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iCloud Notes Suddenly Syncing One Way Only

And here one more who spent also some time to this issue.

On my Mac OS X El Capitan 10.11.6 is running.

Behaviour:
Syncing between Mac and iCloud works
Syncing between iOs devices don´t work correctly:
The iPhone (iOS 10.2) shows current notes from the iCloud but notes from the iPhone don´t go to the iCloud. I have delete an old note on the Mac and the current note on the iPhone was deleted too (title was equal, no more) :(.
On the iPad (iOS 10.2) i turned off iCloud syncing. Last status was no syncing in both directions.

Now i join hoping for an immediate fix from :apple: ...
 
Hello all, joined the forum to add my name to the list.
I have a case open with Apple on this issue, have spent several hours on a few calls capturing/submitting diagnostic logging, but still no resolution.
In summary:
iMacs/MBP/MBAs running macOS Sierra 10.12.2, iPhone 6 & 7 running iOS 10.2, iPads running iOS 10.2
All devices signed on with same Apple/iCloud ID
Notes sync DOWN from iCloud to ALL devices.
NO updates go UP to iCloud from ANY device, hence no sync'ing between devices.
This was all working fine until sometime towards mid/end of November, but I can't be specific about the precise date.
The only additional things I can really add are that I had a Carbon Copy Cloner backup of one of the iMacs (10.12.1), so rebooted using that as a startup disk, and Notes sync started working again ! (same Apple/iCloud account)
I have just upgrade one of the phones to a 7, so had a spare 6 lying around, wiped and reinstalled using a NEW Apple ID/iCloud account, Notes sync worked fine in BOTH directions, logged out of the new ID and used my existing one, and the Notes stopped sync'ing UP from the device.
I am posting this here because I was very pleased to see csprof's post (#54) mentioning the console logs - I have EXACTLY the same messages.
Like a couple of others here, I have now discovered Google Keep, and so might just abandon Notes.
Obviously hoping for a fix, but I wonder how many people have actually logged a case with Apple ?
Hope to be able to contribute to the forum in future - best wishes for the New Year to all.
Cheers
Simon
 
sjltech.uk said:
Hello all, joined the forum to add my name to the list.
I have a case open with Apple on this issue, have spent several hours on a few calls capturing/submitting diagnostic logging, but still no resolution.
In summary:
iMacs/MBP/MBAs running macOS Sierra 10.12.2, iPhone 6 & 7 running iOS 10.2, iPads running iOS 10.2
All devices signed on with same Apple/iCloud ID
Notes sync DOWN from iCloud to ALL devices.
NO updates go UP to iCloud from ANY device, hence no sync'ing between devices.
This was all working fine until sometime towards mid/end of November, but I can't be specific about the precise date.
The only additional things I can really add are that I had a Carbon Copy Cloner backup of one of the iMacs (10.12.1), so rebooted using that as a startup disk, and Notes sync started working again ! (same Apple/iCloud account)
I have just upgrade one of the phones to a 7, so had a spare 6 lying around, wiped and reinstalled using a NEW Apple ID/iCloud account, Notes sync worked fine in BOTH directions, logged out of the new ID and used my existing one, and the Notes stopped sync'ing UP from the device.
I am posting this here because I was very pleased to see csprof's post (#54) mentioning the console logs - I have EXACTLY the same messages.
Like a couple of others here, I have now discovered Google Keep, and so might just abandon Notes.
Obviously hoping for a fix, but I wonder how many people have actually logged a case with Apple ?
Hope to be able to contribute to the forum in future - best wishes for the New Year to all.
Cheers
Simon
Click to expand...

On your spare iphone6, you were saying the new Apple ID was working. And then you signed your existing one and it won't work. Can you please help me to do one more step? Please sign your new AppleID into your affected iPhone. And they won't work anymore if I am not wrong. As this error will spread around once you sign in and sign out. I just want to see if my conclusion is correct. As now, my parents ID are no longer working since I use their account for troubleshoot...

Thanks and please let us know the result.
 
