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I accidentally emptied the content of one of my Notes by selecting all and then pressing on the "return" key - removing everything.

I then quickly exited from my, now empty, Note, which my iPhone 8 automatically deleted.

And since this was an iCloud synced note it promptly synced it over to my Mac and deleted it from there.

So since technically I didn't delete it I can't find it in my "Recently Deleted Files". And checking my backup data on my iPhone there doesn't seem to be an option for Notes.

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    If you have iCloud backup on the phone a restore should bring it back to 'last night' if you left your phone on charge, in reach of wifi. For next time… shake the phone to undo.
    – Tetsujin
    Commented Nov 5, 2020 at 19:57

3 Answers 3

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I'm sorry to say this but I think your note is permanently deleted.

Here's why:
Deleting text in a note is like deleting text in a Word-document. When you delete all text in a Word-document, you can still undo (using CMD+Z) while the document is open. If you closed the document, the undo history gets deleted. And I thinks iOS Notes works this way. Try to create a new Note, add some text, go back, exit the app (by swiping up) and open it again. Can you undo(shake the device) to remove text? No. Undo history is gone.

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  • Not sure if this is the solution because if I manually delete a note it will appear in my "Recently Deleted" folder. But if the note is automatically deleted then it doesn't.
    – user1021726
    Commented Nov 5, 2020 at 20:28
  • @user1021726 I tried to recreate you accident by selecting all notes and deleting them. They did appear in the recently deleted folder on iCloud.com. Either we have a bug here, or my recreation failed. Did I do any wrong in the recreation of the accident?
    – iTunes
    Commented Nov 5, 2020 at 20:40
  • Hmm maybe. So I didn't select and delete all notes, I opened up a note and selected all text and deleted the text, then backed out of the note. And then iphone automatically deletes an all-empty note. Sorry if it wasn't clear before.
    – user1021726
    Commented Nov 5, 2020 at 21:04
  • Thanks for the clarification. No problem, we're here to help. I've successfully recreated your accident. I'm sorry to say this but I think your note is permanently deleted. Here's why: Deleting text in a note is like deleting text in a word document. When you delete all text in word, you can still undo (CMD+Z) while the document is open. If you closed the document, the undo history gets deleted. And I thinks iOS Notes works this way. Try to open a new Note, add some text, go back, exit the app(swipe up) and open it. Can you undo(shake) added text? No. Undo history is gone.
    – iTunes
    Commented Nov 5, 2020 at 21:29
  • It's an important distinction to make that deleting the text in the note is not the same as deleting the note - the note was modified. This is why you can't recover it from trash - the note was never trashed/deleted to begin with.
    – Allan
    Commented Nov 5, 2020 at 21:53
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You may be able to recover the Notes on your Mac using the Local Snapshots. Your Mac makes a backup of your changed files every hour, even when no external drive is connected.

  1. In the Finder click on "Go to Folder ..." and go to ~/Library/Group Containers/group.com.apple.notes/
  2. Select all items in that folder
  3. Enter the TimeMachine
  4. Navigate to a recent backup before you have lost your Notes by clicking on the layers behind the top Finder window
  5. Click on Resotre
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This is not on iPhone but on MacBook, but I've also lost several important notes just because I accidentally pressed Cmd + A, then Backspace key, and closed the app.

My solution was to change the shortcut of 'Select All' from Cmd + A to Ctrl + A only for the notes app, and it has been satisfying so far.

Howto: System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > App Shortcuts (left pane) > Click + button and add 'notes' > Register new shortcut for 'Select All' as Ctrl + A.

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