Notes not syncing or uploading to iCloud After iOS 13 Update

Ok, I thought I'd weather this one out somehow -- yes, notes are not syncing, etc. I though I'd use them carefully, and may be only on one device, but looks like I have to give up for now completely. Because I started experiencing things that go way beyond simple syncing. Concurrent edits are now conflicting and deleting things. I had one not disappear on me -- eventually found it in Recently Deleted. But when I couldn't find my main ToDo list this morning, I really panicked.

In order to recover it, I switched off wifi first. Then carefully opened another laptop in hopes that it didn't sync. Found the note and made a text copy of it elsewhere. Then I turned on the Wifi...

This is too much. I'm assuming that others are experiencing similar issues and longer it takes to fix it, more data and trust will be lost in this confusion. Apple, you guys are letting us down big time this time.

No, new supplemental update does not solve the Notes issue. I upgraded my Mac mini, iPhone and iPad. Still not properly syncing. The 'Reminders' trick works for one sync, after that it stops syncing again. I still have an old iMac, not yet upgraded to Catalina, and a MacBook, which I can't access until end of this week. Maybe both of those also need to be upgraded to Catalina. Anyhow I won't update my iMac, it's the only Mac which allows me to scan on my Xerox Workcenter 6605. Scanning on that scanner is also broken on Catalina.

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.

Sorry to hear that.

But I SHUT DOWN, not rebooted, my iMac.

Then I turned off all iOS devices completely (Power off) and waited a few minutes.

Started up iOS devices only, waited a few minutes, again.

Finally I started up the iMac, and it worked.

Keeping my fingers crossed. I am on Mojave, but I still believe it is/was iOS/server caused.

PS: I am based in Europe (Amsterdam). If it is a server issue, your mileage may vary?

Deep breath. I downloaded the latest (as in the past 24 hours) updates to iPhone, iPad, and Catalina. And it works! Notes are syncing across ALL devices! And even VoiceMemos now downloads recording from Watch to iPhone. So far so good!

I had the same issue. After the today's last update to Catalina, iOS, and iPad OS (13.1.3), it is working.

I used iCloud in Safari to check everything that was not synchronized and copy-paste there, then I turned off and on the Notes sync on iCloud configuration on each device MacBook, iPhone, and iPad; then sync started to work.

In the beginning, it was a bit slow, but I'm happy to say that it's working now.

Yes, like others, I regret upgrading to Catalina. Even with the third update today (16 October), the notes on my Mac will not sync with notes on my iPad or iPhone (yes, I've updated both of these devices. I've tried some of the suggestions in this post, nothing works. So, what DOES work, is I no longer use the Apple Notes program. I like it, but need to have this sync with all my devices, so I'm now using Microsoft Notes. Syncs with no problems.

Hey so you like Microsoft OneNote? I went back to Evernote when Apple Notes broke this week — plus had to erase my whole computer to go back to a working OS.

Is OneNote a keeper so far? Or will you be trying other alternatives?

i may try it as well. Notes doesn’t have a reasonable TXT or CSV export so I’m reluctant to go back after this.

Why should it work with the new updates. This issue is not even mentioned in the fixes. So Apple in my opinion is not acknowledging the problems they have caused.

Many of the people here that complain about the sync not working, have been migrated from Evernote or some other tool in the past to iCloud. I consider these people power users with hundreds or thousands of notes. We trust on this in our workflow on a daily basis. When it breaks it is bad, but my frustration is more about the fact that they do not acknowledge the issue.

This might be well be the starting for me migrating away from iCloud service and only use the basic components you need to use anyway. The fact that Apple does not provide any export methods makes this transition a bit more complicated, but I have seen some web page describing how you can leverage automation with some Apple Script to extract the notes and import them into Evernote or other notes app.

Let’s see if the updates fixes my issues. And hope this never occurs in the future and Apple, although silent on the subject have seen our comments and understand the struggles we have been through as “beta” release testers.

The previous poster is correct.. even though i have spoken to apple and many other have, the issue was not mentioned in todays update... As of now.. notes in IOS are still not updating to the cloud and migrating back down to my MBP.... Notes created in Catalina are in fact showing up in iCloud.. Im disappointed to say the least in one of the worlds largest company releasing this bullshit.... I am going to check out evernote today....

Thank you!!!! Notes had become integral to my daily workflow, so I share your pain. Cannot believe I had to go back to Evernote yesterday...and that we’re discussing a Microsoft product to rescue us from a sync break. The world is upside down this week😂❤️

After updating my iOS devices to 13.1.3 and macOS devices to 10.15 supplemental, my iCloud Notes are syncing again! I made sure to updates all my devices (multiple iPhone, iPad, Macs) and shut them off immediately. They started them back up. At first, typing on iOS didn't sync over to the Mac. But after a few device restarts, it started up again.

If these updates don't work for you, a potential work around that I was using (prior to the update) was Handoff. For example, when I was updating iCloud Notes on my Mac and wanted it to sync on my iPhone, I'd open that up--the little Notes icon would show up on my Mac dock. I'd click on that icon and then my iPhone Notes would update. Not ideal but at least you're getting your notes updated.

So this issue is definitely NOT fixed by the latest iOS, iPad OS, and Mac Catalina updates. I updated all 3, turned Notes and reminders on/off on iPhone, iPad, and Mac, and still have issues. Apple is seriously blowing it with their most valuable and most loyal customers - those of us with multiple Apple devices who are power-users each and every day. I’m blown away that they’ve screwed this up so badly, and completely agree with all of the other comments on how detrimental this is to mission-critical workflows. Notes not syncing, getting lost, or even delayed syncing...it doesn’t matter, it’s all a dealbreaker!

OneNote works super well, but I was really hoping to stay within the Apple ecosystem. Now I need to divert back to OneNote for awhile...recommend the rest of you do the same for now.

Last thing - thanks to everyone on here who continues to track the issue and share both ideas and experiences. Now if only Apple would chime in and give a sh**!

Ditto to what every one on here has said.

I first noticed the syncing problem when my iPhone was updated to ios 13 and 13.1, but was still running High Sierra on my Mac. I hoped the upgrade to Catalina would fix the problem, but a no go there.

My solution has been to airdrop my notes between devices for now since that's faster and cleaner than an email, and I don't want to migrate all my notes over just yet... We'll see as time goes on though. Hope this gets fixed soon!

I've had all of above happen. Notes not syncing, almost all my pinned notes became unpinned, few notes somehow got moved to "recently deleted" folder...

I know Apple is trying to make things slick and simple, but this failure again shows up that we're not there yet. I'm talking about ability to manually backup notes as files -- there is no such function at all. We're at the mercy of apple to retain our notes. We can't import, we can't manually trigger a sync (which, by the way, is a huge irritant in Photos -- waiting around for sync to happen at some seemingly random moment is infuriating).

Apple, take a step back. These things are not as reliable as you imagine them to be. Give us old-school "Save/Import/Open" interface to file system. Introduce an option to manually trigger sync (preferably with ability to see what's happening in the process). Those of us who were born before smartphone era would really appreciate that.