Hi Lausamsam - I will give that a try later today and post back.
In the meantime, I enrolled one of my iMacs in the beta program, and installed 10.12.3
Initially, I still had the problem, but turned of iCloud, deleted Notes stuff from ~/Library/ (as mentioned earlier in this thread) restarted the iMac, logged in, turned iCloud on and activated Notes.
Then went to iCloud via Safari on another iMac, signed in, created a Note, sync'ed down (as it had before), created a new Note on the updated iMac and it sync'ed UP to the Cloud !
Edited and created Notes on both the iMac and the Cloud and the sync'ing worked both ways in all cases - so this looks promising.
Unsurprisingly, the non-updated iMac would get Notes DOWN from the cloud, but no updates were pushing up, so this looks pretty conclusive to me (on the macOS front)
Obviously, I haven't been able to try the iOS beta update yet, and I'm not going to try it.
Thought some of you might be interested in this ;)
Cheers
Simon
 
Traverse said:
I have spent two days Googling for solutions and I have tried varies fixes and I'm simply stumped. I've used Apple Notes since iOS 9 with no issue. I restored both my iPhone and iPad with a clean install of iOS 10. This may be a coincidence, but after that restore my notes starts syncing hit or miss (occasionally one note may sync really late).

Now this is the current situation: notes created on my Mac, iPhone, or iPad never sync to iCloud, but if I enter in a note directly on iCloud.com it appears on all my device instantly. Syncing is only working from iCloud to device, not device to iCloud.

I have:
  • Toggled notes in iCloud on all my devices multiple times and restarted my devices (I restarted my phone 8 times across two days).
  • I completely signed out of iCloud and signed back in. No fix.

I worried that the clean install may have done it, but my Mac was syncing fine until yesterday and I didn't do anything there. Does anyone have any advice? I rely on this app heavily and this is maddening.
Click to expand...

I have opened a case with Apple about a week ago for the same exact issue and it has been escalated to their engineering group. Earlier today we worked to collect logs and diagnostic information from each of my devices so they can better understand the problem. Bottom line is that it's more than just you having the issue and I would suggest contacting Apple Support for assistance.
 
Coldsmoke55 said:
I have opened a case with Apple about a week ago for the same exact issue and it has been escalated to their engineering group. Earlier today we worked to collect logs and diagnostic information from each of my devices so they can better understand the problem. Bottom line is that it's more than just you having the issue and I would suggest contacting Apple Support for assistance.
Click to expand...
I have already been through this process. Apple confirmed with me that engineering has found the issue, but since it's affecting so many users, the fix will be rolled up in a future iOS and macOS update.
 
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sjltech.uk said:
Hi Lausamsam - I will give that a try later today and post back.
In the meantime, I enrolled one of my iMacs in the beta program, and installed 10.12.3
Initially, I still had the problem, but turned of iCloud, deleted Notes stuff from ~/Library/ (as mentioned earlier in this thread) restarted the iMac, logged in, turned iCloud on and activated Notes.
Then went to iCloud via Safari on another iMac, signed in, created a Note, sync'ed down (as it had before), created a new Note on the updated iMac and it sync'ed UP to the Cloud !
Edited and created Notes on both the iMac and the Cloud and the sync'ing worked both ways in all cases - so this looks promising.
Unsurprisingly, the non-updated iMac would get Notes DOWN from the cloud, but no updates were pushing up, so this looks pretty conclusive to me (on the macOS front)
Obviously, I haven't been able to try the iOS beta update yet, and I'm not going to try it.
Thought some of you might be interested in this ;)
Cheers
Simon
Click to expand...

Hi Simon, is your new AppleID working on your spare iphone6 yet? Or it has got affected as well. Thanks for your test.
 
bSr43 said:
[EDIT2] MAKE SURE YOU HAVE A BACKUP OF YOUR NOTES!! IT MAY DELETE ALL OF THEM…

Hello guys,

I have a similar issue, where my notes were not synced between my devices. At least, it was only working one-way, from iCloud to my devices, but not the other way.
I *may* have found a solution, at least, now it seems to work between my iMac, and iCloud, but it is still erratic with my iOS devices.
Here is how I proceeded:

1) activate the « on my Mac » account in Notes on your Mac,
2) move all your notes from the iCloud account to this new « on my Mac »,
3) quit Notes,
4) launch the Terminal application, and enter the following command:
defaults write com.apple.Notes DebugModeEnabled -bool true
5) launch Notes, and make sure that there is no notes in the iCloud account,
6) a new « Debug » menu appeared in the application; choose « Delete Data (Delete from Cloud) »,
7) quit Notes, and in the terminal, enter the command:
defaults delete com.apple.Notes DebugModeEnabled
8) launch Notes again (the Debug menu has disappeared), and create a new note in the iCloud account,
9) with Safari, connect to https://www.icloud.com/, and check if your note has been uploaded,
10) modify the note on the iCloud website, and check the Notes application behaviour,
11) if the application seems to work properly, move your old notes from the « on my Mac » account to the iCloud account.

