Google Notes Do Not Sync

[Jared G.K.]

This refers to Apple Notes on the Mac AND on iPhone/iPad.

Did anyone ever manage to make Google notes and Apple Notes sync?
I tried several times, over the last months (or even longer).

The Google account is active (mail and calendar sync flawlessly). Notes sync is turned on. After a few seconds, the Google category and a notes folder shows in Apple Notes.
But notes created in Apple Notes never sync to Google, and vice versa.
I waited minutes, hours, over night, 2 days, rebooted all apps and devices several times - nothing. Created notes on both Google and Apple (in the Google folder of course), they never sync. Simple notes, text only, no attachments nor weird formatting.

Can anyone confirm that this actually works? How?

 

[BrianBaughn]

I don't even see Notes at my Google web interface anymore.

 

[Jared G.K.]

strange.

Yesterday, after starting this thread, I turned Google notes off and Google disappeared from Apple notes. So far so good.
Right now I turned it on again, just for fun.
Surprisingly, the one test-note that I created in Apple Notes in the Google section yesterday, reappeared.
How come? If you turn off Google notes, the Mac/iPhone asks if you want to delete the Google note(s) on your Mac. Of course I said yes.

The test-note never appeared in my Google notes.
It was deleted from my Mac's local SSD.
So where did it come from?

It can only be that in fact it DID get synced with Google, and got synced back to Apple Notes once I re-activated Google notes.

But where did it get synced to? I can only see one single 'notes' 'app' in the Google web interface for my Google account.

 

[Jared G.K.]

OMG.
It's in a label 'Notes' in Gmail. Not in 'Google Notes'.
How stupid is that 🤦‍♂️

 

[Jared G.K.]

Findings so far:

• you can't write a new 'Note' in Google Mail Notes.
• You have to write a new email, send it to yourself or store it as draft, and then re-label it to 'Notes'.
• Apparently 'notes' that were created that way in Google do not sync back to Apple Notes.
• Apparently you can't edit Google Mail Notes so I don't know if updates would sync back to notes that came from Apple Notes.
• You can't easily move a Google Mail Note to Google Notes (except by copy & paste, which makes it cumbersome, as attachments have to be moved separately and some formatting gets lost).

On the positive side:

• sufficient formatting survived when syncing from Apple Notes to Google Mail Notes.
• PDF and JPG attachments got transferred properly.

But: all in all, a totally not practical method to keep Apple Notes in sync with Google.
Maybe for those who want to bulk- 'export' from Apple Notes into something different - as Apple doesn't allow for 'regular' bulk exports (for obvious Apple reasons).

 

[Jared G.K.]

I'm turning this feature off now.

Even when 'bulk exporting' from Apple Notes into Google Mail Notes, there is no obvious benefit. You can't 'bulk export' from Google Mail Notes into something external, eg if you want to migrate to Evernote. You can't even move it to a different Google app like eg the 'real' Goggle Notes.

So unless somebody wants to have something 'email like' in Google Mail (for whatever reason), this feature seems completely pointless.

 

[BrianBaughn]

There used to be (years ago) a separate Notes section on the Gmail web interface but if I recall correctly the syncing with iOS Notes was only one-way. There were several iOS apps at the time that could do a two-way sync.

 

[Jared G.K.]

yes that's what I called 'Google Notes' vs. 'Google Mail Notes' in this thread.
Apple Notes do not sync with Google Notes.
Apple Notes do transfer notes to Google Mail Notes. But no syncing back. As described in this thread.
No (more?) iOS Apple to Google notes sync app, afaik.
There are, of course, iOS apps that allow for notes to be synced with Google Notes, like e.g. Google Keep. But their own notes only, not Apple Notes.

 

[BrianBaughn]

yes that's what I called 'Google Notes' vs. 'Google Mail Notes' in this thread.
Apple Notes do not sync with Google Notes.
Apple Notes do transfer notes to Google Mail Notes. But no syncing back. As described in this thread.
No (more?) iOS Apple to Google notes sync app, afaik.
There are, of course, iOS apps that allow for notes to be synced with Google Notes, like e.g. Google Keep. But their own notes only, not Apple Notes.

It's different than it was a dozen years ago, if I'm remembering correctly. "Google Mail Notes", as you're describing it, had an simple interface at the website…so the notes were visible in two places: the interface and in the mail folders. I don't know when they dropped the interface. A few years later Google Keep came along and was never intended to work with iOS Notes.

iCloud and Exchange are the only two services that sync with iOS/macOS notes…to my knowledge.

 

[Jared G.K.]

I just tried it with my outlook.com account, which internally is based on Exchange, afaik.
Activated notes in my account on the Mac.
An outlook.com section appeared in Apple Notes.
Duplicated 3 Apple Notes and copied them into the outlook.com folder.
Then checked in my outlook.com account on the web (which I would under no circumstances use in real life, as it's unbelievable slow an laggy).
Nothing. Not in 'Notes' in Outlook, nor in OneNote.
Also, a global search didn't find my Apple notes.
There seems to be no extra 'app' for notes outside Outlook.
There is also no quirky notes - folder in email, unlike in Google.

I think I'll give up on this issue, it gets too annoying.

The only thing that makes me unhappy is that there is no quick & easy way to migrate away from Apple Notes, in case I want or need to. Therefore, kudos to Evernote, they provide a bulk export feature, and their exported files can be imported easily into Apple Notes. But not the other way. Almost understandable from Apple, but shame on them anyway.

 

[Jared G.K.]

One last interesting finding:

in outlook/web interface, the notes count was 6, although only 3 were displayed. First I thought this was a bug.
Then I deleted one Apple Note from the Outlook section, and the notes count on the web went down to 5.
Deleted the other 2 in Apple Notes and the count was at 3.

So the Apple Notes went somewhere, but I have no clue where to.
I even started my local Outlook (which I don't use but have installed as part of Office).
Apparently they changed a lot, there seems to be no more local Notes folder, and if you select the Notes icon it redirects you to the online version of outlook.com.
Back to where we started, no Apple notes were there or not visible.

 

[BrianBaughn]

Apple's Notes is not a great place to store important info…but neither is or was Exchange/Outlook's Notes. Also, they're definitely not aligned with what you can do or see in them. I think of Notes as a quickly-accessible place to put things that I already have in another, less-databasey format.

As far as Evernote exports to Apple Notes goes…I've never tested it so I don't know what you'd get.