Notes not syncing or uploading to iCloud After iOS 13 Update

Hi all,

I have resolved the issue.

I have had the same problem as everyone  - Notes not syncing between my iPhone, iPad, MBA - all with the latest OS. I tried everything recommended and ended transferring all my notes to sit on my iPhone - then deleted all notes out of the iPad and MBA and switched iCloud off for Reminders and Notes on all three devices.

I then backed up my phone so at least I had a copy of my notes (I used iexplorer to look into the backup to make sure all of my Notes were there).

I periodically switched iCloud back on in the iPad and iPhone and attempted to create notes and see if they would sync. They did not. My wife created a note on her phone and shared it with me - and that synced as we both made changes, although it was not instant as it had been prior to the iOS upgrades.

So until yesterday things were still not working.

Then I did the following:

• switched off iCloud again on all devices.
• deleted all notes on the iPad, MBA and deleted any notes in the 'recently deleted folder'.
• logged into the iCloud account to access Notes via the browser and deleted all notes/folders - including notes in the recently deleted folder.
• The only notes left were the 480 notes I'd transferred to the 'On my iPhone' folder on my iPhone. If you don't have this option in Notes you have to go to Settings/Notes and switch it on.
• Then I did this (this is what I think resolved the issue). I went to Settings/Passwords & Accounts/iCloud/iCloud/Manage Storage - and I looked down the list to see how much data Notes had stored in iCloud (obviously it should be zero as I had deleted all Notes out of iCloud). It was 2.2GB - ranked 5th after iCloud Drive, Photos, Messages, Backups. Obviously something was jammed in there.
• So I swiped left and the option comes up to Delete Data. I hit that option and I think it says 'This will delete all Notes in iCloud and on you iPhone' - I say yes or OK or whatever it asked. It didn't delete the Notes I had 'On my IPhone' - but I guess it deleted whatever was stuck in iCloud.
• I waited for 30 minutes. Then switched on iCloud on my phone, and tested making notes on my phone, and in iCloud via the browser and it all synced immediately. I then added my iPad - and the same - all synced immediately - then added my MBA and notes synced immediately between all four. I then copied a folder from my 'On my iPhone' folder - to the iCloud folder - and it immediately synced the folder and all the notes it contained between all my phone, iPad, MBA and iCloud. I then copied all the folders - and all other notes have now synced between all devices. Each account has 480 notes.
• If you are going to follow these instructions the only thing I would do differently is use my MBA to hold all the notes in the 'On My Mac' folder. If you don't have this folder you have to switch it on in Preferences. It is easier to use a mouse to move folders around.

I'll report back if I have any problems, but it seems I have resolved this issue.

Good luck all.

Wouldn't it be nice if the company that has $265B in annual revenue would actually jump in here and offer some answers? Instead it feels like we're all left treading water and trying to find some cold comfort in knowing others have the same issue.

I've been having the same problem (see all my posts above) and I just wondered if there was some corruption of the Notes database on my Mac, so I hunted and found this.. https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4370650

I first duplicated the plist file in case of problems, but thing are definitely behaving a little better for now...

So far it is syncing ok between iCloud web, iPhone and iPad. Mac not syncing properly yet, but I will persevere. Still testing, and I will update with what I find

Continuity should work when your devices are next to each other: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204681

Meaning, go ahead and type your notes as you usually do. But when your devices are close to each other again, use Handoff (https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT209455) to sync those notes. Definitely not ideal but at least it syncs things up.

IMPORTANT: macOS Catalina users, do not do what I did and try and force a re-sync as outlined in my feedback to Apple below otherwise you will potentially lose your new Notes like I did. My old MacBook running macOS High Sierra doesn't seem to be impacted by the Note sync issue with iCloud.

After losing 2 very important business meeting notes, I have sent the following defect feedback to Apple. Feel free to copy and paste the same feedback below to Apple if you are experiencing the same problem. This is more of a macOS Catalina issue rather than an iOS13 issue, but I have noticed other users are also experiencing Catalina issues in this thread so I hope this post is appropriate.

---- Feedback to Apple Support ---

https://www.apple.com/feedback/icloud.html

Summary:

There is a major defect with the new macOS Catalina (v. 10.15) Notes app. Any new notes or updates to existing notes are not syncing with iCloud. Furthermore, new notes are permanently deleted if the user un-syncs notes by un-ticking the "Notes" option in (Notes -> Accounts -> iCloud)

The following was observed for Notes:

1) Syncing iCloud.com to Catalina/iOS works as expected.

2) Syncing iOS to Catalina/iCloud.com works as expected.

3) Syncing MacOS High Sierra to iCloud.com/iOS works as expected.

4) Syncing MacOS Catalina to iCloud.com/iOS is not working.

5) The same iCloud ID is being used across all 4 platforms

6) Spotlight search for missing "Notes" does not return any results.

