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I have been using the Notes app to take notes on my iPhone 5s for years now but recently I'd like to make those notes accessible on my iMac and Nexus 7 Tablet.

To sync them to the cloud I added Notes syncing on my phone and moved all my local notes over the iCloud account. Everything appears to work and if I login to my iCloud account through the web browser the notes appear online. But the notes will not sync to the Notes app on either my iMac or Nexus 7 (running the Notepad app).

I have attempted enabling/disabling the Notes app on iMac and Notepad app on the Nexus 7. Closing/opening the app. Restarting the both devices. Nothing seems to work.

Is there some workaround for this I'm missing or is iCloud Notes sync somehow broken.

I'm running the latest OSX (10.10.5) and lates IOS (9.0.1).

Aside: I've attempted to use Google Notes sync as an alternative but the OSX version of Notes doesn't play nice with Google's 2-factor auth.

Update: I have a note that was created before the update that did successfully sync to my iMac and Nexus 7 prior to updating Notes on my iPhone. As a test I just made a change to it on the Nexus 7 and it successfully synced the note on my iMac but didn't update the note on my iPhone.

It looks like the iPhone is successfully using the latest version that links with my iCloud account but my iMac and Nexus 7 are working with an old version that doesn't reflect on my iCloud account. WTF.

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  • I have the same exact issue. I have logged out and into iCloud on all my devices, all running the latest OS and iOS. Everything syncs, but the iPhone 6s does not.
    – user153811
    Oct 23, 2015 at 0:31
  • @SameProb Check the Notes data on your phone/desktop vs the data on iCloud. You're 100% positive you're running IOS 9 and OSX El Capitan?
    – Evan Plaice
    Oct 23, 2015 at 2:10
  • Yes, WTF... I do not want to update to OSX El Capitan. I already updated to Yosemite in my iMac (previosly updated to Mountain Lion from Snow Leopard) and experienced a lot of performance issues. Why a simple app like this one gives so much trouble? Come on...
    – nephewtom
    Jan 1, 2017 at 19:58

2 Answers 2

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My advice is to sign out of your iCloud account on your iPhone and iMac (or at least go to System Preferences on the Mac and turn off Notes). Then, since everything is on the iCloud.com version of Notes, remove the notes from your computer and phone. When that is done, sign back in or reactivate Notes and they should all be in sync.

I've never dealt with the Nexus personally or professionally, but I would probably say to delete and re-download the app you're using to sync it up correctly.

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  • Although it didn't fix my particular use case, this should solve most problems when OSX/IOS version conflicts aren't the cause.
    – Evan Plaice
    Oct 23, 2015 at 2:06
  • Logging out/in to iCloud on my phone solved my note sync problem.
    – BentheFolker
    Nov 18, 2015 at 21:54
  • Notes sucks, I did all - signed out of iOSes, OSXes, clear all notes in iCloud but it does still not sync. :(
    – Tien Do
    May 24, 2016 at 4:06
  • How do we remove the notes from the computer? I did turn off Notes in System Preferences, and once restarted, no notes were shown. But when turning on again in System Preferences, I got the same unsync problem. Any hint?
    – nephewtom
    Jan 1, 2017 at 20:01
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Updating OSX to El Capitan resolved the issue.

Update:

Just to clarify. The issue started when I updated my iPhone to the latest version (ie IOS9). A notification popped up saying my iMac's would also need to be updated to IOS9 to remain compatible which is likely a bug as my iMac doesn't run IOS (Ie should have said OSX 10.11 El Capitan).

At the time I wrote this question I wasn't aware that OSX had just released a new version.

From what I can tell, Notes.app has received a big overhaul in the latest IOS/OSX. Looks like they're on the warpath to kill and replace Evernote. Either way, the new features aren't available in older versions.

Looks like their syncing strategy is to continue syncing the old version of notes between devices but (eventually) cut iCloud.com support.

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  • I would call this 'chapuza' in Spanish. I think the translation in English is botched job...
    – nephewtom
    Jan 1, 2017 at 20:06

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