Notes App Syncing in Only One Direction

Best advice... skip Notes. The question is not if, but when will you lose data. I've used notes on and of, because it seems handy, but many times have cursed it for loosing information between devices.

Or writing a note only to be able to see the content in the little preview list, but not in the note itself.

The worst thing, information is just gone, there is nothing like "conflicting" copies or a warning, it's just poof gone.

While people may suggest settings changes (which in some cases can help), there are clearly some bugs in Notes/iCloud sync.

I say this because I have experienced inconsistent behavior with no changes of settings.

For example, an hour ago I created a note on my phone, and that note contained a scanned document.

The note appeared on my iPad, Mac, and in iCloud... but with the attachment not openable. On the Mac and iCloud web, the note item in the list of notes shows a thumbnail of the scanned attachment, but the body of the note just has a big gray box where the document should be.

On the iPad, it doesn't show the thumbnail (because perhaps that app doesn't do thumbnails). And when I open that note, in the gray box where the scanned document should be it shows the spinning * dashes as if it were trying to download the image. It will spin forever and produce nothing.

I suspect that the iPhone Notes app somehow failed to complete uploading the attachment to iCloud when it first synced the note. Unfortunately, now the iPhone Notes app seems unable to upload any new notes to iCloud. It does still download notes that were created on other devices.

Perhaps there is just one bug somewhere causing all the bad behaviors, or maybe there are many failure cases. Regardless, it makes Notes untrustworthy. The ability to create notes quickly and easily on the phone (especially with the document scanning feature) is killer... but it is useless if the notes are trapped on the phone.

I have a similar issue. I have three devices all set to sync Notes. iPhone and MBP sync with iCloud properly, iPad receives new notes and updates from iCloud but new notes created on iPad never make it to iCloud (and therefore also do not make it to the other devices). Edits on iPad (to notes created on other deivces) DO sync back to iCloud and other devices so it is only new notes on iPad that never sync.

iPhone 14 Pro, iOS 16.5

MacBook Pro 13” 2020 macOS Ventura 13.4

iPad Pro 12.9 Gen 6 iPadOS 16.5

Well in my case I have an existing note. I add something on my iMac. Later when on the road I grab my phone, open the note, the new just added info is not there. Then when I return to the iMac it's also gone... argggh

Staying Away from Apple Notes keeps a bloke happy a long way!

I've been an Apple user since the 1980's and sometimes Apple just makes crapola software and Notes is one of them. Mail used to be another... was a time if adding 2 gmail accounts, mail from one would end up in the other, but I digress.

Don't use Apple Notes if you have multiple machines and expect it to sync properly. Things get erased, deleted, wiped out, all of a sudden previous versions overwrite newer version on other machines, no warnings about sync conflicts, it's just poof gone. No overwritten notes in deleted notes folder...

A simple fix for me. I was having the same issue and discovered that my iCloud was full (basic account only gives you 5GB to sync). Since it was full my notes were not syncing back to my Macbook (only receiving changes one way). I deleted some of the iCloud files on my phone and once I freed up some space it began syncing both ways again. Hope this helps!

I should mention this was also happening on 16.4.1.a. I did not notice if it was happening earlier but since I mostly create notes on my phone it may have been happening for a while without noticing.