@manton Yikes. I rely on iCloud probably too much. For me it has “just worked” most of the time over the years. If I lost access to Apple Notes for hours, though, I’d be distressed enough to start looking at other solutions.

@manton Also good post back in ‘16. True, how iCloud manages photos and notes is too complex for me, opaque like you said.

I value the “tangible” or visible plain text file approach, which is one benefit of Obsidian for notes, for example. But for sync, you must choose a service. I recall iCloud or Obsidian’s own service as options. Curious if DropBox is supported.

I’ve had horrible luck with Notes / iCloud sync – files not syncing, not deleting, disappearing, reappearing, disappearing again, and so on. After a great deal of logging out of iCloud, deleting, having files reappear, re-delete, reappear I gave up. It seemed to be syncing, but I could no longer trust Notes with anything important.

Problem with Dropbox is that it just eats CPU cycles on anything that it’s running on.

@manton @isaiah Yup, I switched from Evernote to Apple Notes because I don't trust Evernote to survive.

But the syncing of Notes across devices is very hit and miss: some days it's instant, other days it takes hours. Quitting and relaunching Notes seems to make no difference. Oh yes please for a manual sync button.

I've never trusted iCloud drive, and I've been using it since .Mac, MobileMe etc.

@rogerscrafford I’m having similar problems with Drafts not syncing across all devices.

@robbirming That’s a bummer. I think I still pay for iTunes Match and I’m afraid to cancel it because maybe it is keeping the whole thing glued together. Although mostly just use Spotify now.

Issues like this are why I’m grateful Backblaze exists.

I recently tested syncing a single image for TIL with iCloud and it reacted as if I’d thrown at it a collection of those high-resolution images taken by NASA. This was just for between the M1 iMac and iPhone, on a stable connection with no other items being actively saved. That’s both the beginning and end of me trusting Apple for important syncing.

@SimonWoods Yeah, great reminder that even when everything syncs, it’s no substitute for an extra “real” backup.

@ReaderJohn It’s such a strange business, this syncing. I’ve never had difficulty with Drafts :-)