It does not appear that macOS Notes.app is authenticating to dovecot. I haven’t broken out wireshark yet, but I see in the dovecot logs that a working iOS access looks like this:
mail-debug.log (mailbox access): > May 30 20:16:39 imap(pid 28792 user username): Debug: Mailbox Notes: Mailbox > open ed because: SELECT mail-info.log (solr indexing of a newly added Note): > May 30 18:44:31 indexer-worker(pid 26589 user username): Info: Indexed 1 > messages in Notes (UIDs 167..167) There are no such log entries when I launch macOS Notes.app and toggle account activation in System Preferences>Internet Accounts. It doesn’t look like macOS Notes.app is even trying to talk to dovecot.