Safari randomly goes back a page or closes window when opening new tab

[lkhrs]

Starting a new topic for this since the linked one is old.

Continuing the discussion from Mac Safari closes window when opening new tab:

@seren8

I know I’m resurrecting an old thread, but just wondering if you ever found a solution to this. I’m not 100% positive, but pretty sure it just started for me with Monterey. I would say about 70% of the time, when I open a new tab, it closes almost immediately, or when I type a new url in an existing tab, it starts to load then goes back to what was previously in the tab (e.g. do a search, loads results, then goes back to previous page). It’s not a dealbreaker but still extremely annoying. It feels like I’ve got some hardware switch accidentally pressed or something to go back, but I don’t. I was going to post a new topic, but searched, but sounds like you were having the same issue.

@seren8 I have the same issue with Safari 15.4 and Monterey, and managed to track it down. It’s related to using Tab Groups with iCloud sync turned on.

When you’re in a Tab Group, if you open a new tab or click a URL, there’s a random chance it will go back a page or close the new tab. This doesn’t happen outside of Tab Groups.

The only way to fix this I’ve found is to either stop using Tab Groups, or turn off iCloud sync for Safari, but the latter was too much for me so I just stopped using Tab Groups.

I reported the bug to Apple using their form a few weeks ago, hope someone sees it (but I doubt it).

Tab Groups has all sorts of issues related to iCloud sync it seems, renaming a group is an exercise in frustration for example.