My notes are not syncing between Mac and iPhone

I finally solved this frustrating Notes syncing problem.

For the last few years Apple Notes across my device (MAC, iPhone, iPad) would not sync correctly. I had over 650 Notes, and many of them had attachments, e.g., pictures, links to subdirectories, and PDFs. And I was sharing some notes. The problems I experienced included some Notes not syncing; always a different number of notes on different devices (a difference of 30+ notes across synced devices); occasionally Notes updates would not replicate across devices (VERY bad). And I tried ALL the Apple recommended approaches and various online suggestions, including deleting ALL Notes on a device then re-syncing from Apple Cloud to refresh the sync. But despite many attempts, I just could not get my Notes to correctly replicate across my devices nor stay synced afterwards. It was a big mess and causing me a lot of grief.

Here’s how I solved my problems - which required investing over 6 hours meticulously reviewing the contents of *every single Note*. Prior to performing the activities below I deleted all Notes from my iPhone and iPad and then worked on the Notes on my MAC (I wanted to force the Notes on Cloud to sync with the changes below):

• I removed ALL embedded PDFs. Someone else mentioned they fixed Notes by doing this and sometimes PDF files are large, so I figured go after the big rocks. I found and deleted about 50 PDFs (some 25-50 pages). 
• I deleted ALL embedded TIFF images. I hardly ever *use* TIFF files anymore, so was surprised to see them - but they tend to be large.
• I deleted old, obsolete Notes files - brought down my Notes count from 650 to 500. To me, this is a stupid waste of time and I would not even think of doing this if not desperate, but since I was trolling through every Note anyway I figured it couldn’t hurt to cleanup a bit.
• I deleted the FEW embedded NUMBERS spreadsheets I had - figuring those might be Notes complications worth avoiding.
• While I left most embedded pictures (PNG, JPG or HEIC), I did remove some pics when there was, say, more than a dozen in one note. For the record, I organize most my pics elsewhere so there were only few hundred pics total across all my Notes but I cleaned out obsolete stuff.
• I deleted or resolved any Notes ambiguities - i.e., the 1st line of a Note is used for sorting and - I worry - possibly syncing, so it turns out I had a few ambiguities (i.e., Notes with the same Title line) - in one case, a half-dozen with the same name. I figure couldn’t hurt to clean that up.
• I reduced the number of shared notes (meaning shared with my family members on different Apple ID's) down to the bare minimum (less than 10) - I had about 20 shared Notes files. (My last resort w/b to unshare all.)

All considered, my effort was focused on 1) reducing raw space, 2) removing complexity, 3) eliminating ambiguities. And it worked. What a relief!

Suggestion for Apple Notes developers (if listening): Please add a “Sort by Size” option under Notes/View menu - if I’d have had this, I surely would simply have sorted by size and focused on the problem children first. My guess is that I could have solved my problems in a few minutes (rather than hours).

Good luck Notes users - I hope this helps!

• Benoit

[Edited by Moderator]

SOLUTION: After hours of trying to fix the issue of my iphone notes not syncing to my Macbook Pro, I finally found the solution. Open Notes on your computer, go to File>Accounts>icloud and sign in through that method. Then restart your computer.

I kept going to system preferences>icloud on my Mac and it still wouldn't work, but when I opened Notes>Account and then got to icloud, success! Hope this helps someone else!

Hello,

I’m sorry your notes are not syncing. To be able to sync your notes from iPhone to Mac, you must be signed into the same Apple ID, have Notes enabled for iCloud in Settings on both devices, and keep all your notes on iCloud, not under On My iPhone or On My Mac. Follow these steps to make sure all is set correctly:

For both Mac & iPhone

1. Open Settings on your Mac and iPhone
2. Click on your name at the top on your iPhone and Mac.
3. On your Mac, make sure Notes is checked. On your iPhone, go to iCloud, then toggle on Notes.

iPhone

1. Go to Settings
2. Tap Notes
3. Tap Default Account
4. Select iCloud

Open Notes on both devices, then go to Folders. Make sure your notes are all in iCloud, not under On My iPhone, or On My Mac.

I hope this helps!

Sincerely,

Leah

[Edited by Moderator]

I have had similar issues for a while now, notes not synching from computer to iPhone and notes on iCloud even though logged in to the same iCloud account.

Today I decided to delete group.com.apple.notes that stores all cashed Notes data on the computer. It can found here ~/Bibliotek/Group Containers/group.com.apple.notes/ (Before deleting it make a copy of the whole folder just in case you need to restore it.)

Before I deleted the folder I logged out the computers Notes from iCloud and quit the application.

After deleting the content in group.com.apple.notes I started Notes and linked the iCloud account to it again and let it sync all the notes. I have around 1500 notes so it will take sometime :).

After the syncing was done it seems to work again, I have tested to creat a note in the computer and that sync to iPhone and the other way around also. Both edit and or create a new note

I happened upon this thread when I was experiencing sync issues between iOS and macOS.

I discovered my own problem was that the note in question had been created on iOS 16, and was syncing to macOS 10.14 (Mojave) that does not support # Tags.

I knew this, but had accidentally let a # creep into the note – Notes had automatically turned it into a Tag, and therefore it wasn't syncing to my Mac.

As soon as I put a space between the “#” and the next character, Notes no longer recognised it as a Tag and it synced across straight away.

A niche response for the tech laggards among you!

I had the same exact problem. This is what I did to resolve it.

