Notes not syncing or uploading to iCloud After iOS 13 Update

Deleting the "Family" List in Reminders will fix the sync issue w/ Notes. I'm still having issues getting all my reminders to sync across all my devices, but this fixes Notes.

The only solution for the moment:

Deleting the "Family" List in Reminders will fix the sync issue w/ Notes.

+1 to this. First I did the upgrade and it didn't work. But then I also realized I was part of a reminders group (Family) where not everyone has upgraded to iOS 13. As soon as I deleted that group, apple notes started syncing normally.

In my case, since I didn't even had the Reminders app installed, I had to download it and launch it. Immediately after, Reminders showed me a slide-in modal, with guidance explaining that Reminders needed to be upgraded to continue working. I just tapped the button to upgrade, and I was done. I just did it on my wife's phone and saw the same screen as well.

This screen probably appears under certain conditions when you first launch Reminders in iOS13. I don't think you can trigger it manually, maybe uninstall and reinstall the Reminders app?

In any case, that step in the Reminders app seems to be impacting Notes iCloud sync in some way... :/

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 👌.

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.

Possible Solution: I did the same thing as JochenfromKiel, removed iCloud sync from my Mac, iPad and Phone. Took a shower. Came back and re-enabled one at a time. So far, things seem to be working correctly again. Just note that if you have unsynced notes on any of the devices, you will lose them, the notes that sync will be from your online iCloud account, so sign in and check what's there before you do anything.

Hello, All - None of these fixes work ... they are just band aids so do NOT waste your time deleting notes, re-adding, turning things on and off. The problem is an Apple problem. I had a good call with Apple yesterday. The guy wanted me to do the normal power on, power off, reboot, copy, paste, on and on. I told him no way was I going to waste time doing that. He escalated my call to a nice lady who DID confirm they are aware of this and the problem is on their side. But Chengera is right: keep calling Apple, do NOT waste time with the usual things and tell them this is a known issue and it's driving you crazy. The more calls the better. There was an article or two on this. A little bad PR in the news will certainly get Apple's attention! So, switch apps to something else ... or be patient for an Apple update coming (we can all hope) soon. Here is that article: https://www.ibtimes.com/ios-13-causing-another-issue-apples-latest-updates-could-not-fix-it-2850686

AppleCare support suggested that I create a new user test account on my Mac to test iCloud notes. Once I created the test account, I turned on iCloud but just Notes. For some reason the new account forced all of the notes I had typed on my Mac to sync with iCloud. For the last few hours, everything has been syncing between my devices and iCloud.

Creating a test user account might be an easy thing to try out...

Keeping my fingers crossed that it stays this way.

It can work without a Mac. You just have to transfer your notes to "On my iPhone" (and other iOS devices), purge iCloud, then putting them back.

Here are the shortcomings :

• You can't select all notes in one go with the Shift Key, you have to tap EVERY note to select them all. Pain in the a** but doable.
• You can't COPY notes to another location, only MOVE them. So it's a riskier process since you will not have a duplicated database during the transfer.

But then, you definitely can try, I think it will work, since the key seems to disable cloud sync on every device, then purge iCloud completely, and enable cloud sync from a virgin database.

Between iOS 13.2 and iPadOS 13.2 I have the same problem with shared notes.

I found that forcing close the Notes app on both sides and re-opening does the trick. Notes are forced to sync.

It appears to be a problem with iCloud sync service not registering changes while Notes is open or suspended.

this is an old string but I have bought a 2014MacMini and fresh installed Catalina. Amongst many problems I found this one. I tried the 'reminders upgrade' but my App Store was not loading (that took ages to sort). THEN I SAW a post with five points about unchecking and rechecking the icloud notes tick. I left a few minutes between. Hey presto - it worked and all 813 (with a few images)loaded quickly (I have 200MBps net speeds). Next job is how to download my photos off my ipad......grrrr - it seems not to recognise it.....off to another string

Hi it finally solved for me, I realized that over WIFI they synced, so I went to cellular data in iPhone preferences, and switching OFF and ON again cellular data. then went to notes and they start syncing again

so don't trust it even if it says ON, just switch it OFF and ON again

This was very easy to fix once I saw the solution posted by m4stertech.

Go into Notes and keep hitting the left arrow at the top until you get to Folders, if the notes are under ON MY IPHONE, then they are stored only on your phone, not in iCloud, hence they cannot be synced with other devices.

You must move them to ICLOUD, which is very quick and easy.

1. Go into Notes
2. Go into the folder with the notes.
3. Select the ... icon in the upper right corner
4. Select "Select Notes..."
5. Select "Move All"
6. Select the iCloud folder

If you have hundreds of notes it may take a moment to finish.

You can watch the number of notes rapidly going up on your other device.

When the number stops going up, it's done.

I upgraded (= press ok on the new version screen) reminder.app (iOS and macOS).

Then nothing happened until I "forced close" note.app on both iOS and macOS (CMD + Q).

Now notes are fixed for me.