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How to Fix iPhone Notes Disappearing After Accepting New iCloud Terms

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Apple in September updated its iCloud terms and conditions with some minor changes, and this week it has been notifying iPhone users that they must accept the revised terms in order to continue using iCloud. Unfortunately, after accepting the new terms, some iPhone users have seen all of their notes disappear in the Notes app.

iOS 18 Notes Feature
While some users have turned to social media to justifiably panic about all of their notes being gone, thankfully the issue can be fixed by following the steps below.

  1. Open the Settings app.
  2. Tap on your name at the top (aka your Apple Account settings).
  3. Tap on iCloud.
  4. Tap on Notes.
  5. Turn on "Sync this iPhone" (green = on). If it is already on, turn it off and on again.
  6. In the Notes app, wait several minutes for your notes to be restored from iCloud.

We began monitoring this issue earlier this week, but it is unclear what the underlying cause is. Apple did not respond to our request for comment.

Tag: iCloud
Related Forums: iOS 18, iPadOS 18, Apple Music, Apple Pay/Card, iCloud, Fitness+

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Top Rated Comments

antiprotest Avatar
antiprotest
20 months ago
"Our unique integration of hardware and software ensures the total destruction of your data."

Privacy. That's iPhone.
Score: 11 Votes (Like | Disagree)
E
Egk
20 months ago
Safari can’t even keep my bookmarks up to date. I will *never* trust Apple with anything critical when it comes to sync.
Score: 7 Votes (Like | Disagree)
M
mystery hill
20 months ago
There is no way to batch export all notes on iPhone and iPad to a folder on the device, or to an external drive.

You have to completely depend on iCloud and hope that a bug doesn’t delete all your notes.
Score: 7 Votes (Like | Disagree)
H
Hank001
20 months ago

That would be a disaster for most people! I know it’s rare but shows the risk of cloud computing.

Can you still create notes on your mac locally? And if so how do you back them up?
Calm down please. One can simply store them on the iPhone as well.


Attachment Image
Score: 4 Votes (Like | Disagree)
T
tywebb13
20 months ago
would simply making a new note make all the others come back?

i heard that this was a simpler way to fix it.

but more concerning is apple's silence on the matter.

why the silence?

refusal to acknowledge the bug, when it is blatantly obvious to the rest of the internet?

well as big as apple is, the internet is bigger!

and not even helping people with a workaround to fix it, leaving it up to sites like macrumors to provide the workaround?

that’s very poor form on apple's part
Score: 4 Votes (Like | Disagree)
E
ellpee
20 months ago
Only a matter of time before everything you have in iCloud disappears. Nothing about it works smoothly, even adjusting settings will induce hiccups. Always print your favorite photos!
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)
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