Level 1

74 points

Notes not syncing or uploading to iCloud After iOS 13 Update

I'm having an issue where, after updating my devices to iOS 13, notes from the Apple Notes app are either not syncing, randomly syncing, or syncing only after a prolonged delay (e.g. days) between my iPhone and iPad. I've tried signing out and back in to iCloud and have removed and reinstalled the Notes app on both devices. I've ensured that the OS on both devices has been updated to the current version. Interestingly, If I have the notes app open on my iPhone, I still get the notification in the dock on my iPad that the notes app is open on my phone, but the notes still fail to sync, or at best, some notes randomly sync hours or days later, between the two devices. I noticed that if I create a note in the notes app through the iCloud website, the note downloads to both my devices immediately, but notes created on my devices fail to upload.

Has anyone else had this issue and found a solution? Is this a known bug in iOS 13, similar to one with the Reminders app (which I don't seem to be having)?

Posted on Oct 8, 2019 3:55 AM

Top-ranking reply

newcelica

Level 1

4 points

Posted on Oct 14, 2019 7:44 AM

Update: It works now! It's syncing on all devices and working as normal. The first time to sync across platforms took about an hour, so give it time the first few times when you update notes on a device and are waiting for it to show on another device(s).

All I did was exit/quit my notes on all the devices, shut down (not restart) the devices, turned them back on, and then opened up notes. From here I created a new note on each device and called it "New Note From [device]" to see if it would populate on the other devices. It did. Then I typed in each of the bodies using a different device to see if it would sync in the reverse order. For example, a note created from iPhone was titled "New Note From iPhone" was updated in the body of that note from the MacBook. I just wrote "this sentence is written from the MacBook." Then I saw it update on the iPhone and iPad accordingly. This first update took an hour but now new updates are syncing within minutes.

If the shut down and turn on method described above does not work for you then I suggest logging out of your iCloud accounts on all your devices and then proceed with to exit notes, shut down the device, turn it back on, re-log into iCloud, open up notes, let it populate the notes from the cloud, and then test out the syncing with the method aforementioned.

I hope this works for you too. Good luck!

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537 replies

Oct 29, 2019 7:21 AM in response to smccorkle13

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.

edwz

Level 1

16 points

Oct 31, 2019 2:54 AM in response to smccorkle13

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.

Nov 9, 2019 11:16 AM in response to smccorkle13

I wanted to add a solution I found to this...so I am finally able to sync again! Note this one goes into the icloud storage and deletes notes. I found that even though I had moved all of my notes to the "on my Mac" account, and the icloud version of notes being completely empty, that still had 1.7GB of notes in icloud storage.

I'm back!

https://www.redmondpie.com/fix-ios-13-apple-notes-app-sync-not-working-with-catalina-and-other-devices-heres-how/

Nov 13, 2019 5:45 AM in response to smccorkle13

I have this issue and it basically seemed to boiled down to ios 13 for iphone. This issue appears to be resolved in the latest beta of ios 13.3 beta 2 Notes Syncing is instant between my ipad running ios 13.2, iphone 13.3 beta 2 and mac os catalina 10.15.2 beta.

Apr 22, 2020 9:06 AM in response to smccorkle13

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

guguii

Level 1

72 points

Aug 11, 2020 1:14 AM in response to cheeriegirl

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

Sep 7, 2020 4:11 PM in response to m4stertech

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.

Go into Notes
Go into the folder with the notes.
Select the ... icon in the upper right corner
Select "Select Notes..."
Select "Move All"
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.

Oct 12, 2019 12:21 AM in response to smccorkle13

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.

Oct 18, 2019 6:47 PM in response to mauro79

yes you are right. By closing Noted in Multitask and open it again, it immediately upload and i can see immediately on other devices. Thank you so much

Oct 18, 2019 11:37 PM in response to smccorkle13

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

Oct 15, 2019 12:28 PM in response to anatoly193

Notes is syncing normally for me now. From Macs to iOS devices and iOS to Macs. What I did was take out the only Mac that is on Catalina, a back up MBP15r. It is logged out of iCloud and turned off. Soon as I did this things slowly got back to normal.

I didn't even have to reboot, logout or turn off iCloud on ANY of my devices.

All mobile devices are on the latest iOS13, Macs are on Mojave and High Sierra. The High Sierra is the one I use most.

migueleh

Level 1

4 points

Oct 22, 2019 6:27 PM in response to smccorkle13

This seems to be related to the latest update for iOS 13 (13.1.3). If you upgraded to this latest version, your notes will not sync up with iCloud. The only solution I know is to sign out from iCloud in your iPhone, restart your iPhone and log back in into iCloud. No need to sign out / sign back in your Mac. This worked for me.

Oct 29, 2019 6:11 AM in response to paulidj

As some users suggested, I fixed my broken sync by :

Transferring all my main notes database from iCloud to "On my Mac" (just one drag and drop, very fast)
Transfer all not-synced notes from my iPhone and iPad to "On my iPhone" and "On my iPad".
Disable iCloud note syncing on my three devices.
Deleting all notes and folders from iCloud.com (took a couple hours to flush everything, including folders and empty the cloud bin).
Enable iCloud Note Syncing on my three devices.
Recreating my notes folders on iCloud. They synced instantly.
Drag and drop my 170 notes from "On my Mac" to their respective folders on iCloud. They synced instantly.
Adding the mobile missing notes from the iPhone and iPad. They synced instantly.
Deleting all local notes be disabling "Notes On my Mac" "Notes on my iPhone" and "Notes on my iPad".

Everything seems to work perfectly for now, but boy, what a hassle! Shame on Apple for this terrible user experience.

MapucaNL

Level 1

8 points

Nov 1, 2019 9:36 AM in response to pg2001

The same action did not work before iOS 13.2 and Catalina 10.15.1

But cleaning all the old notes from iCloud storage did resolve my notes sync too.

A few seconds delay between notes sync.

I had all notes copied local on my iPad and now could sync back to iCloud in a few minutes. The same process did not finish the previous attempt even after 48 hours and 20 reboots or restarts of notes app. All attachments and media seem to be synched this time. No missing objects or notes for now.

It is some kind of miracle, because Apple say they didn't fix it (they say it wasn't broken).

So I must be a believer now ;-)

Nov 2, 2019 7:22 AM in response to smccorkle13

pg2001 -- your suggestions fixed my syncing problem between 2 iPhones, an iPad, and a MBP, all with the most current OS. I have a feeling the key step was "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."

Thanks a bunch!

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Notes not syncing or uploading to iCloud After iOS 13 Update