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Why do pinned tabs disappear in Safari?

After closing a Safari window and then reopening it with "History - Reopen Last Closed Window", all the websites that I had opened in REGULAR Tabs reappeared without a hitch. But, perversely, all PINNED tabs disappeared. I have never observed this before - in the past, even when opening a brand-new Safari window without referring to "History", the PINNED tabs would always show up immediately, before I open anything else. Now they are gone entirely? (If I pin a new tab, it does appear in any new window I open - but my old pinned tabs are all gone.) Any idea what gives? Sounds like a bug to me!

MacBook Air 13″, macOS 12.7

Posted on Oct 2, 2024 10:43 AM

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4 replies

Oct 5, 2024 7:16 AM in response to jerryful

Thanks for the link. In my case, the problem was that all the NON-pinned tabs COULD be recovered with the usual "History..." menu items. But the pinned ones (which one would think are MORE secure and should automatically show up in ANY new window - restored or not) completely disappeared.

I'm thinking that this must have been a bug recently introduced - there got to be a reason why I was twice alerted to update Safari within a few days, from 16 to 17 and now from 17 to 18. I've re-pinned one of my previously pinned tabs and so far, things behave normally again. No big deal as I had only 5-6 pinned tabs which I can recreate. But it's upsetting that Apple would push out an update with such a glaringly obvious issue.

Oct 5, 2024 1:32 PM in response to Sebastian Kuhn

Me also, where my regular non-pinned tabs were still available in history, but all the pinned tabs are totally gone and cannot be found in history, and they no longer populate when I open a new window.


This had happened to me the same way as you described, after reopening my closed window using "History - Reopen Last Closed Window". The link (of how I recovered the pinned tabs via Time Machine) was just removed by moderators. The linked method is necessary to recover the pinned tabs if you have Safari 17 MacOs 14.6, maybe also Safari 16 according to reddit; others in the same situation can do their own web search, because these are the files that have to be restored from a date/time before the pinned tabs disappeared:

CloudTabs.db

CloudTabs.db-shm

CloudTabs.db-wal

SafariTabs.db

SafariTabs.db-shm

SafariTabs.db-wal


Afterwards, the older, restored version of Safari looks like it should, with the pinned tabs in every opened window. I saved each pinned tab on to my reading list (remember to make reading list available offline.)


But I also need the most recent Safari browsing history that occurred after the rescued TimeMachine date/time that I used to find and restore the pinned tabs. So then I used Time Machine to change those 6 files to the most recent time, so the pinned tabs are missing again, but now they are saved in my reading list, where I am bookmarking them into Favorites.

Oct 5, 2024 11:00 AM in response to jerryful

I recovered my pinned tabs this way:

Then I added the tabs to my reading list.

I won't be using pinned tabs anymore, too unreliable. I learned I can use the Favorites folder in Bookmarks to hold the tabs I formerly pinned. Then in Safari/View menu I can toggle on Show Favorites Bar, and those tabs will display.


[Re-Titled by Moderator]

Why do pinned tabs disappear in Safari?

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