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iBooks syncing broken

nbnbxdnb

nbnbxdnb

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Sep 1, 2010
258
22
Hey guys, I have been spending the last 2 hrs trying to figure out this problem. But no positive results.
Basically, I just want bookmarks and notes to sync between mac, ipad, iphone like before. But now, the syncing is broken between all of them. The notes I made on ipad is not reflected on neither mac or iphone. And it is same for mac and iphone.
I recently reinstalled OS X 10.11 and had everything migrated to the new system. I don't know if that affected anything, or it is for the recent OS updates. Anyway, any thoughts are welcome. I really want to make it work, because I use iBooks a lot.
 
Bump. I'm having the same problem.

El Capitan, recent upgrade
9.3 on iOS devices, clean installations, no jailbreaks
iBooks enabled in iCloud settings
"Sync Bookmarks and Notes" enabled in iBooks settings on iOS devices

BOOKS themselves will sync properly, no problem. Bookmarks and notes will not sync, and I really need them to.

More info:

  • Won't sync on retail books or personal epubs
  • Won't sync from ANY device (Macbook, iPhone, iPad) to ANY device. All highlights and notes remain on their own device, even if you delete the book and redownload from cloud.
  • Have tried logging completely out of iCloud and back in on all devices
  • Have toggled all relevant iCloud and iBooks settings on and off
  • Have tried with multiple books/files, including books bought from the iTunes store

Pretty desperate for assistance at this point. This is a workflow I've been using forever (I'm a writer) and the inability to sync my notes for editing is a massive wrench in the works.
 
Yup! Same here. I am on the phone with Apple Support now. If they have a fix, I'll be sure to post it.

THANKS!

A.
[doublepost=1459440631][/doublepost]Update: The representative sent it to engineering.
 
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I'm having the same problem. Contacted @applesupport, they referred me to this page - no joy. I'm on an iPad 4, iPhone 6, and 2015 Macbook. I wondered if t was a hardware problem with the old iPad, but have now ruled that out. Very interested to hear what you get back from Engineering.
 
It is definitely NOT a hardware issue. Apple Engineering put my iTunes account into engineering mode and they are using it to figure out what's going on.

My two cents is that the issue is caused by something hard-baked into the iBooks app, which was improved a little with the iOS 9.3 release. So, I don't think we'll see a fix for it until 9.4.

A.
 
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Same issue—seems hard to believe that they would release 9.3 (and 9.3.1) with such a glaring error in one of the new features they've hyped.
 
Really glad to see I'm not alone here. I'm pretty good at troubleshooting, and I was kind of shocked that I couldn't find any references to this problem aside from this thread.
 
Same. Can't believe

• people aren't talking about this bug more
• that not enough people use iBooks notes/bookmarks sync enough
 
It seems sync may be working now. At least in brief testing for me. Maybe Apple changed something in the server side.
 
Acknowledged. Seems to work now. Must have been iCloud server side issue. Thank you Apple!
 
Read Position and Bookmarks seem to be working for me now....Notes/Highlights are still not syncing.

**Update - i noticed that my Mac was not syncing - i was not signed into the App Store via the iBooks store menu, once i did that, all syncing appears to be working again. Apparently some of iBooks syncing is done via App Store account and some via iCloud? Signed in to two different accounts for Store and iCloud.
 
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Hi all - I just read through this thread and I'm glad it seems like most of you have had the issue resolved. However, I'm having an issue that may or may not be related. I just downloaded an audiobook for the first time in forever, and I listened to a few hours of it on my iPad today. I was then surprised to find that, when I went to pick it up on my iPhone, my progress wouldn't sync over, and I had to start from the beginning. I haven't used audiobooks in a long time, so is this how it's supposed to act? Seems really strange. Thanks for any help!!
 
Hey... guys. Sorry, I didn't check my own post for a while. The syncing had been working for a few days after I upgraded to iOS 9.3 and enabled "use iCloud for iBooks" (in fact, accidentally). Then all my books were uploaded to iCloud as expected. Syncing was back again after a month long breakdown and I was happy...
Then one day, I found all my books except a few were deleted from both my iPhone and iPad for unknown reason. I didn't change anything, so I blamed it to the iCloud syncing. After I disabled iBook cloud syncing and managed get back all the local copies from Time Machine, I found the syncing was broken again. I lived with the problem for a week or so, until I decided to re-enable iBook cloud syncing. But this time, the syncing no longer worked. So it brought me here.
Besides of that, I found syncing books from iCloud doesn't get all my books to the devices. A few of them couldn't be downloaded and the error message was not enough space. But there was like 600mb free space in the cloud and 20G free on iPad. So I had no idea.
So far, I have to say, iBook cloud syncing has been a disaster to me. I have like 200 books and almost completely depend on them to entertain myself in various occasions like taking airplane, spending a few hours in a cozy coffee shop, etc.
 
boston04and07 said:
Hi all - I just read through this thread and I'm glad it seems like most of you have had the issue resolved. However, I'm having an issue that may or may not be related. I just downloaded an audiobook for the first time in forever, and I listened to a few hours of it on my iPad today. I was then surprised to find that, when I went to pick it up on my iPhone, my progress wouldn't sync over, and I had to start from the beginning. I haven't used audiobooks in a long time, so is this how it's supposed to act? Seems really strange. Thanks for any help!!
Click to expand...

So I'm guessing the syncing issue I've been experiencing isn't intended behavior? It seems so strange that I can't imagine it would be, but then again, Apple seems to be in the middle of changing things up with how audiobooks are handled, so who knows. My progress in the audiobook I'm currently listening to never syncs between my iPhone, iPad, and Mac, which is super frustrating given that I switch between them a lot. However, my regular books (ePub and PDF) have been syncing my furthest read page just fine, so I know at least some part of iCloud syncing is working. What I've been doing is taking a screenshot of my iBooks app (or iTunes) when I am done with listening or switching devices, so that when I pick up on a new device, I can easily check to see where I was and fast forward to the correct place (since Photos syncing is working just fine, go figure!)
 
I can't even open any personal books on Mac iBooks (10.11.6 PB1). Shows the frontispiece but will not open. I left my iPad back at my UK house by accident on Tuesday, when I had a middle of the night start to catch an early morning flight back to France. Have gone through the pain of resetting the library (also resets date of book addition to date of reset - what dimwit thought that was a good idea) but still cannot open books. This is reminiscent of the disappearance of personal music from iTunes when you use Apple Music. Have Apple screwed us over yet again? The strange thing is in my case synching to my iPhone still works and shows the entire and openable book.
 
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