How to sync notability for mac across multiple devices using Dropbox or iCloud

Hi ..

You can get help directly from the Notability app developer website > http://support.gingerlabs.com

I have contacted GingerLabs. Their response was

"Apple handles iCloud, not us, so we recommend reaching out to them for more details on when iCloud sync occurs. "

So I am here, hoping someone else can help. I don't think it's a Notability issue, I think it's an iCloud issue.

I'm using iOS 8.0 and Mac OS 10.10.1. Is there something I can do to force iCloud to refresh/sync? I've checked if iCloud drive is on, that I'm using the same iCloud account on my desktop and iOS devices, and that Notability is checked on for iCloud syncing in documents & data.

Still, no notes get pushed to any other devices.

I'm having the same problem.

1. Just got a new iPad Air and have ios8 on it.

2. updated all software including Notability as of 1/22/15

3. the new "iCloud" option in the settings seems to be the problem, wherein, a note created in Notablity on the ipad goes to my iCloud account, but is not received/synced with the Notablity app on my iMac (also updated and I'm running osx 10.9 on the iMac).

4. the reverse is also true: note created on Notabality on iMac goest to iCloud but not received/synced by ios Notablity.

I can see why Notablity would blame Mac and why Mac would blame notability.

Hope they fix it before I decide to move on from Notablity to another, better working product.

Tell me what you move to, because I am about to drop notability for same reason. I have contacted gingerlabs but no response so far.

so actually, I updated all my software (to Yosemeite on my iMac and ios8 on my iPhone 5 and new iPad air) and it took a few restarts on all devices but eventually Notability started to sync everything. Wasn't a super smooth process and I also had to have the iClould, AND Dropbox AND Google drive all on and working to get things working on my end for some reason. Good luck.

just for clarification:

restarts of icloud drive, the devices, or both?

and besides updating is that all you did was restart over and over?

did you do anything else in between restarts?

i Have been emailing for some time now with a ginger labs rep and nothing has made it work.

Restarts to all devices and yes, max updates to all software.

Nothing else other than waiting for Notabipity to download and sync all my files (which did take some time)

A bunch of notes started syncing today for no good reason… but they keep appearing and disappearing.

Meanwhile, dropbox is backing up like a charm. Every time I make a new note on either device, dropbox gives me a notification. iCloud does nothing.

But Dropbox is a backup, not a sync, and with Notability can't be turned on with both clients.

We'll see if updating to 10.10.2 and 8.1.3 helps.

If you have iOS8, you are probably using iCloud drive to sync Notability, which isn't supported in Mavericks. You have to upgrade your Mac to Yosemite. There is an support article on syncing Notability with iCloud called "Troubleshooting iCloud sync" at support.Gingerlabs.com.

I can verify this as I have two Macs, a MacPro at work and a MacAir at home. The MacAir is running Yosemite and syncs Notability without problems. My MacPro is running Mavericks for the moment, and does not sync Notability correctly. I'll be updated the MacPro to Yosemite shortly.

I am running the latest versions on my iPad and Mac (as of this writing) — have always been running yosemite.

I've been in contact with Ginger labs over the course of several weeks where we went through every possible thing we could do to make this work; it doesn't.

iCloud tells me I have over 500mb of storage used for notability, but nothing syncs across devices. I can make notes all I want but they never show up anywhere else.

At this point I don't care if I have to nuke everything iCloud drive is storing just to start over, but there's no clear way to do that for a single application. Does anyone know how I can just kill the document store for Notability alone and start over?

I have Notability running on an iPad with iOS 8.1.2 and 2 Macs running OS X 10.10.2. The notes were synced between the iPad and the iMac but would not sync with MacBook. I got the MacBook to sync by turning off iCloud in Notability, deleting the local documents (you also have the option to delete, rebooting, and waiting a couple minutes for iCloud to sync. I then started up Notability and turned back on iCloud. All is now in sync.

I finally figured out how to delete that 500+MB store of notability docs on iCloud. It's now only 16kB, and I get see on the iPad the one test.nbn document I made just now.

And I'll be danged. It works now. Glad Dropbox was better about backing up that 500Mb of old documents. At least I have them there.

SO… thank you for that tip to manually delete the document store. Ginger Labs told me to turn iCloud off and on, which implies that it deletes documents, bu apparently iCloud is playing it safe and holds on to that data anyway.

I wanted to add my two cents (a year after the last post) because I'd looked at this page about a dozen times and couldn't figure out what to do. I think the info here gets it right, but I couldn't understand the explanation and the problem was driving me crazy.

First: I don't know what causes it. All I know is what fixed it for me.

Problem: my iPad and iPhone were not syncing at all. They had some of the same older notes, but new notes did not sync. (I also have Notability on my Macbook, but I don't use it much there.) I tried just about every other note-taking app out there, and while some had nice features like handwriting recognition, I just loved Notability for the fit and finish. I wanted this to work.

1. In the Notability app for both my iPhone and iPad, I turned off iCloud.
   1. When prompted, I chose to KEEP the notes locally on both my iPad and iPhone.
   2. I subsequently went through and deleted most of the notes off of my iPhone, but there were a few there that I wanted to keep. It's possible that this would work fine if you just deleted the notes off your less-important device under step 1.1, but I haven't tested this.
2. Under iOS Settings (doesn't matter if you use iPhone or iPad, but I used my iPhone), go to iCloud / Storage / Manage Storage / Notability.
3. Choose "Edit" on the top bar, scroll to the bottom (hold your breath), and Delete All.
4. Go back to the iPad (or whichever device has the notes and folders you want to be primary) and turn iCloud back on in the Notability app. You should see "Backing up" in the bottom bar for a second.
5. After the backup is complete, go to the iPhone and turn on iCloud sync in the Notability app. After backing out, you should see your folder structure from the iPad showing up now.

   The notes from your iPhone will still be there (and will sync over to your iPad), but they will now be under "Unfiled Notes". Your iPhone folder structure will get destroyed.

That was the exact set of steps I used, and things are working great so far. I've gotta tell you, I'm relieved. I just couldn't get excited about GoodNotes or NotesPlus (which are both fine apps... I just like Notability!).

Hey there!

So I was having the same problem of being unable to transfer my notability files from one device to another.

This is how I managed to fix my problem:

(My notes where on my iPad and I wanted them to transfer to my MacBook)

1) If you have an iPad - go to the the gear on the bottom left of the page, select icloud, flip the switch to ON. If you do this, it should announce that your files are being transferred.

2) If you have a Mac computer - open the notability app, select the notability tab on the top left corner of the screen, select preferences, a little screen should pop up and at the bottom there will be the option to turn on your icloud.

I would recommend turning on your icloud on whichever device has your files FIRST, then turn on icloud for the other secondary devices after! If you were like me and did it backwards, no problem! Just turn on icloud on the device which has the files, then go back to the other device turn icloud off and when the pop up screen asks you to keep using icloud, select that! All your files should be there afterwards!

Hope this helped!!

-K