Apple Acknowledges iCloud Notes Disappearing and Explains How to Fix

Earlier this month, we reported about some iPhone users temporarily losing all of their notes in the Notes app after accepting Apple's updated iCloud terms and conditions. Apple has now indirectly acknowledged this issue in a new support document that outlines steps to follow if your iCloud notes are not appearing on your iPhone, iPad, or Vision Pro.

iCloud General Feature
Fortunately, the notes can be re-synced from iCloud. Apple's steps are pretty much identical to the ones we shared earlier this month:

If your iCloud notes aren't appearing on your iPhone, iPad, or Apple Vision Pro, follow these steps.

1. Open the Settings app and tap your name.
2. Tap iCloud, then tap Notes.
3. Make sure Sync this [device] is on, then check the Notes app.
4. If you still don't see your notes, restart your iPhone, iPad, or Apple Vision Pro. After restarting, check your settings again.

After these steps, your iCloud notes should appear and start syncing again on devices signed in to the same Apple Account. When syncing completes, content previously synced to iCloud should appear.

Apple updated its iCloud terms and conditions with some minor changes in September, and it has been notifying users about accepting them in recent weeks. The issue with notes disappearing has continued to affect iPhone users since our initial coverage of it earlier this month, according to social media posts.

Notes disappearing has not been the only problem. In another new support document, Apple said iPhone, iPad, and Vision Pro users who receive a "Cannot Complete Action" error message when trying to accept the updated iCloud terms and conditions should update to the latest version of iOS, iPadOS, or visionOS and try again.

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Top Rated Comments

mortenb Avatar
3 weeks ago
With more and more important data in the Notes app, Apple really need to create a better way to make a local backup.
Score: 28 Votes (Like | Disagree)
ellpee Avatar
3 weeks ago
Apple needs to get out of the cloud business BEFORE a major disaster occurs.
Score: 15 Votes (Like | Disagree)
GerritV Avatar
3 weeks ago

Apple needs to get out of the cloud business BEFORE a major disaster occurs.
Couldn't agree more. None of their cloud services ever worked decently. I remember MobileMe (a yearly subscription BTW), which was so bad that Apple refunded its users and gave them a whole year of free "service".
Score: 11 Votes (Like | Disagree)
MayaUser Avatar
3 weeks ago

Good to know they finally acknowledging the bugs in iOS 18
This is a bug on ios17 as well
Score: 9 Votes (Like | Disagree)
CarAnalogy Avatar
3 weeks ago

With more and more important data in the Notes app, Apple really need to create a better way to make a local backup.
Agreed. I just tested the iCloud download your data page for Notes.

It took five days to complete the request to make my 50MB Notes zip file.

All the notes are plaintext. At least it included attachments.

They really need to do a better job with this. Pretty sure that backup only exists because they're required to provide users access to their data, but they never said it had to be in a useful format.
Score: 8 Votes (Like | Disagree)
tomssy Avatar
3 weeks ago
Happened to me this week. On iOS 17. The fact that they all just disappeared from your local device is bad. It resynced to iCloud after that but took a while too. Apple has never been at the top with cloud services.
Score: 7 Votes (Like | Disagree)