My Notes app on my MacBook Pro M1 2021 keeps crashing after updating to Sonoma

Found resolution.

1. Go to iCloud setting on your Mac and switch OFF synchronization of Notes
2. Start Notes
3. Stop Notes
4. and Go to iCloud setting on your Mac and switch ON synchronization of Notes

This force to re-sync notes files/cache with iCloud.

It helped to fix the crashing Notes App.

Boot in Safe Mode and/or pressing Shift when starting Notes App didn't work in my case.

Suc6, hopefully it will help you as well in case you face a crashing Notes App with notes synced with iCloud service.

Hi, thanks for your help.

It seems that I have found the issue.

One of my notes grown quite at size 5,2GB.

I moved that note to Pages and deleted the note from Notes App.

Now it runs stable.

ps: I learn as well that after a re-sync of notes from Icloud it runs stable as well until you restart the Notes App/Reboot your machine. The resolution is really to move the big note to Pages and delete from Notes App.

ps: using a MacBook Pro M1 16GB

I hope this will be helpful for other facing likewise issue.

With the Notes application completely Closes

Hold the SHIFT key and attempt to Launch the application from the Applications folder

This is a Safe Launch of only the application

If still no success >>

1 - Restart in Safe Mode. This will perform a Disk Repair, clear cache files and only load Apple Software, extensions and fonts. The boot up will be slow and can take some time - Normal.

2 - Safe Mode will also eliminate Third Party Software, extensions and drivers from loading. It will only load the Minimum amount of Core Apple Processes to allow the the computer to function at a reduced Level of Performance 

3 - Does the issue present in this mode ?

4 - Sometimes a Safe Boot followed by a Normal Boot will just put things right.

Please report back the success or failure and will offer other possible solutions

Are you running any 3rd party cleaner, optimizer, or anti-virus software by any chance? If so any one of those could be causing the problem. Otherwise....

I read in another post a while back, that a person had a similar problem and it turned out that one of the Notes was corrupt or had a corrupt image in it.

Depending on how many notes you have and how critical they are, it might be worth removing them one by one to see which one MIGHT be the cause.

As a simplistic way to save your notes you deem mission critical, you could copy and paste them into a Pages file and save it in Pages, then restore them later into individual Notes again if needed.

hi,

so-far I known there is no feature to learn about the size of a note.

You can export a note to pages and see its size in pages/finders.

My note was around 5GB in size (video and audio recordings included)

Start with regular used notes.

good luck resolving..

ps: since I exported the large note to pages, and deleted it from Notes... Notes is working stable :)

The Notes application syncs with 1 or more Cloud Based Services.

If 1 which one?

If more than 1, disable 1 cloud based Service and test

Repeat the above only change other service

Hi, it's 15 August 24 and my notes continue to be unresponsive on my Mac, running Sonoma 14.5. I tried all the troubleshooting and it works, but only temporarily. Any suggestions?

Troubleshooting tried that works very temporarily:-

1. Go to iCloud setting on your Mac and switch OFF synchronization of Notes
2. Start Notes
3. Quit Notes
4. and Go to iCloud setting on your Mac and switch ON synchronization of Notes

Sorry the issue persists.

One 3 different M1 / M2 Computers I own and operate.

Each using macOS 14.0 Sonoma and 1 iPhone with iOS 17.0.2.

All using only iCloud on the same User ID Account

Can not duplicate this issue 😔 with Notes

Then have a suggestion ;

1 - Get Support Choose a product and we’ll find you the best solution.Start now and open an Apple Support Ticket as they are Apple Employees to deal will these types of issues .

issues returned.. Notes unfortunately not stable. Hope Apple will look into it and resolve soon.

Tried above mentioned advise but no succes. Notes keeps crashing.. it loads but after approx. 20 seconds it crashes. With our without using the Notes program. Issue reported to Apple. Hoping a fix will be soon available. Notes is one of my key apps.

Yes, same issue here. Honestly, Apple updates have been excessively buggy across most devices. I am so scared to update anything now because it seems like their devs are not re-checking their work or their UAT is just a joke. I am not paying $$$$ for such poor user experience. Get your act right Apple!!!!!

Notes are synced with iCloud. Works fine on iPad and iPhone but not on MacBook running latest oS

Notes for iCloud on latest Chrome (Version 117.0.5938.149 (Official Build) (arm64)) crashes as well.

So far it is working on Safari.

That works, thanks @Bertrand!

Oké great!