ICloud tabs only shows one iOS device at a time

icloudsafaritabs

I had an iPhone and a Mac connected to an iCloud account, and I recently got an iPad. However, I noticed that I can't see all my tabs on all my devices.

It seems like iCloud thinks my iPad and iPhone are the same device:

  • On the Mac, I only see one iOS device at a time. If I used my iPhone last, that's what it'll show. Then if I use my iPad, the tabs list is replaced with my iPad's tabs.

  • On either iOS device, I can only see the Mac.

So far I have tried:

  • rebooting
  • signing in and out of iCloud
  • changing the names of the devices
  • restoring the devices from backups

Has anyone else encountered this problem?

Best Answer

This is caused by setting up your iPad from your iPhone’s backup.

In macOS, the file ~/Library/Preferences/ByHost/com.apple.Safari.*.plist holds a key named SyncedTabsDeviceUUID. The value of that string uniquely identifies your browser’s synced iCloud Tabs.

Since I have Safari Technology Preview installed, I have a second file ~/Library/Preferences/ByHost/com.apple.SafariTechnologyPreview.*.plist, with a different SyncedTabsDeviceUUID allowing both Safari and Safari Technology Preview to sync their tabs independently via iCloud.

When you restore a device from backup, that SyncedTabsDeviceUUID gets restored as well, leading to collisions during iCloud Tabs syncing.

If you want to get fancy, you could try backing up your iPad to iTunes, find and edit that file within your iOS backup, then restore it back to your iPad.

Or you could just setup your iPad as new and get a legitimate unique ID for it.

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