iOS app stopped syncing with desktop and web on October 19, 2026
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T H A N K. Y O U !
To everyone who helped to solve this problem.
I am so gratefull that my favorite note-taking-app works again.
I realise again how much I use it. How much I rely on it. How easy it works to have my notes on my phone, on the web and on my desktop easily accessable.
Thankx -
A BIG thank you to Automattic who:
- Solved this bug/problem within only 1-2 days
- Rarely if ever introduces new bugs (this was really an exception)
- Provides the best note taking app/service that I have ever found
- Does all of the above for free
I have used Simplenote for longer than I can remember and really hope that I will be able to continue using it for many more years to come! ❤️
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Phew! I’m so pleased the issue has been resolved and my notes are once again accessible via the app on my phone – still to reinstall the Mac app.
Thank you to those who solved the issue, and for maintaining the best clean, minimalist note-taking app without any unnecessary frills or forced AI upgrades.
For a moment, I was worried I’d have to go back to pen and paper! ;)
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Working for me also. Appears to have synced when I opened the iPad at 0517 EDT this morning.
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Yes, the same thing happened to me many times over the past couple of years. You’re right — somehow, the Mac version always seems to win.
I think I’ve figured out what was happening. It seemed to occur when my iPhone had an unstable connection while I was out and about. The changes made on the iPhone wouldn’t get synced to Simplenote’s servers, while my Mac remained connected to stable Wi-Fi. Then the Mac would sync and simply overwrite the newer changes with the older version. And yes, the changes were gone forever — they never appeared in the version history.
I used to report this to Simplenote back when they had human support replying to every email. They couldn’t help, and basically explained the same thing I’ve just described. You’re describing exactly the same problem, including that split second when the iPhone starts syncing and you watch your notes disappear forever.
I always thought it might be because my Mac was old. Then I wondered whether it had something to do with the VPN, since I always had it enabled on both my iPhone and Mac. What about you? How old is your Mac, and do you use a VPN? I’m just wondering whether this could have been an issue on our side rather than a bug in Simplenote itself.
As for Simplenote’s search, I have exactly the same experience. There’s no way to search within an open note. You can only search across all your notes, open the one you’re looking for, and then scroll through it to find the matching text. And while you’re doing that, you often see a lot of irrelevant matches.
I emailed them about this 5–7 years ago and asked them to implement search similar to Apple Notes. They said they’d pass the suggestion on to their development team, but nothing ever changed. And since they’ve stated on their website that no new features are planned, I doubt this will ever be fixed.
There’s also a security concern here. With so little ongoing maintenance and support, it’s reasonable to worry about whether security issues are being addressed promptly. So we’re not only facing the risk of losing our notes, but also potential security risks.
As they explain on their website, “Notes are not encrypted at rest due to server side constraints.” They’re encrypted only while in transit, not when stored on their servers. This means that anyone who gains sufficient access to the servers or the underlying stored data could potentially read our notes. This isn’t a new issue, of course, but it feels much more concerning now that the app seems to be receiving so little support.
Apple Notes, on the other hand, supports Advanced Data Protection. When it’s enabled, your notes are end-to-end encrypted, so Apple can’t read their contents on its servers.
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Hi all – @wordyjugular, @leopools, @johnswift37, @ctuckwell87, @ernfors, @casualfox36b0dafd56, @paulgemp614e5204f9, @toomanybarts, @hofeizai, @jellyfishswiftly672e783464
Thanks for reaching out and sharing details.
We recently had a brief service interruption, as you can read about here: https://forums.simplenote.com/forums/topic/simplenote-down/page/3/?view=all#post-6967
It sounds like you were affected by this event.
Would you try logging in again and try accessing the notes, and let us know in that thread above if you’re still experiencing issues?
Thank you!
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It’s all working now, THANK YOU. But could you help explain what happened and if this is an early warning on the app being deprecated?
I’ve LOVED using this app for 11 years, but this scared me that I’d lose my data.
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Hi @toomanybarts, thank you for letting us know! I’m glad it’s working well for you.
As Steph noted in this comment, Simplenote is no longer being actively developed, but Automattic is a firm believer in not letting existing users who choose to keep using our services down. At this time, we’re planning on keeping on running the service for you all, at our cost, with development being limited to making sure the service remains secure and active.
You can read more about what happened and future updates from our development team in that thread: https://forums.simplenote.com/forums/topic/simplenote-down/page/3/?view=all#post-6967. If you have further questions, you can ask in that thread too. Our team is monitoring that thread closely. :)
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Replying to leopools: I have always had either the latest or prior version of iOS and MacOS on an M2 MacBook Air and a few different iPhones that were only a few years old. No VPN except Apple’s iCloud Private Relay. I do have Background App Refresh turned off for my iPhone but Simplenote isn’t listed in that settings menu as an app that would benefit from it even if it was turned on. I’m pretty confident the issue is unrelated to setup. It’s just that sync conflicts inevitably emerge and at least some of the time, the wrong instance wins. Idk why because it should be easy to look at timestamps and keep the newer instance but it seems like Mac is given priority or there’s just some bug. I found this discussion about what looks to be the same issue: https://forums.simplenote.com/forums/topic/lost-data-due-to-conflicted-sync/
Search is less than ideal in Simplenote but the data security and loss issues are by far the bigger things that concern me.
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