All the notes on my iPhone disappeared

Hi there annieluh1,

If your notes are missing, you'll want to start by making sure your iPhone is updated to the latest software version, which is iOS 16.6. You can see the currently installed version by going to Settings > General > About > Software Update. If needed, learn how to update your iPhone here: Update your iPhone or iPad - Apple Support

Next, your notes may have been stored in a different account. Follow the steps below to see if they help recover your missing notes:

Check your account settings

If you store your notes with a third-party account or email service, like Gmail or Yahoo, check your settings:

1. In the Settings app, tap Mail.

2. Tap Accounts, then tap the email account that you want to check.

3. Make sure that Notes is on.

If you use Notes with more than one email account, just repeat the steps for each account. If your account is missing, learn how to add an email account to your device.

You'll find those steps and additional guidance here: If you're missing notes on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch - Apple Support

To prevent this from happening in the future, you can use iCloud Notes: Set up iCloud for Notes on all your devices - Apple Support

Take care.

I managed to bring my notes back by going into Settings>Notes>Accounts and then clicking on each of my email addresses in turn and toggling Notes to on. For some reason they had all flipped to off which was why nothing was showing in my notes app.

Quick Easy solution I’ll share, when I updated the software it turned off “On My IPhone” Account. Go to settings>Notes and make sure it’s ON.

Once I did that, allllll my notes were back (oddly in the Gmail folder which was empty before).

Why did the update turn it off? Anyone’s guess.

2024-03-05 iPhone 11ProMax

My Notes titles were there but no text inside. My phone had hiccuped and froze for a few seconds some minutes earlier.

What worked was using Chrome to get into the Yahoo account I used to back up that folder of Notes. There is a Notes folder and my Notes were in there but in Read Only. I opened a note and looked at it. When I checked back in the Notes app, it had returned to normal.

Now I’m going to use the iCloud folder to save Notes instead of Yahoo mail, and email notes to myself more often. I’ll experiment with the On My iPhone folder too.

So I had this issue and I don’t know if it will help you, but mine had disappeared after I had deleted an unused email off my phone, turns out that is where all my notes were stored. So maybe checking that all your email addresses are linked properly and have the notes option turned on in the settings.

I had to do the update but I did not have enough storage. I went to manage the storage and found that all the GIF's I sent and someone sent me were all saved. I deleted everything, I was able to do the update. I went directly to notes and found them reappearing before my eyes! I was driving myself NUTS!

This happened to me and it was because my iCloud storage was full AND my phone storage was full. I deleted some photos, bought more iCloud storage, and my notes all came back.

I had to agree to the new iCloud Terms and Conditions and then they all came back.

This worked! Also had to log in to my iCloud account.

I tried 2 things. I changed my Settings for Notes to Save to iPhone. That did nothing that I could see. But the last big thing I had done on my phone was delete tons of Gmail cuz I don’t use that account. So I went to Gmail and searched for one of the titles that had been on notes and it was buried in Gmail! Have no idea how that happened but was happy to find some of my Notes. Now I can’t make fun of my pen&paper friends anymore.

This happened to me today, zero notes on my notes app, even the “on my iphone” folder. Found out that iCloud was full. I deleted files to free up space on iCloud and then my notes started to pop up and eventually everything loaded again.

I was on the phone with apple for about two hours. Here is what worked for me, I also do not recall if I had my notes turned on to save to iCloud or my phone.

we went to general and erased my phone, turned it back on and restored it from a previous backup, I used a back up from Dec 30 as that was the oldest to pick from.

But when the phone is done restoring you’ll need to turn on airplane mode right away, turn setting on in notes to save to phone. Then you may see your notes (I did). I then took photos of all my notes, I heard some copy and paste and create a new note saved to their phone but I wouldn’t even trust that.

while still in airplane mode, if I went to edit one of the notes it would then disappear. When I turned airplane mode off the note showed back up, and then all my notes went away again besides the ones that I did edits to while in airplane mode.

It is strange and I am not sure what is happening, apple also could not tell me what is happening either.

Hope this helps someone.

If you didn’t do anything and suddenly your notes disappear, it could be because of a glitch.

If you store your notes on the iCloud folder then you’d just have to refresh in some ways and it’ll come back. But if your notes are stored on the “on my iPhone” folder, then the only way to get it back (as far as i know) is if you have an icloud backup of your whole device, then you have to erase your phone and restore it using a backup of an earlier version of your phone (one where your notes hopefully still exist). If you know the date of the last time you saw your notes, you can try to use a backup that’s around that time. Unfortunately i think it is still a gamble on whether you will get your notes back or not.

I had 800+ notes on the “on my iphone” folder and thankfully i was able to restore it that way, good luck everyone.

are your notes on the icloud folder or on the “on my iphone” folder. If it’s on the icloud folder the data should still be there you can check on the icloud website. But if it’s in “on my iphone” folder, it might be deleted due to a glitch, and you might need to restore a backup of your phone. Check my reply for more details. Hopefully you can retrieve it.

The only way I have found to access where all your notes are (the local note folder) is to ask Siri to take a note you can put anything in there. Then when the note is complete and on the screen press it. After press back and you will be in the local note file and be able to access the notes. One of the many reasons my next phone will not be an iPhone.