Apple Acknowledges iCloud Notes Disappearing and Explains How to Fix

[Basic75]

With more and more important data in the Notes app, Apple really need to create a better way to make a local backup.

Notes has an "Export to PDF" feature, but it only ever exports a single, even when multiple are selected.

Would it be possible to somehow automate iterating over all Notes and creating a PDF of each one?

Or perhaps we should write an alternative Notes.app that keeps everything in a git repository...

 

[jetsam]

This is a bug on ios17 as well

My sister-in-law, who is still on a 6S, had this happen on iOS 15.

 

[Marty_Macfly]

Hope this still works and is still current for you guys wanting local backup of all your 100’s of notes

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/backing-up-apple-notes-what-is-the-best-way.2305423/

 

[Burger Thing]

Apple and the cloud… and never ending **** show. For 3 hours I am trying to export videos from my photo library in original quality for a FCPX project. Apple has never been reliable with cloud services. Terrible

 

[jasonsmith_88]

Passwords is also a problem.

On my M2 MBA Mac, passwords my mother’s shared with my sister and me have disappeared including the shared folders.

Yet on my Mac those shared folders in my and my sister’s Apple account are present and correctly populated. Same for our iPhones.

Turning off the password sync and then restarting the Mac and turning on sync doesn’t recover them.

Given we use the notes section in Passwords to store all account related info, this lack of robustness is unnerving.

When Passwords launched, many people claimed it marked the death of 1Password. I don’t even particularly like 1Password but I trust their software. There’s absolutely no way I’d risk using Passwords just to save $30 a year.

 

[crisneat]

On iOS 16, and it doesn’t even let me accept the new iCloud terms and conditions

 

[rikki_t]

In Monterey the Systems Prefs for iCloud Drive no longer lists Notes as being stored in the cloud, only Reminders, and sure enough all Notes have gone from the phone, is this part of the bug or is this Apple forcing an upgrade

 

[ignatius345]

That's what I want to know. I was expecting that TM would backup this stuff right?

I think it's backed up with everything else, but I suspect restoring is a hacky process involving replacing some hidden database folder in its entirety -- which could be pretty disruptive!

With the Notes app having evolved into essentially a little file system of its own, it feels like a huge omission to not be able to browse Notes backups in Time Machine the way one would with other documents, and be able to restore versions of individual notes.

 

[Victor Mortimer]

And what if your notes app isn't checked off with iCloud like mine?

Then you won't have a problem.

I've never lost a single note on the accounts synced to my own email server. iCloud has been eating notes for YEARS. Remember when they started the "scan a document" feature? Those would only work with iCloud notes. And one day over half of them were gone. That was the day I stopped using that.

 

[videosoul]

Is there a way to backup all of one's Notes? I know you can export individual notes to PDF, but wha about the whole lot?

 

[TracesOfArsenic]

How about fixing iCloud in general? Syncing between a Mac and iPhone is random at best. Absolute garbage.

 

[Chungry]

Two things are anathema to Apple:
1. Stable cloud services
2. Gaming

Hence why I own a powerful gaming PC and use a notes app that doesn’t rely on the cloud

 

[Chungry]

The other issue: search in Notes 🤬 I go to look for x note, and I know I’ve referenced said note before, but it says it cannot find the note. Of course, it is when I usually need info from said note immediately.

So now I screen shot the note and tag it in the Photos app, which just bloats my Photos folder. 🤷‍♂️

How about searching in mail? Still broken after all these years

 

[Stiksi]

Ok, now fix the one that replaces notes with older versions because the icloud sync messed up. I have to keep libreoffice backups of my notes so I don’t lose edits.

 

[Razorpit]

With more and more important data in the Notes app, Apple really need to create a better way to make a local backup.

I've been saying this for years. Freeform is another app that needs this. These apps are practically useless without some form of backup/versioning.

 

[frifra]

They still didn’t fix the typing bug, especially in tables in notes.


You try to type „Apple“. But it writes leppa or something like that as the cursor moves to the left while typing. Same problem on iPad and iPhone since iOS 17 and now also on 18.1

 

[robertcoogan]

I used to use Notes a lot -but when the app disappeared from the Apple Watch I stopped.

 

[Pagemakers]

Unable to accept the T’s & C’s and no update available from 17.1.1 - many other users with the same problem here:

unable to accept new icloud terms and con… - Apple Community

discussions.apple.com

 

[jetsam]

Notes has an "Export to PDF" feature, but it only ever exports a single, even when multiple are selected.

Would it be possible to somehow automate iterating over all Notes and creating a PDF of each one?

Or perhaps we should write an alternative Notes.app that keeps everything in a git repository...

The paid version of iMazing will save all the Notes at once into a folder. It does seem to flounder on images.

If you've already got the paid version of iMazing, it's better than nothing, and I'm using it. If you don't have the paid version, I don't consider this facility good enough to pay money for.