Thursday, November 7, 2019

Apple Notes and iCloud Syncing

Warner Crocker:

Recently, (and I sadly can’t pin this on recent iOS or Mac OS system updates because I just wasn’t paying close enough attention), I’ll create a note on one device and it may indeed show up on all three, or perhaps two, and sometimes it won’t sync off of the device it was created on until some random time down the road.

[…]

I had spent a morning creating a number of notes on the MacBook in preparation for a production meeting. I walked to theatre, opened up the iPad Pro and none of those notes appeared. I checked the iPhone and some of those notes appeared.

[…]

At the end of that testing period I ended up with four different note counts on three devices and the web.

[…]

Further, it appeared that some of the notes, not all, I created that morning were gone from all devices and the web.

And it happened again after the Apple Senior Advisor reset his iCloud database.

Previously:

Update (2019-11-09): Ivan Pavlov:

I can only confirm that since iOS 13 Notes syncing has become much less reliable. It is a pity since it was so good before. Apple is aware of that, my bug report FB7267359 has more than 10 similar reports with no visible actions since September.

Michele Galvagno:

Wow! Thank you for this!

At least I’m not alone in this!

How are you (people affected) facing this?

I’ve not had my sync for one month now... that’s a lot!

Cameron Ehrlich:

This has been driving me nuts!

5 Comments RSS · Twitter

Michele Galvagno

Thank you for this!
I thought I was alone with this, gives the lack of care the advisor following me is taking on my case.

Is there something we users can do?
Apart from moving all our notes to another service?

Mac Notes allows creating of nested folders. iPad can't make nested folders but used to be able to use them (show and let create new notes in them). Current iOS doesn't show the sub-nested notes but searching does show them. After I flattened the Notes on Mac to only one level of folders, my serious syncing problem eased. Might be related, maybe not; with iCloud syncing you never know.

I don't understand why Apple doesn't give users more info for their Cloud apps, like an indicator that shows sync status and a "sync now" button. For Photos, Notes, Reminders, Voice Memos, Messages, etc. Sometimes it syncs instantly but other times there's a noticeable delay. I often find myself updating a Note on my Mac, then I open my iPhone Notes later in the day and the revision isn't there until after a minute or two (my WiFi is 60mbit/sec, so). It's really annoying when I need the current Note right away. Photos is even worse, I might not see new photos taken on my iPhone show up on my Mac for an hour or more.

I'm so glad I don't use any cloud crap, and just keep my own data on my own devices.

I have this issue too. It came definitely before Catalina but I can't remember if it occurred before i upgraded to iOS/iPadOS 13.

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