Note-taking apps are crucial to our daily productivity. Thankfully, iOS houses the Notes app, a piece of software that’s designed to go toe-to-toe with Evernote, OneNote, and a host of other note-taking apps that have come to dominate the market.

There are many ways to delete and recover notes from directly within the Notes app, but keeping them synced in the cloud — whether using iCloud or Google’s proprietary services — is the best way to make sure you don’t lose any notes. This allows you to easily change devices without fear of losing your data, or get everything back after a complete data wipe. Below, we will guide you through the steps of deleting and recovering notes.

If you have deleted some notes, and you need to recover them, there are a few ways you can accomplish this.

Remember that the Notes app has a Recently Deleted folder. The keyword here being “recently,” as the Notes app will only keep these notes for 30 days. After 30 days have passed, it will permanently delete them.

If you’re trying to recover all your notes after you’ve erased your iPhone or bought a new device, make sure that iCloud is turned on in Settings.

You may have created Notes using your Gmail account — or another account — meaning your Notes may be synced with that account, instead of your iCloud account. If this is the case, your notes will not appear in the Notes app until you set up all your accounts again. That said, here’s how to ensure that Notes is turned on in a Gmail account.

If you regularly back up your data with iTunes, then your notes and other data should be backed up to your computer. Thankfully, you can restore your media from a preexisting backup. Because you are restoring your entire iPhone from a backup, however, the notes that will appear on your iPhone are the notes that were on your iPhone on the day of the backup. Any notes you’ve saved since then may disappear, though you can always restore them using a backup from a previous day.

We recommend using a cloud service to keep a complete backup of every note you take. See the previous steps if you want to ensure Notes is turned on for iCloud, and your other accounts.

If your notes have been permanently deleted from your Notes app, and you can’t recover them using iCloud or any other app, then your only other option would be to go with a third-party app. These apps are great when you need to recover your texts, notes, contacts, and other types of media. Some of them can even repair various iOS issues. Below are a few of our favorites.