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iCloud Drive - Desktop & Documents Folders
- Thread starter myname70
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I answered your question in post #50 (it got merged, so it's probably easily missed).
I think the other three sets of document copies on the other devices should stay on the devices. If you WANT to delete them, then I believe you should do so at your discretion, not Apple's.
@T'hain Esh Kelch there's a separate topic, Optimized Storage reports? – I'll reply there.
In the iCloud pane of System Preferences, clear the checkbox alongside Desktop and Documents Folders.
In the confirmation dialogue, click Turn Off.
Finder, Go menu, iCloud Drive, Desktop; open the iCloud Drive Desktop folder.
Select what's required, move it to your local desktop.
In the iCloud pane of System Preferences, clear the checkbox alongside Desktop and Documents Folders.
In the confirmation dialogue, click Turn Off.
Finder, Go menu, iCloud Drive, Desktop; open the iCloud Drive Desktop folder.
Select what's required, move it to your local desktop.
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Ineligible items
~/Documents/Microsoft User Data/
This exclusion is no surprise. Data that's placed there – by applications such as Microsoft Lync 14.3.3 (160216) – is typically misplaced.
.textClipping files
Maybe excluded because the data fork of a Mac OS X text clipping is, by design, zero bytes …
… although zero-data-byte .webloc (Web internet location) files – produced by drag and drop from apps such as Safari – are eligible (but presented as binary files in the web interface to iCloud Drive; the web browser can not tell the location until after Mac OS X has downloaded and decoded the content).
Maybe useful: Getting the contents of a textClipping file | Communities (2008-03-17)
~/Documents/Microsoft User Data/
This exclusion is no surprise. Data that's placed there – by applications such as Microsoft Lync 14.3.3 (160216) – is typically misplaced.
.textClipping files
Maybe excluded because the data fork of a Mac OS X text clipping is, by design, zero bytes …
… although zero-data-byte .webloc (Web internet location) files – produced by drag and drop from apps such as Safari – are eligible (but presented as binary files in the web interface to iCloud Drive; the web browser can not tell the location until after Mac OS X has downloaded and decoded the content).
Maybe useful: Getting the contents of a textClipping file | Communities (2008-03-17)
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Why on Earth did they not give you two separate options for syncing Desktop and Documents folders? What if I want to sync my Documents folder but not my Desktop? Or vice versa. Annoying!
iCloud Desktop and Documents is great if you have several devices. it allows you to have the same work access environment on any device.
Storage Optimization (not the Desktop and Documents feature) is also interesting however.
it needs to be turned on manually via About this mac / storage. Which means apple does not see this version of it to be used by most users.
it is not designed to be a way to backup.
turning it on does allow you to access the documents that are in the iCloud from all your device.
turning it off does delete it from the device on which you have turned the service off.
in developers documentation it introduces the word "evicted".
if the device you are using has limited space, then apple will evict files to the cloud. meaning it deletes infrequently used files from your device after putting a version in the cloud.
this therefore means that you will have theoretical access to files that are stored locally (files that have been used recently, and therefore not evicted). in which case you can access the local version on your current device.
Storage Optimization (not the Desktop and Documents feature) is also interesting however.
it needs to be turned on manually via About this mac / storage. Which means apple does not see this version of it to be used by most users.
it is not designed to be a way to backup.
turning it on does allow you to access the documents that are in the iCloud from all your device.
turning it off does delete it from the device on which you have turned the service off.
in developers documentation it introduces the word "evicted".
if the device you are using has limited space, then apple will evict files to the cloud. meaning it deletes infrequently used files from your device after putting a version in the cloud.
this therefore means that you will have theoretical access to files that are stored locally (files that have been used recently, and therefore not evicted). in which case you can access the local version on your current device.
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No, not quite; there's another method. Please see the optimisation-oriented topic, in particular yesterday's https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/23129564
hi thanks for that link.
i am interested in one of the graphics they have on that link:
does this mean: that if you do NOT click the check box at the bottom (Optimize Mac Storage) that in fact your Desktop and Documents Folders would be BOTH on your local device and in the iCloud and nothing would be evicted by apple?
if that is possible then i am all in for this sync as it would be me controlling what is deleted.
thanks for your advice.
CPU
I worked around that problem by removing two folders:
Since restarting Sierra:
Eligible items
Now (with 16A254g) at least two .textClipping files are Waiting to Upload (with a very faint cloud icon).
The bigger picture is "uploading 4,029 items (37.3 MB of 37.3 MB)" and that's extraordinarily slow, it's the tail end of a ~1.05 GB upload that began over a week ago. After maybe fifteen minutes, the status changed to "uploading 4,027 items (37.1 MB of 37.1 MB)".
I worked around that problem by removing two folders:
- ~/Library/Caches/CloudKit/com.apple.bird/com.apple.Desktop/ (3.9 MB on disk for 13 items)
- ~/Library/Caches/CloudKit/com.apple.bird/com.apple.Documents/ (11 MB on disk for 13 items)
Since restarting Sierra:
- ~/Library/Caches/CloudKit/com.apple.bird/com.apple.Documents/ has reappeared, with fresh database files (582 KB on disk for 13 items)
- ~/Library/Caches/CloudKit/com.apple.bird/com.apple.Desktop/ has not yet reappeared.
