Notes not syncing to and from iCloud from OS X Yosemite

Okay, this is extremely frustrating and weird. I've had syncing of notes to iCloud turned on for a while, and I was never really able to figure out when the notes were synced. It always seemed pretty random. Anyways, my notes from iOS 8 on iPhone 5S are synced to iCloud just fine, but the Notes app on my Mac refuses to sync to iCloud. As a result, no edits/new notes are pushed to iCloud, and the notes from my iPhone are never synced to my Mac.

I have turned Notes on in my iCloud settings, but it doesn't work. I also tried to disable it and enable it again several times, but it just doesn't work. I have disabled Notes sync for all other Internet Accounts on my Mac, so it is only enabled on the iCloud account.

What on Earth is going on here? Thanks in advance!

Solution 1:

Just a follow-up on this. I wouldn't say that I have fixed the problem, but closing and opening the Notes app seems to enable syncing again. It continues to stop syncing automatically, however. I am not sure if this happens after wakening the Mac up from sleep, which I do a lot. Nevertheless, restarting the app seems to work so far.

Also, make sure that you are viewing "All Notes" or "Notes" under the "iCloud" section in the sidebar of the Notes app, and not just the notes that are on your Mac locally. This happened to me once because I had hidden the sidebar (drag the edge of the left side of the window to the right to show it again).

It seems to be a bug in the Notes app on OS X, as syncing works fine between iOS and iCloud. For now my solution is to manually restart the Notes app when I want to sync, which sucks, but at least it syncs!

Solution 2:

From what I've seen from Apps like Notes, Numbers, and Pages... They're now acting as usual apps which looks for "filesystem" files. i.e. something on the local drive.

When you fire up an iCloud enabled app, then need to open a document, in your Favourites is "iCloud Drive" and now things are stored under there, under folders which correspond to their apps i.e. Numbers, Pages etc...

As to the syncing.. You needn't worry about this. Apple handles this.. Sadly, if you're looking to move directly over from App 1 on Device 1 to App 1 on Device 2 in 1 second, it won't happen.

edit

To resolve this, what I've done in the past is delete the container that the app in question lives in and start again.

e.g. in your case.. notes lives in: ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Notes

Problem is, when you do this, you probably will lose the notes you have... The ones which are already in iCloud will resend back down to the Mac you deleted the notes Container from.

Do note that after you do this, it's HIGHLY advised that you do a "repair permissions" on the drive so the sandbox permissions/ACL's are reset.