How to sync iPhone/iPad Notes with Gmail and Yahoo

When you start using the Notes app in iPhone/iPad,you’ll find it to be an incredibly useful app. I personally use Notes for recipes, combinations I would typically forget and as a notepad for brainstorming ideas for the website. When on the go, using Siri to create notes is mobile computing at its very best. As you start to build out your collection of notes, it becomes important that you are backing up and transferring your notes to your computer. By default, setting up accounts will sync to their respective services.Here’s how to setup and make sure you are syncing your iPhone/iPad notes with Gmail or Yahoo. 

 


As detailed in our getting started guide, folders in Notes are associated with email accounts that you’ve setup. For example, let’s say that you have both iCloud and Gmail email accounts. When you open Notes, you should see both of those accounts as folders. The same goes for Yahoo. Here’s how to make sure you are setup for syncing notes between your email service and your iPhone.

• Navigate to Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars
• Under Accounts, select the email account you’d like to use to sync your notes (Yahoo, Gmail, iCloud)
• Make sure Notes is toggled on (green)

 

Where To Find Your Notes In Gmail, Yahoo

Notes in Gmail

Google doesn’t use a traditional folder system. Instead, it relies on the use of a label system. Your iOS notes are labeled ‘Notes’. Within your Gmail inbox, you can either select that label from the left column or search for label:notes.



Google has a perfectly good note keeping webpage it calls Google Keep. Unfortunately, there is no supported iOS app from Google yet and it doesn’t sync with Apple’s Notes app.


Finding Your Notes In Yahoo

At the top of your Yahoo inbox is a Notepad. One would think the notes sync here, but that’s not the case. Yahoo creates a folder titled Notes that appears on the left hand colum of your inbox.

 

Tip: In all of the accounts, Notes will appear as if they were emails. It’s really a bit bizarre, as you can ‘reply’, which does nothing to your original note. You cannot create a new note, in the traditional sense, within this Notes folders on any of the accounts. iCloud has the absolute best implementation of notes on the web. You can visit iCloud.com, sign-in and your Notes appear just as they would in iOS.What About Outlook?

At the time of this tutorial, Outlook does not support syncing of notes with iOS. When you go into Settings for Outlook, notice the difference in options compared to Gmail.

When you create accounts in Gmail, Yahoo and iCloud, you have an option to associate notes created on your iPhone and iPad with that service. Notes on Yahoo and Gmail will appear in your inbox. To date, the best option for syncing notes from the stock app is iCloud.

Which email service are you syncing with Notes?