[Update: Fixed] iCloud tabs not syncing properly across several Apple devices after recent macOS Big Sur/iOS 14 update

New updates are being added at the bottom of this story……

Original story (published on December 3, 2020) follows:

iCloud users seem to be having a hard time getting their Safari tabs to sync across a range of Apple devices.

And as a result, plenty of such users have taken to the forums. Official Apple forums, MacRumors, Twitter, and Reddit have seen a slew of complaints, some of which are given below.

@AppleSupport My Safari tabs in iCloud have not been syncing correctly on my iPad Pro from other devices. This started happening after the latest update and ive tried resetting sync.
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Safari on iPad doesn’t show currently open tabs on iPhone. There are links if you scroll down but not current. It shows tabs that I closed. Do you have it? Is it iOS issue?
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As apparent from the above complaints, iCloud does not appear to be functioning as intended. For some users, there is a huge delay in syncing Safari tabs across devices.

Long closed tabs continue to show on the iCloud tabs section for way longer than usual when typically, it is almost instantaneous. Other times, opened tabs do not show up at all on any other device.

The issue isn’t just limited to just a single or even a couple of devices. Rather, it’s affecting a range of Apple devices like the iPad, iPhone, or MacBook.

From this, it can be established that the problem is in fact from either Safari’s or iCloud’s side, and not in the devices themselves.

For some lucky people, the sync issues disappear as suddenly as they began, in just a couple of days. For most others though, the problem continues to bother.

So what could be the culprit behind it all? While several users did report that the issue began only after the latest iOS 14 or the Big Sur update, the fact that the issue could be due to the latest version of Safari (v14) cannot be ruled out.

Just got off the phone with Apple support. They basically insist they have no issues on their system. They will not escalate further. The system support guy will research on iCloud further before calling me back on Friday. But they insisting it’s my device fault. Is frustrating when it is obviously a backend issue. I hope everyone will call and file support requests
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And as threads on the forums continue to get longer and longer, Apple is yet to acknowledge the issue. Hopefully, the company will pull up their socks and release a fix for this irritating bug soon.

For now, be sure to check out our dedicated iOS bugs/issues tracker for further coverage on matters like these.

It’s been a couple of months since first reports of the issue begun to flow in and there are still no signs of an official acknowledgment from Apple.

I just updated Safari to the version 14.0.2 (15610.3.7.1.10, 15610). I’m using Catalina (10.15.7) and iOS 14.3. The problem persists. I can see the tabs from/in each device sometimes, but if I want to open or close one of them, they all disappear.
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I was hoping todays Safari update of 14.0.2 would fix the issue but it does not appear to be so.
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The recently released Safari update version 14.0.2 and iOS 14.3 have not addressed the issue and complaints have only continued to pour in.

Apple has apparently fixed the bug that prevented iCloud tabs from showing up in Safari with the latest iOS 14.5 update. Check out all the details here.

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