Safari 15.0 tab groups lost after each restart

I am also having this issue. Tab group sync across devices and backup to icloud do not seem to work most of the time. Groups I create on my iphone show up there until I exit the app and then often are gone when the app is restarted. Similarly groups I create on my MBP are lost when I exit and reload Safari.

The tabs that are created on one device do not seem to sync to icloud and then appear on other devices.

It seems to all be 99% broken. Except that I did originally create a few bogus test tab groups immediately after installing and they seemed to sync to icloud and propagate across devices but that doesn't seem to be working anymore. I did not change anything.

Disappointing. One would think this core feature of the updated Safari would have been tested and mostly functional at the time of deployment. Crazy, Back to Chrome until they sort this out.

Same issue here. I disabled Safari for iCloud and that seems to do the trick. I think it may take some small amount of time after you disable or have to reboot. I tested right after disabling iCloud for Safari and the issue was still happening. I rebooted and then tested an hour later and the tabs are no longer lost. Leave iCloud sync for Safari off until Apples fixes this.

Disable iCloud for Safari: System Preferences > Apple ID > Apps on this Mac using iCloud > Safari (uncheck)

Missy5937, what is the thinking behind resetting a router to fix this issue? If the router was down browser pages wouldn't open at all.

Hello DaviCon,

Thanks for using the Apple Support Communities. We understand that you're running into an issue with a new feature in Safari, Group tabs. From the description you've provided it does sound as though you're following the correct options, Group tabs in Safari on Mac however the settings are saving or syncing with iCloud to your other devices.

Have you tried restarting your router to see if that helps everything sync as it should? If you create a Tab Group on your iPhone, does that sync to your Mac?

Use tabs in Safari on iPhone

Let us know and we'll continue researching potential solutions.

Best regards.

I have exactly the same issue. Big Sur 11.6, Late 2018 MBP 15".

I created 3 tab groups when Safari 15 ran for the first time. Those remain OK. But, ever since that, any tab at the top level or any new tab group created, gets lost when I restart Safari or the computer.

On my iPhone I can see tabs in the cloud that do not exist on my Mac any longer...

Tab groups is a hugely welcome feature - I only wish it would work...

I use no router, but my iPhone as a hotspot thru a cable connection (EHS symptoms in the family, no chance to use WiFi or any radiating technology...)

Somehow I do not believe it is a cloud sync issue. Safari itself fails to remember its own status at.

I've seen these suggestions, and tried the following:

Logged out out of iCloud, stopped iCloud sync, both on the Mac and on the iPhone. Restarted both devices, switched on iCloud sync on both... and nothing happened. The iPhone still shows Mac tabs that had been closed a couple days ago. Safari 15 on he mac is not able to remember any of my new tabs or tab groups...

@DaviCon, the only other thing I did was go to System Preferences > General and uncheck 'Close windows when quitting an app'

Someone mentioned that setting and I tried it early on. But I think it's the iCloud de-sync that worked for me.

Yeah, I had this problem this morning - all my tabs from last night disappeared. All of them - just the Start Page this morning. I just updated to 11.6 on this iMac yesterday, maybe the day before. Awful.

I do have Safari synced across devices - I had stopped using that (quite some time ago) because it was screwing up so much (unrecoverable problems). But I recently re-enabled it before 11.6 and it seemed to (mostly) be working. I have never had a problem with the previous-night's tabs disappearing until 11.6. I reported this at Apple's product feedback site.

I guess the only workaround is to bookmark your tabs before quitting Safari. If you are synced, be sure to watch the bookmarks for about 30 seconds after doing that. Apple still has the (occasional) problem of disappearing bookmarks when Safari is synced.

I have noticed other issues like this; window preferences and the like that Big Sur seems to have a problem with. Booting up in the morning. I see windows coming up in positions where I had not left them the night before.

Unfortunately I had too many issues with sync and lost tabs on the new Safari. I like the interface concept and would use it as primary browser if it worked but it does not.

I also had bad performance with many tabs and widows open. Something isn't scaling well ie it's not just the one foreground tab using memory and CPU.

And Google webpages such as Gmail are terribly broken and unusable.

Back to chrome unfortunately. Maybe Safari will be ready for prime time someday.

After I freed up some room in my iCloud everything was okay. But after a few days stop syncing again. I check on my iPhone and the tab groups were in sync but not on the mac. So I tried to re-install Big Sur as this is the only way to reinstall Safari.app. No it's working again, everything is in sync and all my settings are ok.

I see a number of folks commenting on the iCloud storage limits. I have almost 42GB free, so I know my issue is not iCloud memory-related per se, though server problems may still be at fault.

As I mentioned before, Big Sur seems to have problems with remembering a number of window settings, and I suspect the tab issue is one of them. A finder window came up in a funny location this morning, and the Activity Monitor sometimes comes up with the wrong settings on boot-up.

The bookmark sync feature is still buggy but better. I will admit that I had never seen tabs disappear until I resynced but I did that just before I updated to Big Sur.

I've had the same issue and solved it by disabling the iCloud Safari sync and rebooting the computer. Before the reboot it didn't work (still had the old tabs and groups, regardless of the changes done).

Bingo! Disabling iCloud tab sync for Safari eliminated the issue. Of course this is another issue... let's see now when the two functionalities will be able to work together...

I experienced: "Each time Safari or my Mac are restarted it reverts back". My iCloud drive was almost full and this caused unexpected sync behavior e.g. reverting back closed tabs.