I have a iPad and iPhone, both of which are having severe Gmail Notes syncing issues.
My setup was working fine for the last several years, but recently (starting about a month and a half ago), my Notes randomly stop syncing between the devices and Google.
The notes will be locally updated on the particular iDevice I used last, but never sync up to Gmail (verified by looking in my account on a web browser), and therefore never sync to my other iDevice. This causes out-of-sync Notes, and is a pain to get working again. When I do get it working again, it only works for a handful of days (2-5 days), and then suddenly stops syncing again for no obvious reason.
I only use Gmail for Notes – I have all other Gmail syncing turned off in the iOS settings (as has been for at least the last year and a half without issue). I use Office 365 for Mail, Contacts, and Calendars. My Gmail Notes integration was legacy, but I preferred how it worked over the Office 365's OneNote setup.
Things I've tried:
- Turned off Note syncing (which deletes the notes from the Device), and then turning it back on. This does not seem to have any effect, and the Gmail notes section under the Notes app never shows back up. It's like it's still not enabled.
- Deleting the Gmail account off the iDevice entirely, and then re-adding the Gmail account and turning everything off except Notes syncing. This works for a few days, and then suddenly stops again.
- Tried doing a Network Settings Reset on both iDevices. This has no effect.
- Tried updating my iDevices from 10.3.1 -> 10.3.2 hoping there was some issue/bug in the Notes app from Apple… but this had no effect, even after repeating the above things.
Oddly enough, when I go into Settings and enable Gmail Email syncing, the notes seem to start to sync again. The problem here is I forward all email to my Office 365 account, so I don't want to sync my Gmail Mail to the iDevices. My password for Gmail has not changed recently, and deleting/re-adding the account to iOS would confirm if I've entered the wrong password anyway.
My Devices:
- iPhone 6 on iOS 10.3.2
- iPad 4 on iOS 10.3.2
How can I make my iDevices cooperate with Gmail Notes like they used to?
Best Answer
My iPad updates right away if I add or edit a note in gmail. iPhone does not. Only way I can get the iPhone to sync is to do a hard reset of the phone (waiting for the white Apple) and then restarting the notes app.