My notes are not syncing between Mac and iphone - I have tried every suggestion for every article I could find - checked all setteings dozens of times -
HELP!???
[Re-Titled by Moderator]
iPhone 7, iOS 15
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):
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!
[Edited by Moderator]
PROBLEM SOLVED
This worked for me too.
For what it is worth, I have an older Mac and newer iPhone and newer iPad. Notes on the Mac is an older version of Notes compared to Notes on iPhone and iPad. It seems impossible to tell exactly what Notes version — not OS version - you have on each device BUT if one device is older, it stops some notes syncing across all devices. In my case if I create a note using Tags or tables on the iPad it does not sync -even between devices that could use Tags, because one device does not use Tags - in my case my old Mac. A message does pop up saying This note in not supported on some of your devices. It means not supported on ALL your devices and so won’t work on ANY device - that’s just ff’ing great, if you ask me. I’ll try to disconnect the Mac from all accounts used by Notes and only use Notes by logging into iCloud and see what that does. In the meantime, I’ll keep the notes in Notes very simple.
UPDATE using new features on new iPad, DOES sync on new iPhone. But not on older Mac - so I’ll browse to iCloud on the Mac to access Notes to see if the new features are syncing there.
I just figured out that a note will not sync to iCloud if it begins with a number (i.e. if the title of the note begins with a number). Seems like it must begin with a letter. Strange.
For me, the issue showed up after signing out of my id and signing back in. Once I opened notes and turned on sync nothing happened. I went back in, turned it off and turned it right back on and everything loaded.
Thank you so much bjlappleuser for this tip. No one could have guessed this could have been the problem with this defect. I deleted all my PDFs and restarted my application and VIOLA !!! Hope Apple is taking a note of this concern.
To sync NOTES between the MacBook and iPhone, turn NOTES off and turn back on. NOTES will be synced.
Thank you this worked for me - my Notes on my iPad were being entered in an outlook (?) folder and not iCloud. Moved the notes and it works
Try creating new folder and add new notes, for me, it suddenly worked
What version of MacOS and Notes? You may need a different solution.
would like to add my voice to the chorus of frustration. iphone & ipad notes not syncing with laptop (macbook air bought this past winter). if I turn off icloud sync on laptop, then turn it back on, they do load -- note by note, painstakingly. I must do this anytime I change a note on a mobile device, if I want to see it on my laptop. this is making me crazy.
Those steps do not fix the problem on my devices. My iOS device (iPhone 13) reliably syncs to iCloud and my Mac M2 Pro receives those syncs. But it will NO LONGER work in the opposite direction: A change to an existing or new Note that is made on the Mac will not sync to my IOS device. Often when I try to solve this issue by editing a note to try to force a refresh, a duplicate Note appears making 2 identical notes, but the Mac-to-iOS sync still won't update either note in iOS. This has started happening awhile ago during recent updates of macOS Ventura, now on 13.4.1. My use is to create a Note or update an existing Note on macOS, then access that edited Note on iOS when I'm away from the computer. It always lets me down when I open the note on iOS and find the update I made on the Mac is never there anymore.
I'm having the exact same problem with Notes. I have a MacBook Pro 2021 (M1 Max) with Ventura 13.5. My iPhone is 11Pro. The Mac receives any notes I make on the phone, but changes on the Mac are not being received on the phone. I've tried every recommended option for fixing this problem – without success. I use the Notes app for work, and I can't afford to not have my Mac notes syncing with those on my phone.
As another data point, I also saw Notes stop syncing after upgrading one of my laptops to Sonoma.
I haven't found a solution to the problem yet.
Edit: Logging out of iCould on the non-Sonoma mac and logging back in pulled down notes again, but changes after the initial download of notes are not synced.
WARNING: Do not attempt these steps unless you're willing to lose all the changes that haven't been synced! I signed out and signed back in via Notes>Accounts>icloud and sign in, as described by mwmom. It may have worked in terms of getting future changes synced, BUT it did not capture all the changes that had been made on my Macbook Pro for the last couple of weeks (since it stopped syncing)!! This is so bad, I'd made so many notes, and now they're gone.
I've done this, and Notes are still not syncing. It's as if something broke during an update.
I have:
My notes are not syncing between Mac and iPhone
