Notes from my iPhone disappeared post accepting new iCloud Terms and Condition.

All of my notes from March of this year (2024) until now were not saved to my iCloud before this happened. They're just completely gone. I reached out to Apple Support, but there was nothing they could do. I write a lot in my free time, but now all of my recent stories are gone. If anyone can help me fix this, I'll be enternally grateful to you. :'(

Some of my notes came back but up until 10/25. Nothing after that! I have really important notes after that and many that I updated after that, too!! Anyone have that happen and was able to successfully retrieve them? This is a disaster!

I had the same happen to me. It happened because I didn’t agree to begin with, I closed the app bc it was taking ages. But after I saw it deleted all of my notes, I went back and did it. Then I watched my notes come back BUT the issue is that it’s about 2 months BEHIND

ive lost MONTHS worth of notes because of this and I’ve been talking to Apple support. They’re suggesting I update my phone and make sure I’ve got enough storage and whatnot. This is insane frustrating and I’m really bothered by this. These notes are SUPER important

im on an iPhone XR on version 16.1 but am updating to iOS18 rn

Hi, did you get a prompt with delete from my iphone or cancel, saying are you sure you want to continue? All icloud notes will be removed from your iphone? I’m too scared to press delete incase it deletes my missing notes which I can still see when I sign into icloud.com. I am freaking out, I have over 12 years of notes & important info in there I cannot lose & I cbf screenshotting thousands of pages… adhd things I guess.

Makes me realise I have way too much faith in this device & apple to not delete important stuff.

I dont know what to do 😱

Hello, so I also accepted the terms and conditions last night. Notes were gone this morning. Have tried everything from the past 5 pages of comments here to no avail for the past three hours. The 'on my iphone' notes are gone and not coming back with anything mentioned here so far. If I was to do a backup of my iphone to a previous backup would they potentially be in there?

In order to do that I need to update my laptop to the latest OS update however my faith in updates is currently weakened after what's happened this morning.

Has anybody got any advice as for this situation in particular? Tried shutting the phone off , toggling on and off the 'sync this iphone' etc etc. There is no 'recently deleted' folder anywhere to be found.

I thought I was backed up but as always, these are the moments I've found out it's not as straightforward as I'd presumed and I feel stupid now. Just to clarify I'm not having an issue with icloud notes or notes linked to an email account, but purely the 'on my iphone' notes. If anyone has had any luck I'd be delighted to hear how you got on. Thanks a million

I have the same issue, except one thing, my files were saved on my phone not iCloud. Especially since I ran out of 5Gb iCloud space. Everything was saved on the phone. So why did this agreement erase my notes? They didn’t even give a warning first. The solution I see here is probably dangerous for me because if I toggle iCloud off I get the warning that all my notes will be deleted from phone. So I need a different solution. Anything tips will help. But Apple drop the ball and will be hearing from me. All important notes were deleted. Medical notes, business plans, etc.

Okay, has anyone had this happen where a new note folder you created to house notes has not come back? I have uninstalled and reinstalled, did everything suggested here, but cannot find the note at all. It is SO IMPORTANT, but I cannot find it on the cloud, or in the notes anywhere. It is gone. I just need anyone to help guide me through this because I’m gutted.

Mine disappeared today to. 10 years of them from each iPhone I’ve had. They are EXTREMELY important. I have bible notes for studies I give. And I spent months writing them. And I need them for Saturday’s teaching.

now they are gone.

I went to sync them and my phone is already SUNCED so that is an EPIC FAIL.

NEXT OPTION PLEASE!

Seriously!! And why would anything like that delete notes off my device…… if my iCloud was full then fine, they should have defaulted to store locally and Apple shouldn’t have had the option of deleting them. I’m so angry!

DO NOT FOLLOW the fixes people have provided here unless you KNOW for sure your notes are backed up on the cloud. I’ve spent lots of time on the phone with Apple recently… and if you do this, there’s NO WAY they can recover them because it resyncs your phone with whatever is most currently in your iCloud.

Also learned that Apple doesn’t monitor these communities and conversations, so if you haven’t reported your issue directly to Apple, they likely are collected all the data needed to prevent this from

happening in the future. It’s important everyone call them and report this so they can see it wasn’t just a couple people this happened too. More than one of them told me “hmmm changing terms and conditions shouldn’t do that though. It shouldn’t delete data…” Well, it DID!!!! To lots of people.

I also learned i didn’t have the option of “on my iPhone” checked… it must not be a default or else some of my notes would have been saved directly to my device instead of pulling from the cloud to sync. :(

Do not press delete because I did and I don’t know how to get my notes back now. I followed the directions given to a T and now I can’t access my notes on my current phone. I can only access them on my old phone. I genuinely don’t know what to do to get them back and I’m frustrated.

Very helpful. Whew! My notes are back

Same here! They do appear in my macbook so at least I know they are not gone forever, but I got scared at first because they don’t appear in my iphone (se 2020, iOS 16.smth). Hope they fix it soon.

go to settings – notes – default account – on my iPhone, and they will come back

I had one Notes disappear and all of the others (multiple notes) were still there. None of these solutions seem to work for bringing back just that one Notes.