Duplicate notes? Notes not syncing?

Thanks, that worked a treat!

Logging out of iCloud worked for me. One word of caution though: some of the last "notes" I had added did not get pushed to the server before I logged out. I recommend you verify your notes are on the server by checking Notes on a separate device (iPhone, iPad, or iCloud.com via Safari) before you log out. Copy any missing notes to TextEdit and re-apply them after you re-login.

Also, if you encounter a "spinning wheel" for the KeyChain when re-establishing service with iCloud, I found that rebooting my system solved that. There may be other, less brute force ways, but it worked and is good for what ails ya.

same here:

notes duplicates every document every 2sec. while editing... hope yosamite will fix this.

Hey Everyone, I fixed this on my computer, but I'm not sure my fix will work for everyone. Seems like a strange glitch. I've never had this problem until I did a Fresh Install of Yosemite. You read that right; not an upgrade from ML, a fresh install from scratch. After installing Yosemite (and signing into my iCloud account during the install process) I booted up and opened my Notes. Duplicated notes, same results as the OP. Here's what I did to fix it:

I went into System Preferences > iCloud. The window displays a list of things (iCloud Drive, Photos, Mail, Contacts, etc.) with blue checkmarks to the left of each App. In this list, Notes had a blue checkmark next to it. I clicked this checkmark ONCE, and the checkmark flashed off for half a second and then came back on. It should have unchecked and stayed unchecked, but it didn't. I thought that was strange, but instead of clicking it again, I left it on and closed System Preferences and opened my Notes... and voila! My duplicates where gone!

So, I'm not touching any other setting with my Notes ever again! Just leaving it alone now that everything seems to be working! Hahaha! Hope this helps someone.

Checking back in 2014 after reporting IMAP Note Duplicate bug in 2012 (I believe a mainstream scenario in many corporations?). Same bug still there :/

• Setup: Macbook Air Yosemite, iPad Mini iOS 8.1, iPhone 4 iOS 7.x
  • iCloud notes syncing works perfect in all directions (never had duplicates there)
  • IMAP notes syncing works perfect from iPad, iPhone -> Mac, but duplicates every second Mac -> iPhone, iPad. Unusable.
• Tried deleting cache & com.apple.notes which helped iCloud users - no change.

-> Giving up on Apple business software, will migrate to 3rd party Notes app with Dropbox & company cloud support.

Hi there ! I found a soluce with this video on youtube : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHjfVG7iZLk. It work great... But before doing it, think about doing a backup of your notes. ( select the text of the note and do a "drag and drop" of the text in a backup folder and after you finished to do what is explain on the video, just copy and past your saved notes in "Note" ) Enjoy 🙂

For me, the duplicates seem go away on their own after a few days.

But let me check. My iDevices don't agree with my Mac. On my Mac I currently (12/4/14) see:

Note A: 12/1/14 & 11/30/14

Note B: 11/27/14 & 11/16/14

Note C: 10/18/14

Note D: 10/17/14

Note E: 5/23/14

I saw more on my iPhone, but couldn't see the dates, so I switched to my iPad:

Note A: Monday, Monday, Sunday, Saturday

Note B: Thursday, 11/11/14, 11/8/14, 10/3/13

Note C: 10/18/14, 10/18/14

Note D: 10/17/14, 10/9/14

Note E: 5/23/14

These all on my wife's iCloud account.

I think you all guys should just make sure to have the same Default Account for notes on all you Apple devices and you won't be experiencing any of these problems. I had just a problem too and solved just setting the same account as default for my notes on all devices. It happens that you create a note on you Macbook (and it is saved in account_1 - which is the default account of your macbook), then you edit it in your iphone (and it is saved in account_2 - which is the default account of your iphone) so you end up with two copies of the same note in those devices where you added both account_1 and account_2.

It never occurred to me that there was any other way to do it. But I still have the problem.

My partner have been complaining about this for quite some time and never understood how she managed to get this problem - this was driving me mad since I've never experienced this.

I was doing my tests trying to reproduce this by updating notes on her iphone (iOS 8.1), iCloud.com and from Mac OS X (Yosemite) but was unable until I asked if she made sure hits "Done" (in the upper right on the phone) - but turns out she didn't do that all the times.

So did a few tests, from the phone quickly hitting the middle-home button just after an update and the duplicate turned up.

So perhaps the issue could be that when not hitting "Done" but instead switch to another application (or home-screen) the sync starts but gets interrupted and for that reason creates a new copy on iCloud until it has been marked as "Done" .. but returning to notes after a while the application doesn't realise that it is a new version but instead consider this as a new one.

So for you who had this issue may want to try to assure that you always assure you hit "Done" on the iPhone ... or have anyone seen this despite hitting "Done" and leave enough time for the phone to sync?

about a year ago something must have changed in iCloud. all my keyboard shortcuts, notes, contacts were synced across macbook, iPhone and iPod touch perfectly. now the shortcuts are randomly on some devices, contacts decide to disappear intermittently, and the other day i looked in notes and each of the top 5 notes had 3 duplicates!!

I've tried everything (signing out, turning off/on documents and data, etc), and participated in another discussion on the keyboard shortcuts not syncing properly. i believe this issue began when iOS 8 was released. my friend also had all his keyboard shortcuts disappear on his 5s when he updated to iOS 8, this seems to be a very random and annoying glitch- i think within iCloud-, nothing i try works to fix it. i hope apple addresses it soon. 🙂

So freaking sick of this problem. I have no other accounts syncing with notes, only iCloud. And yet I get duplication any time I edit a note from either the phone or the computer. I've deleted cache. I've deleted the container. Nothing works. Been a problem since Notes moved to iCloud. Thanks for the headache, Apple. Crappy notes sync over the last three operating systems. Think different but apparently not better than before.

Same crap in Mavericks AND Yosemite.

How to fix Apple Notes from making so many duplicate copies!

Please be very sure to backup the notes file before you do this and be sure this is only used on Mountain Lion.

Quite Notes app.

Open Finder>Appications>Utilities>Terminal

Enter ‘

rm -rf ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Notes

This clears up the Notes synced to your Mac and on the next start Notes.app will download new copies with no duplicates!

Yay - that worked! Thank you John Hammer! 🙂