iOS 9 Notes not syncing

That is a work around, thank you. That is not what I really want, but better than nothing.

Background: I am not anxious to upgrade my desktop computer to El Capitan just yet. (Last time I updated my system I was suddenly surprised to find I had to shell out money to upgrade Photoshop and Acrobat, which would not run on the new system.) I did recently upgrade my iPhone to IOS 9, got the Notes warning (which I didn't fully grasp at the time) and I do understand now why I don't see my newest-created Notes on the computer when I log into iCloud. On my iPhone I see two sets of notes at the outer Notes menu. I can live with giving up the ability to read new Notes on the desktop via iCloud.

My question: on the iPhone I have Settings > iCloud > Backup turned ON. Are both sets of Notes being backed up in the event I replace my iPhone and want to restore? (FWIW, I don't see *any* category for Notes backup available to be turned on or off on my iPhone at Settings > iCloud > Storage > Manage Storage.)

yes, the same to me. a secondary iCloud account wont work anymore.

Apple, fix it plz.

I have an iPad air, iPhone 6s, iMac and MacBook Pro. Notes synching stopped with upgrades to IOS 9 on my mobile devices and OS X El Capitan on my iMac and MacBook Pro. APPLE, PLEASE FIX NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Two words: Google Keep

It just *works*.

I'm stuck on Yosemite on my laptop, and I've already upgraded to IOS 9.1 on my iPhone. Google Keep is a much better note taking solution that syncs just fine.

patbren80 wrote:

I have an iPad air, iPhone 6s, iMac and MacBook Pro. Notes synching stopped with upgrades to IOS 9 on my mobile devices and OS X El Capitan on my iMac and MacBook Pro. APPLE, PLEASE FIX NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

My notes are syncing just fine between my iPhone 6s+, iPad Mini 2, and MacBook Pro with iOS 9 and El Capitan.

What doesn't work is syncing an iCloud account when it is a secondary iCloud account on the devices. If you're not using two iCloud accounts on the same device, then you may just need to look at your settings or sign out/in to iCloud again. A standard iCloud setup syncs Notes just fine, unless you have something set up incorrectly or something is corrupted.

Hi Jeremy

I found this thread through a Google search and I am having the exact same issue - the secondary Apple ID on my account won't work in notes. I just wanted to know if you ever had luck finding a solution or still awaiting an update that will fix this. Looking forward to hearing from you. Thanks!

Moe,

In order to make it work the secondary account has to be a different email. I am using my Charter email and added it to my wife's phone and turned on Notes under the Charter account and now our Notes sync. I noticed that the Notes aren't iOS9 looking but it works for the time being. It does take a few seconds for them to sync but since adding a non iCloud or Apple ID Notes syncing now works. So any other email seems to work.

Hope this helps you.

Jeremy

Thanks so much for the prompt response Jeremey!

Just to clarify, you moved the notes that you want synced over to a non iCloud account (I.e. Gmail account) and now they sync properly. Is that correct? Or are you saying that once you started syncing a non Apple account with notes, even the swcond iCloud account started working?

Thanks again 🙂

Yes, the working Notes is with a non iCloud account. I had several lengthy discussions with Apple and they confirmed Apple removed the syncing feature between two different iCloud accounts.

So what I did was turn off Notes on my iCloud account which was the main one and added a Charter email as a secondary account and turned Notes on. Then on my wife's phone I did the same, turned Notes off on her main account and added my Charter as a secondary account and turned Notes on and it works.

I can't believe Apple would remove this feature. You can voice your frusration by giving feedback to Apple. Hopefully they will listen and add the feature.

Good luck and hope this workaround works for you.

Jeremy

Thanks again for your fast response! I really appreciate it!

OK, I may do the same if I really feel the need to have the secondary account sync across devices. I'm just still not so clear why you turned off you and your wife's primary iCloud accounts Notes. If you wouldnt have done that the secondary non iCloud account would not sync?

Also, I think those at Apple saying that they removed the feature are mistaken because if that was so, they would have removed the option to activate notes in Settings on the secondary account Just as there is no option to turn on Safari (for bookmarks etc.) on secondary iCloud accounts. Agree? I think it must be a glitch in the iOS 9 update.

Not a problem, glad I can help. I looked at my settings and I was mistaken. I still have Notes turned on the main accounts. So i did not turn notes off, my mistake.

I hope it's a glitch because if they removed that feature I will be very disappointed. Glad there is a workaround but the Apple motto "It just works" is really not the case.

Lol. Still better than Android "it just doesn't work" 🙂

thanks again! GN!

I have a workaround solution to the iCloud Notes/IOS 9 sync issue. Your mileage may vary. Please read the caveats below before you try this.

