 4.
I'm happy others have seemed to get this fixed, but what's happening on my end might shed some light in what other's are experiencing. And considering we're on page 62 now, I've seen a few folks claim before to have fixed this, only for it to happen to them again later. I'm convinced this isn't something we can "fix". Has to be fixed by Apple, and that's worrisome.
FB11976762 & FB12045859 if it matters to anyone else.
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Ran into this problem again on my iPad running iOS 16.3.1.
I noticed the iPad wasn’t showing tabs I had opened on my Mac, so I killed Safari and reopened it. At that point it showed the open tabs plus one I had closed a few minutes earlier which was now stuck. Trying to tap and hold and choose close didn’t work as it kept coming back.
Normally if this happened I would reopen the closed tab on my Mac and close it again, but it wasn’t there.
I did what worked in the past which is:
1. Turn off iCloud Reminders (not doing so messes them up).
2. Setting the date 4 weeks ahead.
3. Tapping and holding the tab on my iPad and choosing close.
4. I killed Safari and reopened and it was still gone.
5. Set the time/date back to automatic.
6. Turned iCloud Reminders back on.
At this point the tab came back, which normally it doesn’t. I closed it again and it came back and then went away. At that point iCloud tabs behaved correctly.
I wish there was an easier fix for this though.
I noticed the iPad wasn’t showing tabs I had opened on my Mac, so I killed Safari and reopened it. At that point it showed the open tabs plus one I had closed a few minutes earlier which was now stuck. Trying to tap and hold and choose close didn’t work as it kept coming back.
Normally if this happened I would reopen the closed tab on my Mac and close it again, but it wasn’t there.
I did what worked in the past which is:
1. Turn off iCloud Reminders (not doing so messes them up).
2. Setting the date 4 weeks ahead.
3. Tapping and holding the tab on my iPad and choosing close.
4. I killed Safari and reopened and it was still gone.
5. Set the time/date back to automatic.
6. Turned iCloud Reminders back on.
At this point the tab came back, which normally it doesn’t. I closed it again and it came back and then went away. At that point iCloud tabs behaved correctly.
I wish there was an easier fix for this though.
You're right. They moved the location of those files, as I discovered today when I had to do this procedure (it seems I have to do it once every 3-6 months). It would be nice if the Mac programmers would auto-delete these files when a user unchecks Safari from the iCloud sync settings, which seems to be what happens now with iOS/iPadOS, so they can be reset with a simple toggle, as opposed to have to dig into hidden directories via the command line interface.
I've had this problem for years, really I'm always freaked out that I can't find a link from another device. If I use a custom panel group, that one is most likely to sync. Just pinning a panel that appears the same width as other panels on macOS doesn't work properly here. It's frustrating.
I’ve decided to move to tab groups entirely (meaning I don’t use the on-device tabs anymore).
I have a personal Focus mode that’s enabled when I’m not working. I configured the focus to use a tab group also called Personal on every device (you could configure separate tab group for each device if you don’t want the same tabs open on every one).
Then I moved all my "normal" tabs from every device to my Personal tab group (making the local group empty). It took a while, but now my iCloud tabs are empty on all devices (not that I would care since you can just turn off the iCloud Tabs section on the start page) and no more phantom tabs.
Haven’t looked back since.
I have a personal Focus mode that’s enabled when I’m not working. I configured the focus to use a tab group also called Personal on every device (you could configure separate tab group for each device if you don’t want the same tabs open on every one).
Then I moved all my "normal" tabs from every device to my Personal tab group (making the local group empty). It took a while, but now my iCloud tabs are empty on all devices (not that I would care since you can just turn off the iCloud Tabs section on the start page) and no more phantom tabs.
Haven’t looked back since.