The Simplest Way to Sync Notes Between iPhone and iPad You Probably Don’t Know About

Notes for iPhone iPad - syncing via Gmail
Picture 1

Writers use many note-taking applications on their iOS devices. Some of them are very advanced, like Evernote, but frankly, how often do you tag notes, mark them as favourite or print?

If you want to have a quick way to write something down (quick = minimal number of taps) and you want your notes to be synced between iPhone, iPad and a computer, the simplest possible way is a default Notes application. There is no reason to spend extra money on an advanced note-taking app, if you only want your notes to be accessed from a computer.

Syncing is handled via Gmail. If you added your Gmail account in the Settings » Mail, Contacts, Calendars make sure notes are synced [picture 1].

If not, turn them on. Since that time all your notes will not only be synced between iOS devices, but also a special tab, called Notes, will be automatically created in your Gmail account.

What you have to remember is that it’s good to wait a couple of seconds before closing the app to give it a chance to send the new content to server [picture 2], but this is applying to all apps with sync functionality.

8 Replies to “The Simplest Way to Sync Notes Between iPhone and iPad You Probably Don’t Know About”

  1. I guess you haven’t updated your devices lately. That option is unavailable now.

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  2. I believe this only works if you’ve added Gmail as an IMAP account, not as an exchange account (i.e. with push functionality). So, the choice is between manually checking mail + notes syncing, or push e-mail notifications minus notes syncing.

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  3. Hi, I have been trying for quite some time to sync my iPhone notes with my iPad and in the process I ended up syncing my iphone notes to my Gmail. However, I find still cannot find a way to use the iCloud in order to transfer the notes I had originally on my iPhone before I enabled iCloud sync there.

    The notes which I took after the iCloud sync transfer correctly from my iPhone to my iCloud and back to my iPad, however, the problem is how to transfer the original notes I had before iCloud was enabled from my iPhone to my iPad. Can anyone help?

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  4. there is no direct way using Apple-native tools to tranfer your iPhone notes to your computer. I used this program (works on PC) to get my iphone notes transferred to my computer:

    http://www.copytrans.net/copytranscontacts.php

    Otherwise, I think it is possible via iTunes, but I am not sure whether it transfers the notes to your computer in a readable format or in a backup format so you can restore them to another iDevice.

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  5. i added gmail twice for that reason, one with mail and contacts synced, the other with calendars and notes synced, and everything seems fine. i get the notes listing in my gmail but… it doesn’t actually sync.

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