7) Logging out from the iCloud ID on Catalina does not solve issue

7) Firewall in Catalina was set to "Off" during the above testing.

------- End of Feedback ----

Let's hope Apple fixes the issue in the next Catalina updates.

I have run in this behavior, too and done some testing. This doesn´t help at all but shows something.

How I have tested

• All 4 Devices in WLAN 5 GHz (2 iPad Pro 1st. gen.; iMac Late 2013; iPhone 8+, all with latest updates)
• 50 MBit-cable connection
• All devices in same iCloud Account
• All devices has been restarted and left alone for 20 minutes to get things sorted out
• Every run I have created a new note with a headline and no further content
• After sync or more then 5 minutes the note has been deleted and time noted
• Notes.app were always open
• More then 5 minutes waiting has been counted as no sync

Noted

• Almost every time all syncs were simultainly on all devices
• iPads shown sync-activity without any change
• Deleted Notes shown on some devices much longer then on other (up to 15 min and several successful syncs of new notes)
• Deleting Notes is not instantly shown on other devices (seems to relay on Upload-cycle) Sometimes deleted notes were deleted on different times different devices
• On the iPhone sync upload seems to be more often when on cellular (marked as "no WLAN in table)

Conclusions

• Downloading syncs seems to be „push“ for all devices show new notes on the same time
• Uploading changes seems to have a timeframe of aprox 5 minutes on a fixed base (e.g. 16:10, 16:15; 16:20) 
• Deleting notes seems to work on a different scheme (ridiculous, I know - perhaps coincident)
• This renders notes useless for collaborative shopping with my girlfriend.
• Shared notes with my gf seem to update even longer (not tested but recognized) up to several hours

Sorry to say the issue started before. I experienced iOS not syncing up to iCloud at 13.2 and not syncing from Mojave to iCloud/iOS.

Some suggest it started with Catalina/iOS13, others say it went away after updating to Catalina.

For me, it began with iOS13, and only restarting iPhone works. For a while.

There is little awareness, and no recognition that I can find on Apple support site other than standard things to try:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203521

This turned out working for me, for now: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7720480?page=4

Finally found a solution for this after months of trying various different things. (Tried pretty much every solution, individually or in combination). What finally worked for me was:

Making sure that all internet accounts had synching off for notes (including iCloud) in the system preferences

Going to /users/[name]/Library and doing a search within that folder for any file containing “Notes” in the name.

matches were found in both /users/[yourname]/Library/Containers AND /users/[yourname]/Library/GroupContainers

going to /Library/Caches and selecting all and moving to trash

Selected all such files, threw them in the trash.

Empty trash

Reboot

Open Notes

Turn on synching for iCloud

Presto! It worked! For the first time since I installed Sierra pretty much, it finally worked on my computer again! So I’m not sure which file it was exactly that I deleted that did the trick, but my best guess is that deleting the notes related files in “containers” is not enough, you must also go after the related files in “group containers”.

There we go! Hope this helps somebody else!

Finally got Notes syncing from iPhone to iCloud again after a few weeks. Thanks Bidule200 for instructions. When trying the first time, I got stuck because of several "old" notes were hanging in the iCloud and I was not being able to delete them. The Notes web app (using iCloud via web browser) kept crashing on me every time I tried to open it in the web browser.

Then more or less by accident I discovered an option to delete all Notes data in iCloud from iPhone (Settings/iCloud/Manage Storage/Notes-swiping right-delete)... once empty in iCloud I turned on Notes on iPhone and they work again.

BTW: I have made backup of Notes to my local storage on my Mac prior to deleting them in iCloud (see Bidule200 instructions):

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250713674?answerId=251516953022#251516953022

smccorkle13, what were the steps??

When you say deleted all Notes out of iCloud, did you have them backed up elsewhere first?

I have almost two thousand notes and can't risk losing them.

At one point in the last week, sync across MacBook, iMac and iCloud worked. My iPhone Notes stopped syncing with iOS 13.x.

I can still sync between iCloud and Macs, but iPhone might as well not exist.

We need to use the right support routes, you can log a call with Apple here:

https://getsupport.apple.com

And you can just feedback generally on the product here:

https://www.apple.com/feedback/

I agree with Dashiscrazy and many others, this is major lapse in what is a simple but very useful product. It's great to get support from other people with the same issue and I'm sure some of the tactics e.g. clearing out the Notes database have helped in some cases, maybe by accident.

However as has been said, this is not the main support route into Apple so we have to assume they are not listening to these threads and the only way to engage is to use the routes above which I feel are still pretty good even though they make you do a lot of work and are reluctant to believe there is a problem.

My Notes syncing seem to be working mostly OK now but I have a different problem with weird characters appearing in iCloud Notes when I dictate an update on my iPhone. I was told by the last analyst I spoke to that it "might be a new feature of Notes in iOS 13" like I should be grateful or pleased!!!! I made myself laugh rather than cry. However the person before that had been right on the case and really helpful so for me it has been worth pursuing.

