Mac iCloud Note not showing up on iPhone

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Mac iCloud Note not showing up on iPhone

I noticed some - but not all - iCloud notes on my Mac would not sync to my iPhone. So to test the devices, I created a new note on my Mac. It showed up as an iCloud Note on the Mac. It never showed up on my iPhone. I checked iCloud.com, & it was indeed there. Then I created a note on the iPhone, & it never showed up on iCloud, nor the Mac. So I figured the culprit was the iPhone. I took the next steps to rule out any settings issues the iPhone: In Settings, the "Default Account" was indeed set to iCloud, “Apps using iCloud” & “Sync this iPhone" for Notes were set to “on", I restarted the phone to no avail, I logged out of iCloud on the phone & all notes disappeared, then I signed back into iCloud: Sync began & notes loaded back up, with sync wheel spinning for several minutes & stopping at the same 48 notes instead of the 52 on my Mac/iCloud.com, missing the same 4 notes. Also, the test-note created on the iPhone, still didn’t sync up to the Mac nor iCloud. To emphasize, some recent iCloud notes outside the iPhone are not syncing into the device, & new - iCloud-designated - notes created on the iPhone are not syncing out of the device, no matter all the setting turned to “on” or toggled, nor reboots, nor sign-in & out of iCloud! Have I missed any steps? If not a bug, wasn’t Apple supposed to be intuitive?

iPhone XR

Posted on Nov 30, 2022 9:49 AM

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Answer 1

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Ali Soltani Author

Level 1

43 points

Dec 5, 2022 10:51 AM in response to nathan430

Made the call to Apple Support. Turned out my iPhone had not backed up since a week ago, indicating lack of storage space, presumably due to increase from a 1.9 GB backup a week ago to a required 13+ GB (presenting an entirely different issue as to what raised the requirement by over 10 GB in a week), on my 5 GB iCloud storage space. I was recommended to buy more iCloud space. But to determine whether the iCloud space was the reason for incomplete syncing of Notes, I deleted the iCloud data for most apps & then turned off most non-Apple apps from “using iCloud”. This reduced the required backup space for the phone & increased the available iCloud space, & after several minutes, the missing iCloud.com Notes showed up on the phone.

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Answer 2

nathan430

Community Specialist

Dec 3, 2022 7:26 AM in response to Ali Soltani

Hey there, Ali Soltani,

Thanks so much for using Apple Support Communities. This definitely sounds like unexpected behavior, any notes that are stored in iCloud should sync between all of your devices if the settings are in place. Since some of those notes are syncing, we think it's safe to say that your settings are good to go.

The first thing we want to recommend is that you make sure your iPhone and Mac are both running the latest versions of their respective operating systems. To update your Mac, follow these steps: Update macOS on Mac - Apple Support. For iPhone, the steps can be found here: Update your iPhone or iPad - Apple Support.

Once you're up to date, if the issue continues to occur then we want to recommend that you reach out to Apple directly so that they can get some more information and see what might be going on. You can start by reaching out here, just follow the prompts for your issue: Apple Support

We hope this does the trick for you!

Cheers.

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Mac iCloud Note not showing up on iPhone

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