My setup:

I have multiple Macs (Maverick 10.9.5), iPhone 5S (IOS 9.1), and older iPad (IOS 9.1). My Notes would sync perfectly using iCloud when my iPhone/iPad ran IOS 8.4.1, however, after upgrading my iPhone 5S and iPad to IOS 9, Notes no longer would sync between all my devices. I use Notes a lot, and I was not happy. However, I did not read the warning on my iPhone when I first launched Notes after upgrading to IOS 9, so the fault was my own. I did not want to update my Macs to El Capitan (which would fix the iCloud Notes sync issue) because I would have had to buy a bunch of updated software to work with El Capitan. I could also not downgrade my iPhone to IOS 8.4.1 because Apple quit signing it. Stuck!

After much thought, today I found a workaround solution. This is nothing new, but I just thought of it today. It is to stop using your iCloud Notes account and instead use an IMAP email account for Notes, but on all your devices the IMAP email account must be the SAME account (otherwise Notes won't sync to all devices). This will NOT work for a POP email account, it must be an IMAP email account. Here's how I did it:

First, backup all your iCloud Notes by emailing all iCloud Notes to yourself. Skip this step at your peril!

After backing up iCloud Notes via email method, I went into iPhone Settings/Mail, and selected my main IMAP email account. This IMAP email account I use on ALL my devices. I then turned Notes ON for my main IMAP email account on my iPhone. Next I went to my two Macs, launched Notes, went to Notes>Accounts, and selected the same IMAP email account that is also on my iPhone. I then turned Notes ON for this IMAP email account on both my two Macs. Now I had my iPhone and my two Macs using Notes on the same IMAP email account.

Next, I went back to my iPhone and launched Notes. The Notes app screen now showed both the IMAP email Notes account and my iCloud Notes. I then went to each individual iCloud Note, "Selected All" (meaning copy the entire body copy of the note), then navigated back to my IMAP Notes (< icon in upper left corner) and created a new note, and PASTED the text into the IMAP note. Viola! This IMAP Note now synced to both my Macs and my iPhone. I repeated this for each of my iCould notes until all my iCould notes were copied into new IMAP Notes. I had about 45 Notes, took me about 15 minutes.

So I'm back to using IMAP for Note syncing and so far it works just fine.

Caveats:

- I backed up all my iCloud Notes by emailing them to myself, just in case. I suggest you do the same before trying this.

- When creating a new Note on any of your devices, you must create it using the SAME IMAP email account that is on ALL of your devices, in order for it to sync on ALL your devices. If you mistakenly create it using your iCloud Note account, then you can always copy and paste it into an IMAP Note.

- I have only been doing this for a few days, but once I am satisfied that IMAP Notes is solid, then I will turn iCloud Notes OFF on all my devices. Know that this will permanently DELETE all your iCloud Notes. (But you did back them up and copy them all into fresh new IMAP Notes, didn't you?)

- IMAP Notes is text only, so if you have created any Notes under IOS 9, only the text will copy/paste to an IMAP Note.

nowhearthis wrote:

This is nothing new, but I just thought of it today. It is to stop using your iCloud Notes account and instead use an IMAP email account for Notes, but on all your devices the IMAP email account must be the SAME account (otherwise Notes won't sync to all devices). This will NOT work for a POP email account, it must be an IMAP email account.

This is all fine and good, though many folks already have an IMAP account integrated into their Mac and/or iOS Notes. What you've described is just avoiding the use of iCloud to share notes across devices, and there are other methods to avoid iCloud besides IMAP (such as using a 3rd party notes app like Evernote, Google Keep, etc.)

In my experience, using the Mac or iOS Notes app to integrate notes from other email-based accounts is hit or miss, and the internet is littered with complaints about Gmail or Yahoo notes suddenly disappearing (e.g. look at Virjee's post on page 4). iOS Notes has been very reliable with my work Exchange account, but I avoid other types due to reliability concerns. So at this point I'm using iOS Notes for my Exchange notes, and Evernote for personal notes to share with my wife, and neither of us are using iCloud for notes. I don't like having to use two apps for the same purpose, but I just don't feel I have other options to trust.

There is one more experiment I'd like to try, which I think was hinted at on a previous page in this thread. Set up a 3rd iCloud account, and add it to my iPhone and my wife's iPhone. We each have our own iCloud, so this would be a second iCloud account on both devices. My iCloud account was her 2nd account on her iPhone, and that used to work until we updated Notes to the new format. This likely wouldn't help you since you're still using Mavericks, but I'll give this a shot to see if it syncs between two iPhones, each with their own iCloud accounts and both with an extra shared iCloud account for note-taking.