Safari closes tabs even with setting set to Close tabs manually” - iOS 16.2

Safari regularly closes all my tabs when I either click a link that opens an external app (like a news link or weather, etc.). I go back to safari and the only tab left (I regularly have anywhere from 8-20+ tabs open) they are all closed except the last one I was reading.

‘this has also happened after I restarted the device (I do this fairly regularly just to let it refresh). I do not manually close Safari when I restart the device.

this has happened for months and clearly been reported by over 200+ people (see discussion thread Safari opens and closes tabs by itself - Apple Community).

I just spend 1/2hr on Apple support getting nowhere about this issue. Supposedly they opened a case The time was completely wasted as this individual did nothing to try to troubleshoot the problem.

I have rebooted my iPad.

This setting is the same (set to manually close tabs) on all my devices, my iPad Pro 5 iOS 16.2and my iPhone X iOS 16.2 (yes, I know it is an old phone. :) ). Sadly my MacBook Pro M1 does not have this option that I can find.

Yes, I have cleared the cache by selecting “Clear History and Website Data” . This is a fairly drastic move because it clears it on all my devices, even my MacBook.

I have rebooted, forced to several times during the iOS 16.2 update.

please HELP. This is a serious time waster as when I am doing research I lose tabs and have to re-do what I started.

thank you.

[Personal Information Edited by Moderator]