I guess I tried this on a good “Apple” day.
I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that Notes syncing was broken for me. The 13.2 update and logging out of iCloud on my phone and then my iPad Pro seems to have resolved it. I never got as far as logging out of iCloud on my iMac or MacBook before they began to sync again. I’m still nervous and take a few moments now and then to check that notes are syncing but that will fade. I’m relieved because I didn’t want to move everything to another app.
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What’s really frustrating is that they DID have it right and they hosed it up.
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Im experiencing the same. Notes sync just fine on my iOS devices. When I change a note on my MBP it never pushes it to the other devices. I can still see changes on my MBP is I change a note from my iPhone or iPad though. Seems to be a Catalina issue.
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This is the ultimate problem. Notes syncing will work again, but this is a fundamental requirement of the software and Apple never should have let this break. And here is why I think that’s the case.
My wife likes to use technology and much of her life is managed on her iPhone. But she’s not a tech geek and you’d never find her listening to MPU or perusing these forums.
Technology solutions have to “just work,” because if they don’t she won’t ever come back. As a mom of four kids, her life is too complicated and she has no patience for more friction. Things need to be simple and work. For her, notes has been great. She and I planned birthdays using shared notes, we have notes with little shopping lists, and we use them for other things. I shared an important note with her with one our children’s school information. It still has not synced. Apple hasn’t lost her on this yet, but if this doesn’t get fixed soon, it will. … and then we’ll be back to exchanging all of this in Messages, which works but which is not the ideal candidate. But Messages never fails her. It’s frictionless.
It took me a month to get her to come done from the ledge after “Find My” was changed. 
Me: “Here, let me show you how it works.”
Her: “I don’t have time for that. I have a hungry baby, I have to leave for this appointment, the other kids are screaming and destroying the house. {tosses phone at me} You do it.”
Me: “But, it’s really pretty simple…” {she’s gone already. I’m fiddling with Find My}
Joking aside, most users should not have to tinker if they don’t want to. (None of us here should, either, for that matter.) Apple is the standard bearer of “it just works,” and this notes syncing is one of those cases where it doesn’t right now, and unfortunately it’s a key function of the software that is acting unreliable.
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This has seemed to work for me. Fingers crossed it stays that way!
From Apple’s discussion board.
Finally found a solution for this after months of trying various different things. (Tried pretty much every solution, individually or in combination). What finally worked for me was:
- Making sure that all internet accounts had synching off for notes (including iCloud) in the system preferences
- Going to /users/[name]/Library and doing a search within that folder for any file containing “Notes” in the name.matches were found in both /users/[yourname]/Library/Containers AND /users/[yourname]/Library/GroupContainers
- going to /Library/Caches and selecting all and moving to trash
- Selected all such files, threw them in the trash.
- Empty trash
- Reboot
- Open Notes
- Turn on synching for iCloud
Presto! It worked! For the first time since I installed Sierra pretty much, it finally worked on my computer again! So I’m not sure which file it was exactly that I deleted that did the trick, but my best guess is that deleting the notes related files in “containers” is not enough, you must also go after the related files in “group containers”.
There we go! Hope this helps somebody else!
EXACTLY iPersuade!! The days of “pull the choke out half way, set the parking brake, mash the clutch in, take ‘er outta gear, now turn the key and pray she cranks before the battery goes dead” is over with. Things should just work, ESPECIALLY if it is sold by a company who rides on that slogan.
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Chased up my support case today, not been called for three weeks. Still no solution, notes came down from iCloud after 30 mins but nothing is syncing and iCloud.com gives me an error, so this is being investigated now. Switched over to Notability but the lack of shortcut support is a little frustrating.
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Same for me. I have discovered something weird. Some of my notes (not many, but a couple) synced (partially) but they show a created date of 12/31/2001 on the synced-to device, and, not surprisingly, appear at the very bottom of my notes list. From the device where the note was created, the date is accurately reported. WEIRD.
I have turned off syncing several times on all devices but that never solved the problem. How do you nuke the notes data? Perhaps I need to try that. Thanks.
I moved all my notes. All >1,000 of them and their associated folders to “on my Mac” and the ones only on iPad to my IPad local storage. And now I’m trying your trick.
I’ve had Dropbox since 2012 and never had a syncing problem. I came to loathe Evernote, but in all the time I used it, I never had a sync problem. Omni sync? Never a problem. There are probably a dozen other cloud providers I can say the same of.
Forgive the rant. I’m annoyed.
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@Wolfie - It seems to have worked for me, too. Although, I lost some notes along the way. (As far as I can tell, nothing critical.) Shared notes and shared folders are also working correctly. Thanks for the tip. I’ll also report back if things change.
Over this weekend my notes began syncing immediately again. I didn’t do anything to fix it, the issue seems to have resolved itself (for me at least). Handwritten notes also sync perfectly again.
Is it still causing problems for anyone else? I want to trust it again but need to be sure!
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Just last night I had to reboot my iPhone for it to start syncing Notes again. Sigh.
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Handwritten notes are syncing for me now.
@Rob_Polding @ismh - fixed itself! fixed after any easy reboot! Would that I had been so lucky!!! O hear my lament! But I’m glad everything is working now.
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At the risk of jinxing it… it all seems to have sprung back into life of its own accord - all notes are syncing now, including those created during “the dark times” which have popped up on the other devices.
Presumably they have been kicking sync servers somewhere…
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I agree. My tangled mess of mal-synched notes seems to have resolved itself. Fingers crossed. — jay
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Mine too. So now I have to decide, do I migrate back to Apple Notes? I only have about two weeks of new notes in Notability not currently in Apple Notes so it will not take a lot of time but can I expect dependable syncing going forward? Anyone with thoughts on this?
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