How do I recover iCloud notes on my iPhone 16 Pro?

Lollypops88 wrote:

I recently went to the apple

store to try resolve an issue I had with the iPhone 16 pro. The technician did a full factory reset on my phone. I’ve had to download all apps again etc. however I’ve noticed all of my notes in my notes app are gone! iCloud backup is on for them, and all that’s there are 5 notes from pre 2020! Unfortunately I lived my entire life from my notes app 😩 and it’s making me want to vom the amount of years worth of info I’ve lost! They were definitely not saved locally (I don’t think) as I’ve had these notes YRS and a plethora of new phones over the years and they’ve always transferred over seamlessly. Is there any way at all these could be recovered or am I just gonna have to chalk it up to a bad experience??

also worth noting that when I go into iCloud and notes back ups, there are only those 5 notes pre 2020 I mentioned above 😭

[Re-Titled by Moderator]

Original Title: How to Recover Notes

Notes aren't part of the backup, since they are synced to either icloud or your mail account.

If you log onto icloud.com on a web browser and go to notes and recovery and it doesn't come back to your phone, then perhaps you were syncing them to your mail account.

Go to your mail settings on your phone and make sure notes is enabled.

Unless you have not enabled the “on my iPhone” option within settings -> notes, as razmee209 already pointed out, your notes are not being saved locally, instead linked to your mail account. If you have used an account different from iCloud, it may not yet be displayed within the notes application. Please follow the guidance of razmee209 for further clearance.

in case you have saved them locally, they should have been included in the iCloud backup though.