On laptop

1. Restarted laptop
2. Settings > Account Name> iCloud: Turn off Notes
3. Close the Notes app
4. Settings > Account Name> iCloud: Turn on Notes
5. Open Notes App

It's also worth noting that I did the same thing on my iPhone first...but that didn't fix the problem. Don't know if it was part of the overall solution though, so it might be worth including in your process.

WARNING: When I did this, the notes app on my laptop synced to my cloud files (same as iPhone) and I lost any edits to Notes that only existed on my laptop. I also lost any Notes that we only on my laptop and had not yet synced properly to the cloud. For me, it was a relatively small price to pay to get my notes back in sync across devices.

I tried everything (and I mean everything suggested in this feed and by ChatGPT), but the solution for me was simple--I moved all folders I had placed into subdirectories under other folders (Like, "Reading" as the encompassing folder then subfolders using the names of magazines or news orgs. or websites) into the "All iCloud" folder. Apparently, the "Notes" app does not like folders in sub-directories. That solved the problem across all my devices.

Ok, after trying many things, I guess found a solution.

First, the problem was very similar to the initial case, endless spinning synchronization icon and unreliable note numbers on various devices (Mac, iPad and iPhone).

The main reason was I guess, I had imported approximately 3.000 notes from Evernote as an ENEX file. The notes were successfully imported to Apple Notes on my MacBook Pro, successfully synchronised with iCloud and iPhone. But I had an endless sync icon on my iPad even after days..

What I did, I found the Exporter app from App Store which targets to export Apple notes of local folders as ".md" files with separate attachement folders. This app exported my whole library where ~10s of notes were "failed to export". After Exporter finished operation, it generates a log page where you can see the export failed note titles.

I found all these failed exports (many of them were notes with embedded TIFFs) and removed from Apple Notes, the iPad finished synchronization and all total number of notes on various devices were same.

Hope this small trick works for you.

When this happened most recently for me, it was because iOS had just updated terms/services that I had not clicked through on my phone. It blocked syncing of Notes across all devices. Settings > AppleID > Agree to terms/services; then closing Notes on all devices and reopening did the trick.

After spending hours on the phone with apple support, we finally fixed the problem.

Go to 🍎menu>system settings> select your name top left

icloud>Notes (which is under show more apps for me)

Not only should it be toggled to "on", click on it and toggle "sync on mac"

Turn it off for 30 sec. then switch it back on. That is worked for me. If your notes disappear in future, try this again.

Hope this helps!

Thanks! That's a great working tip!

Additionally, if anyone is still facing issues even after trying your method, another step to consider is toggling the iCloud sync option. Go to System Preferences > Apple ID > iCloud on your Mac, and then uncheck and recheck the box next to Notes. This can sometimes refresh the sync process and resolve any lingering issues. Remember to do this on both your iPhone and Mac for a consistent experience. This method often helps in re-establishing a proper sync connection.

Also had the same issue, what resolved it for me is that my iCloud was full so I had to delete some stuff. Once you delete stuff and make room, it will sync again.

On your mac:

System Settings > Click on your name at the top > iCloud > Manage Account Story and then choose what to delete.

March 12, 2024

I had the same issue, notes created on MacBook Pro M2 with Sonoma were syncing to iPhone 11, but edits/notes created on iPhone 11 not syncing back to MacBook. I had tried toggling Notes in iCloud settings from Mac but no luck.

MY SOLUTION:

Check for PDF or other Image file attachments at the top of the note, and edit to put at least one line of text at the top of the note (which will be the title text of the note). To me it seems there is a discrepancy between how iOS and MacOS handle the title of a note when an attachment is at the top.

I sorted the notes by Title and started comparing the Notes folder where the count on the MacBook was 5 higher than the iPhone. I found a few missing and would AirDrop the missing note from my iPhone to my MacBook to at least get the note over.

Then I found a note with a PDF file at the top of the note. The MacBook was sorting the title of the note by the filename of the PDF file (which was numeric). But the iPhone was sorting by the first line of text below the PDF file in the note. I edited the note on iPhone to move the PDF file below the text I wanted to be the title of the note, and all of the sudden it sync'd to my mac.

I hope this is helpful to anyone else out there with this issue!

I had this problem between an older model iphone and a new macbook. The solution I found was in user error - I had been saving all my notes on my phone under the Iphone Folder instead of Icloud. Once I selected all notes and pressed "move" it allowed me to transfer them into the icloud folder and when I reopened the notes app on my mac, they were there! Simple fix, but as a new user to mac, it wasn't obvious. I found this solution after finding this community post and trying some of the recommended actions. I do appreciate the support and hope maybe my resolution helps someone too!

I had this issue between my Macs

I had to use icloud to move my notes between macs

after logging into icloud and enabling syncing of notes they still weren't syncing between my macs

I realized that you need to manually move the notes on your laptop into icloud

to force the notes to upload quickly to icloud I had to do the following:

keep in mind though this gets rid of all the folder structure you had created in the notes on your laptop -_-

• create a new folder on the icloud section of the notes app - folder name used: Imported Notes
• select all notes that were on my mac - go to all notes on mac
• right click to move the notes on my mac to the newly created icloud folder: icloud > Imported Notes
• to keep your folder structure move each individual folder to the icloud section

all the notes on my mac that were created prior to logging into icloud were immediately uploaded to icloud and I was able to see them across my macs

I hope this helps someone out there that also didn't know this

sending you all resilience vibes as you get through these mac issues >.<