Fixing Safari iCloud syncing

I've been having an intermittent issue with Safari failing to sync any data via iCloud that you would normally expect — history, tabs, bookmarks and the landing page were all behaving independently despite iCloud syncing being enabled.

These steps fixed the issue, finally, on my devices:

  1. Open a terminal and run defaults write com.apple.Safari IncludeInternalDebugMenu 1
  2. Quit Safari
  3. Open Safari, navigate to the new Debug menu and select Sync iCloud History
  4. Run defaults write com.apple.Safari IncludeInternalDebugMenu 0 to disable the Debug menu[1]
  5. Disable Safari in the iCloud settings of each of your devices
  6. Reboot each of your devices
  7. Enable Safari in the iCloud settings of each of your devices

Cross your fingers and hope for the best, but sync should settle down and start working again. I'd contend that none of these steps should be necessary, but here we are.


  1. Unless you want to keep it. ↩︎

Cory
Cory Dransfeldt

I'm a software developer in Camarillo, California. I enjoy hanging out with my beautiful family and 4 rescue dogs, technology, automation, music, writing, reading and tv and movies.