[EDIT] doesn’t work on iOS device…
Click to expand...

Like most of you guys, I went to the process of talking to apple, collecting logs from all my devices and sending them to the engineers. The Apple Senior Advisor, Daniel, was great and the last time he called me he told me that the engineers found the problem and that they were going to roll it out on the next update.

BUT until that happens this is what I did to get all my devices working. I hope this works for all of you guys.

IOS Sierra (Mac OS 10.12.2)
Following this procedure posted by bSr43 worked to fix Notes on my MacBook Pro. At first it didn’t work but then on that debug menu I clicked a couple of the other options present and it started working. The options I tried were, Refresh from iCloud, Push Everything to iCloud, Migrate iCloud Account, Delete migrated Duplicates and Reset Local Migration. Not sure if this is going to delete your notes or not but I proceeded because I didn't have that many notes and I also copied them to Word documents before I tried.

I think this actually fixed whatever was wrong with my Apple ID account, could had been the permissions set incorrectly or maybe a corrupted note was causing the conflict. But after the MacBook started syncing that is when I proceeded with the iOS devices.

IOS devices (iOS 10.2)
I read the forum on apple discussions that was posted by Lausamsam,

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7748879?start=15&tstart=0

There I found a suggestion about deleting the Notes apps from the IOS devices and reinstalling it. Once you reinstall the app make sure that you go back to the iCloud setting and enable Notes again, it will get disable once you delete the app. I did that on my iPhone 7+ and iPad Mini and now Notes work on all my devices, they are syncing back and forth with iCloud as they used to.
 
Last edited:
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Lausamsam said:
Hi Simon, is your new AppleID working on your spare iphone6 yet? Or it has got affected as well. Thanks for your test.
Click to expand...
Hi Lausamsam, I haven't had time to try again on the iPhone since the last post.
Having spoken to the Apple tech support person I've been talking to about this problem, I've been told it's a recognised problem that will be fixed with a patch/update, and certainly for me, the beta 10.12.3 on macOS HAS fixed the issue, so I've decided to just wait for the update - unfortunately hjirman's solution didn't work for me on my iPhone 7.
Since I'm not going to install beta macOS on my other devices, or beta iOS on my iOS devices, I'm sticking to Google Keep from now on - means I can replace Notes AND Reminders with a single app (the geolocate reminders in Google Keep are surprisingly useful too !)
Cheers
Simon
 
hjmiran said:
Like most of you guys, I went to the process of talking to apple, collecting logs from all my devices and sending them to the engineers. The Apple Senior Advisor, Daniel, was great and the last time he called me he told me that the engineers found the problem and that they were going to roll it out on the next update.

BUT until that happens this is what I did to get all my devices working. I hope this works for all of you guys.

IOS Sierra (10.12.2)
Following this procedure posted by bSr43 worked to fix Notes on my MacBook Pro. At first it didn’t work but then on that debug menu I clicked a couple of the other options present in that menu and it started working. The options I tried were, Refresh from iCloud, Push Everything to iCloud, Migrate iCloud Account, Delete migrated Duplicates and Reset Local Migration. Not sure if this is going to delete your notes or not but I proceeded because I didn't have that many notes and I also copied them to Word documents before I tried.

IOS devices (I'm running on iOS 10.2)
I read the forum on apple discussions that was posted by Lausamsam,

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7748879?start=15&tstart=0

There I found a suggestion about deleting the Notes apps from the IOS devices and reinstalling it. Once you reinstall the app make sure that you go back to the iCloud setting and enable Notes again, it will get disable once you delete the app. I did that on my iPhone 7+ and iPad Mini and now Notes work on all my devices, they are syncing back and forth with iCloud as they used to.
Click to expand...
This worked brilliantly. Thank you for sharing the process.
 
Last edited:
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sjltech.uk said:
Hi Lausamsam, I haven't had time to try again on the iPhone since the last post.
Having spoken to the Apple tech support person I've been talking to about this problem, I've been told it's a recognised problem that will be fixed with a patch/update, and certainly for me, the beta 10.12.3 on macOS HAS fixed the issue, so I've decided to just wait for the update - unfortunately hjirman's solution didn't work for me on my iPhone 7.
Since I'm not going to install beta macOS on my other devices, or beta iOS on my iOS devices, I'm sticking to Google Keep from now on - means I can replace Notes AND Reminders with a single app (the geolocate reminders in Google Keep are surprisingly useful too !)
Cheers
Simon
Click to expand...

Yeah, Thanks sjltech.uk. Fair enough. I am quite happy with Google Keep at this stage.

