Notes not syncing or uploading to iCloud After iOS 13 Update

In my case Mac on Catalina, iPhone on iOS 13 and iPad on iOS 13. New notes and changes from iPhone or iPad sync to Cloud and to Mac, but new notes and changes from Mac do not sync. Turned iCloud Notes off/on again, same behavior afterwards.

In the process lost a few days worth of new notes on the Mac which were not synced to the Cloud. Would have thought not yet synced changes should be kept locally, but alas, no, they just disappeared, and turning iCloud Notes back on created a new notes database, so it's all gone now. :(

I am having the same issue. It sometimes will update my iOS devices if I update a note from iCloud.com but only sometimes. Very hit or miss. Nothing updates if I update the note from an iOS device or macOS Catalina.

RESOLVED. Your suggestion lead to the solution. I updated (10/09/19) all my i-devices MacBook (Catalina), iPad and iPhone, which resulted in my NOTES app not synching notes among devices. After reading your proposed solution, I updated the REMINDER app on iPad but MacBook did not have an update available for the REMINDERS app. I then deleted REMINDERS app from my MacBook and also from my iPad. I waited a few minutes and then re-downloaded the REMINDERS app and reinstalled on both devices. Immediately after performing the aforementioned steps my NOTES app synched across all of my i-devices. I never would have made the connection to work on the REMINDERS app in order to fix the NOTES app. Kudos to you on the brilliant yet simple fix.

Well, its 'sort of almost but not quite' working... So far I've just been testing between iCloud web, iPad and iPhone. Things DO sync, but VERY slow (like minutes, compared with seconds before I updated to ios13 and Catalina).

I am wondering (guessing) whether the new Notes and Reminders is putting some massive load on Apple iCloud sync servers, and that is causing the initial delay in sync, and then I wonder whether, when users start editing UNsynced notes on multiple devices some sort of sync database gets corrupted and then it never works again. This is what I suspect; so far, after deleting PLISTS file on Mac and NOT restarting Notes on Mac, my iCloud web, iPad, and iPhone DO sync, albeit VERY slowly.

I am just about to spark up Notes on Mac and see if that is now syncing, or if that kills the whole thing again....

How did you delete REMINDERS on Mac. I try to do that and I get a dialogue saying

"“Reminders” can’t be modified or deleted because it’s required by macOS."

I think we are REALLY clutching at straws here. Apple NEEDS too FIX this, its crazy!!!

OK I have a solution. Firstly all i have is a new iphone 11pro, a dell laptop and an iphone X.

Basically all my notes had disappeared from my new iphone 11pro but they are all still on the icloud on my Dell.

This is what I did. i reset my iphone 11pro to factory by going into settings, general and then at the bottom click reset and then erase all content and settings. this resets to factory.

I then did the setup using my WIFI but used manual as the option and used my last good backup of icloud i had from my iphone X.

All notes did reappear and it seems that any update i make on icloud.com on my dell syncs to the new iphone 11pro within a minute and vice versa.

hope this helps.

Have been rigorously testing this problem on 8 devices, which include Ios, ipad os, mojave and catalina. And it looks like Mojave is the only one that consistently syncs notes to icloud.

My workflow is now completely broken.

Absence of forced sync in notes and similarly in Photos app is so frustrating. Sitting around and waiting for the software to decide when it’s a good time to sync is disempowering.

Running all the latest software on iPhone, iPad and MacBook Pro. Notes are syncing between the iPhone, iPad and Notes on iCloud through Safari, but not on the MacBook running MacOS Catalina, which seems to be the problem. The changes made on iPhone, iPad and iCloud appear on MacBook-eventually, but any changes made in the MacBook will not sync. 

I'm having this same issue. I upgraded to IOS 13.1.2 on my iPhone and several iPads, and to Catalina on my iMac and MacBook Air. Ever since then, anything I enter into Notes fails to sync with the other devices. Oddly, AirDrop works fine--I can force a syncronization by opening AirDrop and syncing that way, but it doesn't do it on its own. And, unlike some of the others who have posted here, I'm not having any success in any direction--I've tried making edits on each device, one at a time, to see if it sync'd on the remaining devices, and in each case, it didn't. And P.S. -- My Reminders app is already updated to the latest version. C'mon Apple--help us!!!

Same problem as here. Basically your iPhone is fine and uploading notes to iCloud but notes/ changes to notes made on the Mac do not sync. You can see this best by logging into iCloud.com and seeing that changes from the Mac are not syncing to the server. Each one of us need to contact Apple so they are aware this problem is widespread, even if no solution is currently available, as seems to be the case....

I've been trying to trouble shoot this for the last week. So frustrating.

I created the following folders on each device

Test-iPhone (from the iPhone iOS 13)

Test-Laptop (from Laptop Catalina)

Test-WebInterface (from iCloud.com)

Test-iMac (from Catalina)

Test-iPad (from iPad Pro w/ iPadOS)

Eventually all folders synced except Test-iPad.

I'm getting my iMac and MacBook Pro to sync folders and notes fine with my iPhone 11/iOS13, however my iPad Pro with iPadOS is NOT syncing properly.

It's not Catalina, because it's happening to me, and I am still on Mojave. Notes on my mac are syncing to my phone, but not the other way. I forced it to sync by shutting down my phone and force quitting notes on my mac and it synced, but does not continue to sync.

I have the same problem with Mojave.

Also, while trying to apply some of the tips in this feed, somehow my calendars migrated from my Mac to iCloud, while I only synced through iTunes, leaving nothing on the Mac. iCloud was never activated for anything other than Notes on any of my iOS 12 and 13 devices, but when I tried to upgrade Reminders, everything became worse. I had to reload my Calendar backup on my Mac four times before I gave up and switched Calendar to iCloud. Contacts never synced properly, so now I am still syncing that with iTunes.

Hope this does not make things complicated, but imho this problem lies on the iCloud/Mac side, not on the iOS side.

Something is wrong in the new ipad os.. may sync sometimes but very unreliable and random. This is the problem when it’s built into the OS we 1-have to wait for Apple to notice 2- have to wait for an OS update to fix it.

I can confirm this solution works.

I am on iOS13, and none of my new notes made on my iPhone were being uploaded to iCloud. Mac to iCloud and iCloud to Mac on the opposite, were working fine.

I launched the iOS Reminder apps (which I never use) and got the upgrade screen as indicated in mdeonte's post. I tapped "upgrade now" and right after I could see my phone notes being uploaded to iCloud. To verify this, go to the Notes app on the iCloud website and check if the contents are the same there than on your devices.

Thanks for the solution mdeonte. This is obviously a bug though, I hope Apple is on the ball with this.