As someone said a while back on this thread he was disappointed in himself for being pleased with partial solution and he's right - we know they can do it properly, it used to work (!!) so don't let them fob you off. No-one has a monopoly on good software or service - I use loads of microsoft products - but all manufacturers have the same issues and I still feel Apple are better than most.

HOW TO FIX APPLE NOTES

1. Enable the On My Mac account in the Apple Notes's Settings (macOS).
2. Drag and Drop all the folders and notes you have into On My Mac area (to make them offline only; be careful with this).
3. Go to the iCloud settings on your iPhone, select Manage Storage -> Notes -> Delete Data.
4. Restart all devices (for sure).
5. Try to sync all of your devices to see that you have no any notes online for now. If you have something, well, Delete it manually. Check on the icloud.com too. This 4th step is all about to become very clear that you have ZERO notes at your account online.
6. Try to create a note with a simple text at some device and see what happened. In my case it started to sync correctly.
7. And the last item here, very IMPORTANT. You have to recreate all folders and notes by yourself. And then just Copy and Paste all contents of the notes you have. DO NOT DRAG ALREADY EXISTING OFFLINE NOTES INTO ICLOUD FOLDERS! Because in my case it brings the same problems with syncing I had before. Again: you need to CREATE NEW NOTES by yourself again. And just Copy and Paste (CMD+A, CMD+C -> CMD+V) all the contents from old notes onto the new ones.

P.S.: I've tried many things and nothing helped but this. Apple - It just works 👌.

nikbelikov .. thank you for the procedure. I followed it carefully to a T. Typed notes are now synchronizing swiftly between devices (MBP, iPhone, iPad, iCloud web app). But that's where the good stuff ends.

Handwritten notes are not synchronizing properly.

1. Write a note on iPad
2. Wait for synchronization to other devices.
3. On other devices the hand written note is empty. No image.
4. On the iCloud web app a silhouette of handwritten thumbnail appears but it's empty. And the contents of the handwritten note are empty.

NB: it was very difficult to delete everything (notes and folders) from iCloud.com using the web app. The web app crashed a good 20-30 time while deleting 373 notes.

I solved this problem on my config, maybe not doable for everybody.

My setup: I daily use a Mac mini, iPad and iPhone. Syncing was bad or never happened. I also have an old backup Macbook and an iMac I use on second location.

The iMac is still running 10.14. I don't have access to it and will sync Notes later. It's currently powered off.

On the Macbook I disabled Notes iCloud syncing.

1. Made a backup of the notes folder on my Mac Mini. I also copied al changes I've made to notes or new notes I've made since Catalina to TextEdit.
2. Removed all notes and folders on iCloud.com. I deleted them one-by-one, making sure they were deleted cause it sometimes takes minutes to delete one note. Then I removed everything from 'Recently Deleted'. It took me 3 hours to do that. And often deleted notes and/or folder reappeared on the iPad/iPhone/Mac. I continued doing this until everything was really deleted. Rebooted all devices 3 times until I was 100% sure all files were deleted on all devices. Note that after 2 reboots some folder still appeared on iPad/iPhone.
3. Removed iCloud notes syncing on all devices and rebooted them again.
4. Disconnected my Mac mini from the internet
5. Enabled iCloud notes syncing on my Mac mini
6. Restored the notes folder from my Time Machine, date 4 October = before the Catalina update.
7. Started Notes on my Mac mini.
8. Copied all the notes from the iCloud folder to the 'On My Mac' folder. You do need to enable this folder. I just dragged complete folders. Shared notes can't be moved. So I copied those and deleted the original ones. That's because I couldn't unshare notes while not being connected to the internet.
9. Then I reconnected the internet to the Mac mini.
10. Moved all folders one-by-one to the iCloud folder. For each folder I checked whether these synced properly to the iPad/iPhone/iCloud.com. It takes a few minutes or so for each folder
11. I recreated the new post-Catalina notes based on the TextEdit copy.

Result (for now): sync works between all devices. I can create new notes and change existing notes and it syncs between iPad/iPhone/Mac mini.

Hey I solved my issue perfectly last night.

This bug really ruins my daily workflow...

From previous discussion I guess this issue comes with new Catalina.

What I did is:

1. Log out the iCloud account on my macbooks
2. Go to Note on my iPhone, Move all notes to “On my iPhone” folder
3. Go to iPhone setting- iCloud- manage storage- then delete data of Note.
4. Then notes app on all devices will show icloud note not available, do you want to create a new note.
5. Then drag all the note back to icloud again on my iphone.

Done! Now my iphone and ipad are syncing seamlessly just like before.

But I did not test what will happen if I log into icloud on my macbook....I will just wait for further update. And Now I just use airdrop to transfer note between ios and mac.