Apple Ending Support for Safari Bookmark Syncing on iOS 10 and Earlier

In a support document published this week, Apple said it will be dropping support for Safari bookmark syncing on iPhones and iPads running iOS 10 or earlier, and on Macs running macOS Sierra 10.12.5 or earlier, starting December 18. Apple said it made this decision in accordance with its minimum software requirements for iCloud.

iCloud General Feature
Apple said Safari bookmarks on devices running those older iOS and macOS versions will no longer be synced to other devices or uploaded to iCloud.com:

You won't lose any bookmarks already on your devices and you'll still be able to create new bookmarks on those devices. However, new bookmarks won't sync across devices with iOS 10 or earlier and macOS Sierra 10.12.5 or earlier. They also won't be recoverable on iCloud.com.

Apple said users will need to update their devices to iOS 11 or macOS Sierra 10.12.6 or newer to continue syncing their Safari bookmarks with the newer iCloud Bookmarks system, with steps for iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Mac, and PC users outlined in Apple's support document. If you cannot or do not want to update your device, you can copy or export your bookmarks, with the support document outlining steps for that option as well.

If your devices are already running iOS 11 or later or macOS Sierra 10.12.6 or later, no action is required, according to Apple.

As we previously reported, Apple also announced that iCloud device backups for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch will require iOS 9 or later starting December 18. As outlined in another support document, users will need to update their devices to iOS 9 or later or manually back up the device to a Mac or PC. After the deadline, Apple said any data backed up to iCloud from devices that have not been updated to iOS 9 will be deleted.

Tags: iCloud, Safari

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Top Rated Comments

ArtOfWarfare Avatar
7 weeks ago
macOS versions are... kind of a mess.

They have their own totally unforced error from when they decided the next version after (10.)15 was 11, making it hard to realize that (10.)12 is over 8 years old now, when it only feels 3 years old.

It's interesting that Apple supports their hardware for long, but "major" releases of macOS only get support for 2-3 years. I wouldn't feel comfortable as a business using an OS with so little API stability. Although Windows seems to throw everything out with each major release, at least the major releases get free support for 10-11 years (and longer paid). RedHat probably has the best API stability of any OS, and they similarly offer free support for ~10 years and another 3-5 years beyond that for paid.

And updates from everyone just strike me as taking an absurdly long time to install. What the heck is going on during that? Are they building the entire OS from source code? I've gotten used to updating the base image for linux in a docker container where it takes well under 5 minutes... IDK why it should take significantly longer to do any other OS update. Probably because everyone insists on including a ton of applications and stuff that really should be installed separately and not be part of the OS. Let me start using my computer after 5 minutes and it's okay to spend the next 50 minutes installing all the bizarre apps (Freeform? Has anyone ever touched this?) in the background.
Score: 4 Votes (Like | Disagree)
scrapesleon Avatar
7 weeks ago
Apple trying to force people to upgrade all in the name of more money
Score: 4 Votes (Like | Disagree)
PsykX Avatar
7 weeks ago

Is there someone still using macOS 10.12.5 when macOS 10.12.6 was already released 7 years ago? macOS 15.1 is already released and will be updated to macOS 15.2 next month...

iOS 10 is the last update for iPhone 5 and 5c and iPad 4 but there could be others like me that stay on older versions for the performance...
Yeah, it's not a big deal.

The oldest supported iPhone is iPhone 5, which I bought 12 years ago now.
I mean, if you have one, it was a good phone, but maybe it's time to upgrade (or maybe you don't even care about bookmarks syncing). If you don't have money, the used market is also there for you.
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)
adrianlondon Avatar
7 weeks ago
Thanks for the warning.

I've just booted up my first-gen iPad mini (iOS 9) so it can sync everything possible before it gets cut off. I'm surprised it's lasted so well, to be fair.
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Slix Avatar
7 weeks ago
It's been a while since I checked, but I thought my devices on iOS 9 and macOS 10.11 were already not syncing bookmarks in Safari? Maybe I'm mistaken, but either way, I guess they won't soon.
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
orbital~debris Avatar
7 weeks ago
I hope this is being done to improve reliability of the syncing. It's truly one of the only places in the entire iCloud infrastructure that I can 'feel' a creaky system behind it: for example, Safari will often show a warning about being unable to deal with changes to bookmarks because syncing is in progress…
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)