Eligible items
Now (with 16A254g) at least two .textClipping files are Waiting to Upload (with a very faint cloud icon).
The bigger picture is "uploading 4,029 items (37.3 MB of 37.3 MB)" and that's extraordinarily slow, it's the tail end of a ~1.05 GB upload that began over a week ago. After maybe fifteen minutes, the status changed to "uploading 4,027 items (37.1 MB of 37.1 MB)".
From an earlier suggestion:
If that's done from one Mac, then (at any other Mac) the action shown in @Ritsuka's screen shot will be no longer applicable. Nothing left in iCloud Drive; you can't Keep a Copy of nothing.
If that's done from one Mac, then (at any other Mac) the action shown in @Ritsuka's screen shot will be no longer applicable. Nothing left in iCloud Drive; you can't Keep a Copy of nothing.
You're missing my point completely. If I want to remove myself from the iCloud ecosystem completely, simply turning it off or logging out should not delete anything from the Mac, it should delete it from iCloud.![XDQPUHH.png]()
Regarding the above ^^
In Sierra, the Documents and Desktop folders are relocated to iCloud Drive when this feature is turned on - almost in a way that the folders themselves are relocated to the Drive. But I think the reason that this is confusing users is because, visually, the feature is represented by a lack of 'nesting' in the sidebar of the Finder window. Currently, the Documents and Desktop folders appear independently to iCloud Drive, almost as separate services but still under the 'iCloud' title.
Therefore if one turns off iCloud Drive, the contents of the Drive are deleted, exactly as it does on El Cap. The Documents and Desktop folders are then linked to their normal location under the user's Home folder.
We could start a discussion on why Apple even wants to delete your data just because you choose not to use the Drive; but my guess is they believe that if you're so unwilling to use this service that you actively turn it off (rather than just ignoring it), they would rather retrieve the storage space on their servers than letting it go dormant.
The solution on Apple's part would be to automatically move the contents of Documents and Desktop to their default location after turning Drive off, as deleting them all together seems like a very naive decision.
The simplest solution is to use Dropbox.
In Sierra, the Documents and Desktop folders are relocated to iCloud Drive when this feature is turned on - almost in a way that the folders themselves are relocated to the Drive. But I think the reason that this is confusing users is because, visually, the feature is represented by a lack of 'nesting' in the sidebar of the Finder window. Currently, the Documents and Desktop folders appear independently to iCloud Drive, almost as separate services but still under the 'iCloud' title.
Therefore if one turns off iCloud Drive, the contents of the Drive are deleted, exactly as it does on El Cap. The Documents and Desktop folders are then linked to their normal location under the user's Home folder.
We could start a discussion on why Apple even wants to delete your data just because you choose not to use the Drive; but my guess is they believe that if you're so unwilling to use this service that you actively turn it off (rather than just ignoring it), they would rather retrieve the storage space on their servers than letting it go dormant.
The solution on Apple's part would be to automatically move the contents of Documents and Desktop to their default location after turning Drive off, as deleting them all together seems like a very naive decision.
The simplest solution is to use Dropbox.
In some ways it's very useful to think of the feature as relocation to iCloud Drive but technically, there's co-location involving hiding of ~/Desktop and ~/Documents
That hiding is not apparent in the first screen shot below (taken from Storage Optimization and iCloud Integration - A First Look At Apple's macOS Sierra) –
– but things may become apparent if you show hidden files and folders and then key Shift-Command-O. This, for example:
Demonstrating what happens after removal of Documents from iCloud in the sidebar – to the right of the sidebar, selection of something in iCloud Documents but within the sidebar, no highlght of iCloud Drive:
If I begin by selecting iCloud Drive then browse to the same folder, iCloud Drive remains highlighted:
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If that's your machine then I'm not sure what's going on. On mine, when I turn off Documents and Desktop for Drive integration, the folders simply disappear and presumably return to normal. I say 'presumably' as nothing surprises me with iCloud anymore.
Those two shots were not of a problem. They were to show how the sidebar can appear if related items are removed from the sidebar.
All this techno-babble explanation of iCloud Drive, and Docs/Desktop integration with iCloud is exactly why nobody is going to use it. If it takes more than a few seconds to explain what it's doing, then it's a failure.
Placing your faith in Apple's iCloud was already a gamble as a backup solution, storing your current files there is a risk I suspect few beyond tech bloggers and fellow geeks are going to take.
Placing your faith in Apple's iCloud was already a gamble as a backup solution, storing your current files there is a risk I suspect few beyond tech bloggers and fellow geeks are going to take.
Definitely, because there are apps that want to use Documents as a reservoir for their junk, where as The Desktop nobody (App) stores stuff on your Desktop and needs files to be there. This could be troublesome...
Somewhere in this Thread is the answer to my question, but I can't quite figure it out.
My question is......Sometimes when I want to upload a document from my iCloud Drive, I can't find the iCloud drive in my side bar! Where is my iCloud Drive! Thanks.
My question is......Sometimes when I want to upload a document from my iCloud Drive, I can't find the iCloud drive in my side bar! Where is my iCloud Drive! Thanks.