Why do I need a new email for iCloud notes?

Yep. But that's not the whole story. Notes under OS X gives me free choice of any of my gmail accounts to use for notes sysncing. And it works perfectly between my macbook air and my mac pro. On the iphone however as stated above it insists on creation of a new account. Even though it is signed into an icloud account already.

Now I don't know if this is apple trying to string arm us into an icloud email which is actually under the domain .icloud.com or just an oversight. Either way I think your Apple Genius was blowing smoke.

It's very annoying.

You can also setup Notes to sync with GMail on an iOS device as well although I found it to be pretty clunky to view them on the net, and of course it also requires a Gmail account. You can turn on Notes in Settings/Mail, Contacts, Calendars selecting your Gmail account. With multiple accounts enabled Notes settings will have an option to set the default account and the app should show an Account button.

That's not my experience Stephen...Following your instructions, I get precisely the same result on the iPhone as on the MBP, where I am forced to create an *@iCloud email account before Notes will sync across my devices. While I take your point that it can be a totally unused (redundant) account, I shouldn't have to give more of my personal info over to Apple, and have just one more email address to manage (remember, worry if Privacy is being compromised etc etc).

😠

This thread is almost 2 years old and a lot has changed in iOS as well as how Google manages notes not to mention how it wil sync with ios. I'm not sure what additional information you expect to hand over to Apple to setup the iCloud email. If you already have an Apple ID they already have all the info they need. You are simply turning on the email account that is already reserved for your use. The fact is most note apps with syncing capabilities will require you to setup an account, almost always tied to an email account.

Optionally you could use Evernote which can be setup using any email account, but you'll have to setup a new account with them too.

Well regardless, this was a useful discussion as I myself was indeed stumped by this phenomenon just now, so thanks to all involved for introducing/explaining the inner workings of why this issue exists etc. As it is, I only really use 'notes' as temporary 'stickies' for jotting down things; and there's '1password' for anything important etc. It's interesting however that there is seemingly an additional 'email' account waiting to be activated as there is indeed occasions where a backup email account can be useful (i.e. For being able to retrieve access to other email accounts etc), so it's useful to know; but despite all this, I only tried to enable it purely because it was the only thing that wasn't 'synced' and for the largely irrelevant/unneeded activation step, I think it can simply continue to remain blissfully unaware in a 'cyber coma' for the moment! 😁 Thanks for the heads up anyway guys/girls 😉

And here it is: 30 Jan 2015, with a MacBook Pro on Yosemite, and other devices running iOS 8, was signed into an existing iCloud account, tried to access Notes, and had to create a new iCloud email account to do so!!! So, what happens to my previous iCloud email??

How is this still a problem three years later?!

I'm also still having the same problem. and I'm not interested in making a new mail account just to sync notes between my iphone and my macbook(s).

Does anyone know another way to access and sync the notes that doesn't require this stupid mechanic?

I have to admit I'm a little shocked as with all the major updates to the 'Notes' app via IOS 9, I assumed this issue was a thing of the past. It's strange Apple would allow a prehistoric problematic design decision to continue to haunt IOS through repeated major updates. Creating an unnecessary email address basically just increases your spam footprint and is thereby something I'd avoid at all costs, but I can understand your frustration. They need to remove this necessity to protect the privacy of users as it's important and clearly part of Apples agenda. Hopefully they'll get around to it eventually (although after 3 years I'm not going to hold my breath)!

I had the same problem when I changed phones to an iPhone 6. I had notes on my old iPhone under my existing gmail address. On the new phone I turned on notes in the icloud settings thinking this would bring up all my old notes because I use my gmail address for icloud, however, none of my old notes were there.

What I had inadvertently done was to turn off notes in the mail, contacts, calendars settings for the gmail email account. As soon as I turned notes on in the gmail account all my notes reappeared.

What I understand is that notes in icloud get stored using an icloud email address which might be different from the (possibly gmail) email address that you might use for your icloud/apple ID.

So make sure notes are turned on in the mail settings for you gmail account and then notes should just use that address. If you want to use notes via the icloud email account then you will have to set one up if you don't have one already.

Its 2016 and having the same problem to sync your mail and Notes we have to creat @iCloude.com email why apple we dont want to have more email who will manage to just make sync your own personal emails we have to whole new email plz dont do this you ppl making phone smart but in that bounding ppl to not work smartly this is total insane please make it easy and i believe in 9.3 ios update you change it and do as what we want

+1 This issue is over 4 years old? Create an iCloud email address? Wow. I mean, I like the Notes app that the iPad Pro has - it's pretty nice. but in terms of sync across devices, I have to create another email address? Makes no sense. Why not just leverage the unique Apple id?

I'm using IOS 9.2 and i turned on Notes in Icloud settings without having an icloud.com address. It works well and synchronize nicely on the web access.

On my macbookair i'm still under Yosemite. When i try to activate it, it ask for icloud.com address...

Does it mean if i upgrade to El Capitan it will work as on IOS ?

The thread may be over two years old, but the problem still exists in September 2016.

Not only that, now Im trying to create this new could email in the new iMac and it just repeated the process over and over so it won't let me have this iCloud account.????? what is going on please?