Restoring a deleted note in Tahoe

[Mudhen]

So I accidentlly deleted a note. Searched online and every suggestion doesn't seem to work. No more "Deleted" option in my Notes toolbar. Tried looking in Time Machine and Notes doesn't even appear in my older versions.

Is there a way without buying some third party software?

 

[kitKAC]

I have a Recently Deleted section at the bottom of my folder list.

 

[NoBoMac]

^this but only if you have a deleted Note that has not been purged. Both iOS and Mac.

And: are you talking iOS or Mac? Post is in iOS 26 but talking about Time Machine.

 

[Mudhen]

It's on my Mac

 

[gilby101]

The Notes database is stored in ~/Library/Group Containers/group.com.apple.notes. You can find this in your Time Machine backups - I use Finder to do this.

If desperate try a) exit Notes, b) copy your existing ~/Library/Group Containers/group.com.apple.notes folder somewhere safe, c) guess a date when the note was present and find the folder in TM, d) copy the folder from Time Machine to ~/Library/Group Containers, e) run Notes, f) if that has worked, copy the contents of note you want to somewhere else. Then revert back to your current Notes by a) exit Notes, b) restore your safely preserved group.com.apple.notes back to ~/Library/Group Containers, and c) start Notes again.

This is messy and prone to all sorts of unexpected issues and mistakes (potential consequence is to lose all Notes) - I would only do it if really important to recover the lost note. As an additional precaution, I would export ALL existing notes from Notes to PDFs.

 

[PotentPeas]

If desperate try a) exit Notes, b) copy your existing ~/Library/Group Containers/group.com.apple.notes folder somewhere safe, c) guess a date when the note was present and find the folder in TM, d) copy the folder from Time Machine to ~/Library/Group Containers, e) run Notes, f) if that has worked, copy the contents of note you want to somewhere else. Then revert back to your current Notes by a) exit Notes, b) restore your safely preserved group.com.apple.notes back to ~/Library/Group Containers, and c) start Notes again.

If your deleted note was stored in iCloud, disconnect from the Internet before hitting "e) run Notes"; otherwise, it might disappear the note you are trying to rescue immediately after opening the Notes app when it does the iCloud sync.

 

[gilby101]

If your deleted note was stored in iCloud, disconnect from the Internet before hitting "e) run Notes"; otherwise, it might disappear the note you are trying to rescue immediately after opening the Notes app when it does the iCloud sync.

Good (if that is the right word) example of what can go wrong. Also possible that any newer than the backup notes might vanish. Absolutely right - disconnect from the Internet before trying my suggestion.

My recommendation is to accept the loss of the note.

 

[Mudhen]

Doesn't seem much point in backing up something if you can't retrieve it.

 

[gilby101]

Doesn't seem much point in backing up something if you can't retrieve it.

I agree!!

For the future, you may want to consider the way I work:
1) Apple Notes is for ephemeral notes. For notes you want to keep use something else (e.g. a markdown editor or Pages) which stores documents/notes as files.
2) Regularly use Exporter to export the Notes database to files (either markdown or html format). Though to be honest I do that irregularly.

Backup and recovery is much easier if the objects to be recovered are individual files.