All notes disappeared after iOS 18.1 update

Unfortunately, a good chunk of my Notes also disappeared from my phone AND ipad after the update. Hour and a half with Apple Support, trying everything, and unfortunately, they're just gone. Everything from 2024 has vanished!

If you don't see your iCloud notes in the Notes app

Here’s how to check your iCloud sync settings, and restart if needed.

If your iCloud notes aren't appearing on your iPhone, iPad, or Apple Vision Pro, follow these steps.

1. Open the Settings app and tap your name.
2. Tap iCloud, then tap Notes.
3. Make sure Sync this [device] is on, then check the Notes app.
4. If you still don't see your notes, restart your iPhone, iPad, or Apple Vision Pro. After restarting, check your settings again.

After these steps, your iCloud notes should appear and start syncing again on devices signed in to the same Apple Account. When syncing completes, content previously synced to iCloud should appear.

I tried the option where you go into your settings and turn on notes in the icloud settings but to my surprise it was already on so i had remembered I read someone say on here that their "Recently Deleted" was also gone , I went to check if mine was but fortunately it wasn't, so it made me think that maybe icloud wasn't loading them or "syncing" And to my surprise I was correct, If you go to your Photos app , in the right corner you will see your first letter of your name, There should be a blinking yellow light on it , click it, It's going to say "Syncing with Icloud Paused" Click on it "Sync Now" and click on "resume Syncing" maybe wait a couple mins and then go back and check your notes, if that doesn't work then restart your phone and check again but it should work the first time, sometimes this happens because you dont have enough storage or your phone was on low power mode, so it automatically stopped, Hope this works for you guys like how it worked with me because I read all of these replies and no Hope LOL

Still not working

Contact - Official Apple Support (CA)

I have same issue, and my notes are also older'. I've tried all the suggestions from apple. I believe' my notes missing' were connected to one of my email addresses ( if that makes sense ), I've turned notes on' for sure, and requested to fetch' every 15 minutes, but still nothing updated on notes' app on phone. Also, things like my 'recently deleted' are gone. Any help greatly appreciated I had very important things stored on my notes.

Same issue here after updating iOS18.1, only a few old notes are remaining. Even log into the icloud.com, the notes were not there anymore.

Any suggestions on how to recover? Will Apple fix this by another update?

I even login iCloud itself to see if the notes are there. Unfortunately, it seems the notes from last few years are permanently gone. Very odd that the files are removed from iCloud without a recovery option

Beyond furious. Lost all Notes after updating OS. Have spent hours troubleshooting. Apple “senior engineers” can’t restore. And I supposedly have iCloud backup but it’s failed me so what good is it?! I had years of critical information in Notes that can never be recreated.

[Edited by Moderator]

Most of my notes in the Notes app on my iPad disappeared after updating to 18.1. I have tried the suggestions recommended and it didn’t work. I only have notes from 2018-2021.

I turned off syncing to the iCloud, for notes, because of security issues. Why were all of my notes deleted in the first place after upgrading to 18.1?????

OMG!!! FINALLY, this worked for me and I was able to retrieve my notes!! If you're reading this, try it. I got my notes back within 2 minutes! Thanks, dude!

Try signing in to icloud.com/notes…if you synched your notes to icloud, they should be there…mine were :)

Not sure how to get them to reload into the notes app yet.

This just happened to me today. Did you get a resolution?

Hi @Carlos0426,

I tried this step too, but no luck. Does anyone have any further advice on how to retrieve Notes in Notes app that were synced to a Hotmail account? I’ve tried everything in Microsoft & Apple forums!

Hello,

It turned out that all of my notes disappeared from Notes app last night.

Sync with iCloud is not enabled on my side, they were only stored in my phone.

There is no "Recently deleted" folder in the Notes app.

I'm currently using 17.6.1

Update pending 18.3.2 which I haven't triggered because I'm out of storage.

All my notes with important data that I'm gathering the last 9 years is GONE!

Restart of the device and re-installing the app did not help.

Can you please help me to restore them?