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Notes app

okay so I was looking through my storage and found that my notes app takes a lot of space, and I want to delete the app entirely. But I want to make sure that my saved notes are still there after I delete and download it again. Would it delete all my notes if I deleted the app?

iPhone 13 Pro Max, iOS 15

Posted on Jul 30, 2022 7:57 PM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Jul 31, 2022 1:39 AM

See the article Delete built-in Apple apps from the Home Screen on your iOS 14 or later or iPadOS device or Apple Watch - Apple Support

When you delete a built-in app from your device, you also delete any related user data and configuration files. This can affect things like related system functions or information on your Apple Watch.

The notes will be deleted from iPhone and iCloud , if notes is occupying iCloud storage space delete notes Delete and recover notes on iCloud.com - Apple Support

3 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Jul 31, 2022 1:39 AM in response to yasumi160

See the article Delete built-in Apple apps from the Home Screen on your iOS 14 or later or iPadOS device or Apple Watch - Apple Support

When you delete a built-in app from your device, you also delete any related user data and configuration files. This can affect things like related system functions or information on your Apple Watch.

The notes will be deleted from iPhone and iCloud , if notes is occupying iCloud storage space delete notes Delete and recover notes on iCloud.com - Apple Support

Aug 17, 2022 5:26 AM in response to yasumi160

The Notes App without any notes does not take a lot of space, so keeping the Notes and deleting the App won’t reclaim much space.


One solution is to move your notes to your Mac (saved locally on your Mac), turn of Notes in iCloud and then delete the iOS/iPadOS App. Then on iOS, look in iCloud->Manage Storage. As you have moved Notes to your Mac, and deleted the Notes App, there should not be any space allocated to Notes. If there is, delete it.


I had a problem with Notes taking up a lot of space and my issue was that I had recently inadvertently copied an App to Notes. I deleted the Note, but iCloud never released that Note from storage.


I solved my problem by:

1) On my MacBook, Moved all Notes from iCloud to On My Mac

2) In System Preferences, iCloud, turned Off Notes

3) On all my iOS devices, turned Off Notes from iCloud

4) On my MacBook,, looked into ~/Library/Group Containers/group.com.apple.notes/ and in the Accounts/LocalAccount/Media Folder, looked for large files and found the offending file attachment is still there.

5) Deleted the offending files in the Accounts/LocalAccount/Media Folder

6) Then looked in iCloud->Manage Storage and deleted Notes (there shouldn’t be anything there as I already moved all Notes to my Mac)

7) Moved the Notes previously moved in 1) to my MacBook back to iCloud

Notes app

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