iCloud iCloud Constantly downloading ClonedFiles and gobbling my HD space / reclaiming "hidden" space

[antmit]

I've used Macs since 2008 and iCloud / iDisk for roughly the same amount of time. I have a 2TB iCloud storage plan, with around 1.4TB free. Most of the 600GB I've used are 'files', with the rest photos, emails, etc:

I have a 1TB M1 Max MBP, and had previously enjoyed most of that as free storage space (700+GB). However, recently I noticed that my available HD space was steadily going down, and when it got to around 200GB I needed to find out why. I have some large files in that iCloud Drive, but nearly all of is stored on iCloud, or at least that is what I've always done and never seemed to have an issue. I ran an app called DaisyDisk and found that several huge (70GB) files were sat in the com.apple.bird ClonedFiles folders, but when reading briefly online about them I found articles that said they were mostly harmless and you could delete them. I did this and saw my HD space return more or less to normal, but then once again started depleting. It got to around 90GB and I decided to stop iCloud Drive by turning it off, doing a check of the online version at iCloud.com and then, when I was confident there were no unnecessary files there, turn it back on.

All good, but then I came back a couple of hours later it was down from around 600GB to 92GB of free HD space. I've taken the decision once again to remove the ClonedFiles but I can see already that more are starting to creep back.

Am I missing the point of iCloud's "remove download" feature? ALL of my folders on my Mac have the cloud-arrow download icon next to them, and as sometimes they 'fib' a bit, I've checked that the "on disk" values don't show some cheeky files refusing to go away. I'm aware that these ClonedFiles things are like a local copy should they be needed, but then what is the point of the "remove download" option for these files, and is what I'm describing is happening really just a bug? I am tempted to simply turn off iCloud Drive again, download all the files manually and then upload them all again before "remove download" again, to see if this cures the issue. Has anyone else suffered with this?

Also, in Daisydisk there is a graphic that shows "hidden space", and it is presently 283GB. How do I get this back?

Thanks
Ant

 

[antmit]

148 views and nothing?? Even to say they've not had that issue, or answer in relation to how iCloud works generally?

OK, well it seems I solved my own problem. I downloaded the website version of DaisyDisk and subsequently found that 'hidden space' were lots of document versions. Since other than Dropbox I've never stored documents in that manner, I decided to remove these apparent older versions of whatever files were involved, and I have around 715GB free space on my HD.

The ClonedFiles folder seems to have stabilised and hasn't moved up or down over the weekend, so I'll just keep an eye on it.