Surely, if they are fixing the issue and roll the solution for the next update, I wouldn't bother contacting them again as there is nothing they can do at this stage. We will keep updating here for the latest status.
 
I just upgraded from an iPhone 6 (10.02) to iPhone 7 (10.2) and also facing the same issue above (iOS to iCloud sync does not work; but iCloud to iOS sync works)

When i was using an iPhone 6, I did not encounter such issue.
Only encountered it on my iPhone 7

edit-
Deleting and re-installing the Notes app did not work.
Also tried turning on/off the Notes sync in iCloud settings
Unfortunately I don't have a Mac computer so i can't try some of the solutions above
 
Last edited:
bSr43 said:
[EDIT2] MAKE SURE YOU HAVE A BACKUP OF YOUR NOTES!! IT MAY DELETE ALL OF THEM…

Hello guys,

I have a similar issue, where my notes were not synced between my devices. At least, it was only working one-way, from iCloud to my devices, but not the other way.
I *may* have found a solution, at least, now it seems to work between my iMac, and iCloud, but it is still erratic with my iOS devices.
Here is how I proceeded:

1) activate the « on my Mac » account in Notes on your Mac,
2) move all your notes from the iCloud account to this new « on my Mac »,
3) quit Notes,
4) launch the Terminal application, and enter the following command:
defaults write com.apple.Notes DebugModeEnabled -bool true
5) launch Notes, and make sure that there is no notes in the iCloud account,
6) a new « Debug » menu appeared in the application; choose « Delete Data (Delete from Cloud) »,
7) quit Notes, and in the terminal, enter the command:
defaults delete com.apple.Notes DebugModeEnabled
8) launch Notes again (the Debug menu has disappeared), and create a new note in the iCloud account,
9) with Safari, connect to https://www.icloud.com/, and check if your note has been uploaded,
10) modify the note on the iCloud website, and check the Notes application behaviour,
11) if the application seems to work properly, move your old notes from the « on my Mac » account to the iCloud account.

[EDIT] doesn’t work on iOS device…
Click to expand...
This fixed it for me :)
 
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jwm said:
[EDIT2] MAKE SURE YOU HAVE A BACKUP OF YOUR NOTES!! IT MAY DELETE ALL OF THEM…

Hello guys,

I have a similar issue, where my notes were not synced between my devices. At least, it was only working one-way, from iCloud to my devices, but not the other way.
I *may* have found a solution, at least, now it seems to work between my iMac, and iCloud, but it is still erratic with my iOS devices.
Here is how I proceeded:

1) activate the « on my Mac » account in Notes on your Mac,
2) move all your notes from the iCloud account to this new « on my Mac »,
3) quit Notes,
4) launch the Terminal application, and enter the following command:
defaults write com.apple.Notes DebugModeEnabled -bool true
5) launch Notes, and make sure that there is no notes in the iCloud account,
6) a new « Debug » menu appeared in the application; choose « Delete Data (Delete from Cloud) »,
7) quit Notes, and in the terminal, enter the command:
defaults delete com.apple.Notes DebugModeEnabled
8) launch Notes again (the Debug menu has disappeared), and create a new note in the iCloud account,
9) with Safari, connect to https://www.icloud.com/, and check if your note has been uploaded,
10) modify the note on the iCloud website, and check the Notes application behaviour,
11) if the application seems to work properly, move your old notes from the « on my Mac » account to the iCloud account.

[EDIT] doesn’t work on iOS device…
Click to expand...

I tried this, but notes stalls after clicking "delete data (delete from icloud)

The whole app goes grey with the spinner in the center and it never finishes. Anyone have a recommendation?
 
So I have this issue on my MBP (10.12.2), iPhone (10.2), iPad (10.2), non of the fixes worked. Having just updated my work MBP to 10.12.2 everything seems to be working just fine on that machine.

Odd and frustrating at the same time. Hope Apple are near to a fix and release for this annoying issue.
 
Last edited:
hjmiran said:
Like most of you guys, I went to the process of talking to apple, collecting logs from all my devices and sending them to the engineers. The Apple Senior Advisor, Daniel, was great and the last time he called me he told me that the engineers found the problem and that they were going to roll it out on the next update.

BUT until that happens this is what I did to get all my devices working. I hope this works for all of you guys.

