Notes not syncing or uploading to iCloud After iOS 13 Update

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.

Darn. Sorry to hear that. I was hoping that it would work. I see some people saying that their notes aren’t syncing despite not having Catalina. So, I think it is a server problem as one person previously mentioned.

I'm not on Catalina yet! Definitely seeing other syncing issues though - besides Notes, my desktop wallpaper was reset to default today. First time that has been a problem since upgrading to new MacBook.

I've done some rigorous testing and my conclusion is that current notes syncing behavior is simply erratic. I have 6-7 devices on which notes used to sync and ever since installing Catalina on my first computer, every device synced only partially. All devices now have a different total number of notes. Difference is around 5-6 between devices, but still not satisfactory.

The most frustrating part is that the most important document/note I've been working on all day yesterday after all somehow ended up in deleted items... And that, I know for sure, is not an operator error.

It doesn't look like a server issue, like many suggested. It seems to be in the software, so, I guess, we need to brace ourselves for quite some time, until updates come out.

adobe.jazz wrote:

ever since installing Catalina on my first computer, every device synced only partially. All devices now have a different total number of notes. Difference is around 5-6 between devices, but still not satisfactory.

Agreed, the Notes not syncing issue got really bad right after installing Catalina to my back up MBP15r (Saturday night), caused a slew of other issues to my machines and mobile devices so I logged that MBP off and turned it off.

A few days later (this morning) syncing returned to somewhat normal.

Same problem here, but since updating to iOS 13. In fact, I updated to Catalina to see if the issue would resolve itself. Talked to apple, they gave all sorts of solutions (all of which I tried). None of them worked. Notes sync to the Mac if I edit or create on the iPhone, but not the other way around. Sometimes it takes 5 hours to sync. Apple should address this in an update, doesn't seem to be user fixable.

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 have noticed laggy updates too in Notes after iOS13. The one I have noticed the most is where I have one note that I will update from different devices, most commonly between an iPad and an iPhone (all on the latest iOS). Sometimes on a computer too.

I just did a test where I had the same note open on the iPhone, iPad, and in a browser based iCloud session on a Mac running Catalina. I added a few words in that note from each device. The iCloud text showed up on both the iPhone and iPad right away, but the iPhone and iPad text took a while to show up on the other devices - and in fact even now 15 minutes later the iPad still does not show the iPhone text.

Weird!

Yes me too. It syncs almost instantly from iCloud website. So the problem is OUTBOUND sync on IOS and IPAD OS 13 13.1 13.1.2

the OS is not pushing the sync. Sometimes restarting notes can force a sync but that too is inconsistent

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.

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... :/

Actually I believe it’s not as simple as that, folks are reporting a whole range of behaviours. In my case, iPhone and iPad and iCloud (via browser) are now all fine sync both ways (but much slower than before ios13) but the moment I put my MAC in the loop (notes on Mac) the sync breaks, which makes it seem (at least in my case) to be a Mac/iCloud problem

Please, can you tell me which iPhones you are using?

I deleted and downloaded Reminders on my SE (iOS 13.1.2), and never saw an update option. Sync works on Reminders from iPhone to iMac (Mojave), but Notes refresh (instantly) from iMac to iPhone only (not using iTunes or Safari).

Opening iCloud in Safari does do something, but I cannot find out what, exactly. Did not help me for Notes (or Contacts, which is a total disaster, and always has been; backups at hand, and never satisfying, losing per person ringtones, etc.).

Thanks

Careful, it did seem to work for me. I did exactly this (while on the phone with Apple Support and reading this forum). It synced everything, but then I created a new note (from iCloud.com), and it happened again, no syncing on the iPhone, Mac working just fine. So it might seem that it works at first, like reminding the iPhone it needs to sync, but it stopped working after a minute for me.