Where are Notes files stored

This procedure will revert the whole Notes database to a previous version. It's not possible to restore individual notes.

Please quit the Notes application if it's running.

1. Triple-click anywhere in the line below on this page to select it:

~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Notes

Right-click or control-click the highlighted line and select

Services ▹ Reveal in Finder (or just Reveal)

from the contextual menu.* A folder should open with an item named "com.apple.Notes" selected. Move the selected item to the Trash, then restore it from a backup that predates the unwanted change. If you back up with Time Machine, enter it and select the snapshot from which you want to restore.

2. Do as in Step 1 with this line:

~/Library/Group Containers/group.com.apple.notes

This time the selected item will be "group.com.apple.notes", or you may get an alert that the item doesn't exist. If the latter happens, skip this step.

3. Log out or restart the computer and empty the Trash. Launch Notes. You may see a "Welcome to Notes" splash screen, as if you had never launched it before. Click Continue.

4. If you synchronize Notes with iCloud or another network service, the notes you restored may be immediately deleted after you restore them. In that case, temporarily disconnect from the Internet, for example by turning off your broadband adapter, and restore again. Copy the contents of each note to a document in another application, such as TextEdit. Reconnect to the Internet. If the notes are deleted, recreate them from the TextEdit document. They should then synchronize to the network.

*If you don't see the contextual menu item, copy the selected text to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C. In the Finder, select

Go ▹ Go to Folder...

from the menu bar and paste into the box that opens by pressing command-V. You may not see what you pasted because a line break is included. Press return.

Linc, I'm fascinated with the right-click/service menu step for quickly showing a file in the Finder, but I don't have the "Reveal" or "Reveal in Finder" option in my context list. How would I get it?

My services look like this:

I do appreciate the information on the Notes location on Mac. Respectfully though, I have a problem with step 4. I have several hundred notes, including attachments, such as images, links, PDF files. The notes are stored across numerous folders. Copying all this manually into another application, especially given various formats of the attachments, is simply impractical.

Is that all we can expect from Mac software/ecosystem, with all the feature glitz and push to the "seamless cloud", to resort to manual copy/paste workaround while disconnected from Internet? What is the point of having a backup, especially TimeMachine, if an average user can't easily run an intuitive restore operation?

Also, speaking of your point on how to prevent an immediate deletion of a restored Notes database. Would the following sequence work:

1. Disable Notes in iCloud Preferences, thus deleting them across all devices for the account, including the iCloud

2. Restore the database files, per your recommendation above

3. Enable Notes in the iCloud, thus inducing it to sync across the iCloud. I assume Apple programming geniuses included a provision in the software to check for an existing Notes database, and to give precedence across an empty or uninitialized iCloud Notes and consequently on the rest of the devices for the given account.

If this doesn't work, then maybe the following sequence would do it:

1. Disable Notes in iCloud Preferences, thus deleting them across all devices for the account, including the iCloud

2. Restore the database files, per your recommendation above

3. Move the entire folder/notes hierarchy from the iCloud account within Notes to the local On My Mac account.

4. Enable Notes in the iCloud Preferences. The sync would not affect On My Mac account because it's local not iCloud.

5. Move the folder/notes hierarchy back to the iCloud account within Notes. Subsequent sync should override the empty database on iCloud.

I have not tried all of this because until reading your post I didn't know the location of the Notes database. To be honest, even now I am not sure I have the nerve to experiment with all that. I am concerned that if I break it I would not be able to restore it properly.

Please advise on all that. It would be greatly appreciated.

I managed to restore my missing note! For the benefit of others, here's how.

I had the foresight to archive the iTunes backup made days before the disappearance. Made a fresh backup. Turned AirPlane Mode on and restored my iPhone from the older backup. The missing note reappeared in Notes app. Apple says that backups do not include files that are otherwise synced via iCloud, but that, apparently, is not true. All 500 of my notes were recoverable from the backup.

This one worked for me as well. I just needed to transfer my notes from and older backup to my new system.

I copy-pasted these files from backup to new location:

~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Notes

~/Library/Group Containers/group.com.apple.notes

Saved a lot of headache!

Do you mean that you erased and reinstalled? If so, why? Merely reinstalling the OS in place should not have affected Notes data. Do you synchronize Notes with a network service, such as iCloud?

Will your procedure to recover (revert to previous database) Notes work with Sierra 10.12.5, iMac (late 2009)? I just want to be sure before moving forward. Thanks. Bob Derr

Hi Link,

Are these instructions still good for macOS Sierra and apply to synced notes stored on iCloud, with just local copies on the Mac?

For the record, as Eric Root pointed out to me, only iTunes backups contain all Notes.

Try get current selection. If that doesn't work, go to Finder/Go/Go to folder and paste it there.