My notes won't sync

Hi cosmovart,

If you are having issues syncing Notes between your iPod Touch and your MacBook Air, you may find the following article helpful:

iOS: Syncing Notes

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4191

Regards,

- Brenden

For me, I had noticed that sometimes Notes wasn't syncing between my iPhone & Mac. Opening the Mail app on my iPhone (which downloads my new mail) immediately initiated a sync. Try that. If that doesn't work, also try opening Mail on your Mac. This seems like a bug. You shouldn't have to use the Mail app on any device for your devices to sync notes between each other.

I just realized my notes weren't syncing, and googled apple to your response.

I opened up Notes on my Mac, Under the "Notes" drop down window selected accounts. Under my Gmail account (when you click on it, a list shows up in the right hand selection window), I added a "check" next to notes. As soon as I did, the sync started and the notes from my iPhone showed up on my Mac Notes. I'm guessing mine stopped working when I upgraded my iPhone, and didn't realize that it was automatically linked.

No matter what excuses are given, this problem is obviously an error in the new upgrades. Everything else syncs just as it did before, however, the failure of Notes to sync is a new problem. Perhaps, someone at Apple needs to re-engineer the upgrade in order to restore Notes to a workable (syncable) version.

Around 3 weeks ago my Notes on Macbook & iPhone went out of sync. The phone does sync with iCloud Notes online but notes with Notes on the Macbook. I've checked and rechecked all the settings.

Any suggestions?

I am having the same bloody issue where notes would sync like so:

iCloud (online) -> Mac, iPhone, iPad

iPad -> iCloud (online)

however Mac, iPhone to iCloud (online) or to one another doesn't do anything.

so basically, my notes in my iPhone 6 and MacBook Pro are view-only at the moment. WHY??

Same issue! iPhone will sync notes w/ cloud, but Mac wont sync. Whats UP???

Ditto! Spent hours trying to resolve this issue, but still no joy.

Brendan,

I Clicked on your links, but they're broken. Thank you for trying.

I can't offer any help here, but I've started having the same/similar problem with iCloud notes.

Basically, it seems the notes will sync DOWN from iCloud to devices, but not UP from devices to iCloud.

To take a very simple example to demonstrate the problem:

Assume I have an iMac, and an iPhone, both using the same Apple ID and iCloud ID (happens to be the same) and both set to use iCloud notes for sync'ing. Both devices are latest OSes and fully patched. They are updated as soon as updates are available for general release, and have never run any beta software.

1 - Create a shopping list in iCloud online using Safari on my iMac

2 - This list will now appear in the notes app on the iMac and on (say) my iPhone

3 - Go shopping with iPhone, tick a few items off the list, maybe add a couple of new items

4 - Get home and check iCloud online, the list is not updated, the new items are missing and consequently, the notes app on the iMac is not updated.

5 - Update the items online (iCloud) to reflect what's on the iPhone and the iMac's notes app will update

All of this WAS working until around sometime in November this year, but I cannot be more specific than that.

The Apple ID has not changed, nor has the password between this working and not working.

I enabled two factor authentication at the beginning of October, across all my devices.

As far as I've been able to get with this is that the problem is somehow related to the ID.

If I use a freshly created Apple ID/iCloud ID, the synchronisation works.

The new ID is NOT using two factor authentication, but the syncing WAS working with two factor authentication on the original ID.

I should also add that the ONLY iCloud area I seem to be having this problem with is notes, reminders are syncing fine in both directions.

I too use a gmail account as my primary mail account (in the mail app) but don't use the notes function there, although if I turn this on, it works fine in both directions across all devices.

At a bit of a loss on this one, so I've switched to using Google Keep for now.

Any ideas would be welcomed, but I suspect it's a "back end" problem at this point.

Cheers (and merry christmas)

Simon

I also have this exact sync DOWN from iCloud but not UP issue, its driving me crazy.

I've tried everything to resolve, turning notes off and on, deleting cache, signing out of iCloud etc.

I had a call back from Apple Tech Support yesterday (28th Dec) and it seems this is a known problem and will be addressed in a software update for iOS and macOS.

I enrolled one of my iMacs in the beta program and downloaded macOS Beta 10.12.3 and this certainly fixed the issue for me on that iMac, but not on iOS devices (not really surprising !)

In the meantime, I've also been following another thread on macrumours:

http://forums.macrumors.com/threads/icloud-notes-suddenly-syncing-one-way-only.2 015541/

This one's worth looking at as some people on there have had some success (as we don't know how far away the official update is)

In brief summary, the workaround involves enabling debug for Notes on macOS devices and resetting some things, then once the Notes are syncing correctly from the macOS device(s), delete the Notes app from the iOS device(s), reinstall and reenable iCloud Notes sync on the iOS device(s)

The key seems to be the debug resets from Notes on the macOS device(s), so I'm not sure whether simply deleting the iOS Notes app and reinstalling it would help, but I guess it might be worth a try ?

Cheers

Simon

deleting didn't help.