IOS Sierra (Mac OS 10.12.2)
Following this procedure posted by bSr43 worked to fix Notes on my MacBook Pro. At first it didn’t work but then on that debug menu I clicked a couple of the other options present and it started working. The options I tried were, Refresh from iCloud, Push Everything to iCloud, Migrate iCloud Account, Delete migrated Duplicates and Reset Local Migration. Not sure if this is going to delete your notes or not but I proceeded because I didn't have that many notes and I also copied them to Word documents before I tried.

I think this actually fixed whatever was wrong with my Apple ID account, could had been the permissions set incorrectly or maybe a corrupted note was causing the conflict. But after the MacBook started syncing that is when I proceeded with the iOS devices.

IOS devices (iOS 10.2)
I read the forum on apple discussions that was posted by Lausamsam,

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7748879?start=15&tstart=0

There I found a suggestion about deleting the Notes apps from the IOS devices and reinstalling it. Once you reinstall the app make sure that you go back to the iCloud setting and enable Notes again, it will get disable once you delete the app. I did that on my iPhone 7+ and iPad Mini and now Notes work on all my devices, they are syncing back and forth with iCloud as they used to.
Click to expand...

This also worked for me! But after you have done it be careful with iCloud.com because the first time I tried it, it worked but after deleting an note on iCloud.com everything stoped working. But today I tried it again after about 3 weeks and it worked again and now I won't go to iCloud.com so I hope it keeps working. Hope that my info wil help you!

Info:
iPhone 6s iOS 10.2.1 beta 3
Ipad mini iOS 9.3.5 (my iPad alway worked with iCloud notes)
Macbook Air macOS 10.12.3 beta 3
 
I have had this issue for weeks and had been working with Apple support, who ultimately sought assistance from their backline support. They confirmed there was a code issue that needed to be fixed. Bottom line is that today it is working in the beta version of Sierra 10.12.3.
 
Coldsmoke55 said:
I have had this issue for weeks and had been working with Apple support, who ultimately sought assistance from their backline support. They confirmed there was a code issue that needed to be fixed. Bottom line is that today it is working in the beta version of Sierra 10.12.3.
Click to expand...
Traverse said:
I have spent two days Googling for solutions and I have tried varies fixes and I'm simply stumped. I've used Apple Notes since iOS 9 with no issue. I restored both my iPhone and iPad with a clean install of iOS 10. This may be a coincidence, but after that restore my notes starts syncing hit or miss (occasionally one note may sync really late).

Now this is the current situation: notes created on my Mac, iPhone, or iPad never sync to iCloud, but if I enter in a note directly on iCloud.com it appears on all my device instantly. Syncing is only working from iCloud to device, not device to iCloud.

I have:
  • Toggled notes in iCloud on all my devices multiple times and restarted my devices (I restarted my phone 8 times across two days).
  • I completely signed out of iCloud and signed back in. No fix.

I worried that the clean install may have done it, but my Mac was syncing fine until yesterday and I didn't do anything there. Does anyone have any advice? I rely on this app heavily and this is maddening.
Click to expand...


are other items still syncing correctly? most common cause of this is that you reset your Apple ID password and only entered the updated password on your phone. The Mac still has the old password stored and thus won't sync anything until you update it. but if other items are syncing then its not this
 
Coldsmoke55 said:
I have had this issue for weeks and had been working with Apple support, who ultimately sought assistance from their backline support. They confirmed there was a code issue that needed to be fixed. Bottom line is that today it is working in the beta version of Sierra 10.12.3.
Click to expand...
Also in the iOS beta?
 
So Rick turned out to be useless. Haven't heard from him in two weeks. Senior Engineer my ass! Apple's so pathetic. How can they not get this fixed yet!?
 
zaaach48 said:
are other items still syncing correctly? most common cause of this is that you reset your Apple ID password and only entered the updated password on your phone. The Mac still has the old password stored and thus won't sync anything until you update it. but if other items are syncing then its not this
Click to expand...
Everything except for notes.
 
Traverse said:
Everything except for notes.
Click to expand...

Weird, and you have completely signed out of iCloud and in again? (i know i'm basically saying turn it off and on again, but its worked for most iCloud issues)

I know that Mail and Notes sync via IMAP and it's somehow a different system than the rest of the items that sync in iCloud, hence why you used to have to create an "@icloud.com" email address when you wanted to sync notes. Something must be wrong on the server side then
 
Glad to see I'm not the only one having issues with Notes...(sarcasm about the "glad") Was looking to switch to it yesterday but the weird behavior I said nope quickly. My wife (Apple user as well) saw me migrating to Apple Notes - warned me saying she wouldn't recommend it, she's lost notes and had weird behavior recently. lol.
 
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