iCloud storage discrepancy?

Question

pcpclafferty Author

Level 1

85 points

iCloud storage discrepancy?

Trying to understand what seems like a discrepancy between the way iCloud is totaling up my storage

iCloud preferences show this much space used for documents....

....which is close to but not identical with what I see totaled for documents here:

....but which together are nowhere near to what I find when I click "info" on iCloud Drive in my finder:

I know iCloud represents both documents and Photos and more, but with specific reference to "other documents" (are those different than just "documents?), I note this apparent large discrepancy between what storage iCloud says I'm using and what I actually am?

Does my question make sense? And if it does, am I misinterpreting what each of those totals represent?

thank you in advance for your help

Patrick

MacBook Air 13", macOS 10.14

Posted on Feb 23, 2019 2:25 PM

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Answer 1

léonie

Level 10

200,699 points

Feb 24, 2019 8:24 AM in response to pcpclafferty

Are you using the option "Optimize Mac Storage" for iCloud on your Mac?

Then the local copy of iCloud Drive can be much smaller than iCloud Drive in iCloud, because not all iCloud Drive items may have been downloaded to your Mac.

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Answer 2

pcpclafferty Author

Level 1

85 points

Feb 25, 2019 4:29 AM in response to léonie

in fact, I am using that feature. So that explains why I see the difference.

How, though, can I know what files are in iCloud but not on my local machine? (My line of inquiry is all ordered toward figuring out how to reduce the amount of storage in iCloud.) When I login to iCloud.com, I see all the folders and files I see on my local machine. So where's the rest? Or are you saying that when I open my iCloud Drive folder in the finder the full 77.5GB of file storage is annotated, but only a portion of that is actually resident on the local drive?

thanks for helping me wade through this!

Patrick

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Answer 3

pcpclafferty Author

Level 1

85 points

Feb 25, 2019 5:15 AM in response to léonie

so the way to reduce my iCloud storage amount would be to download the files with that iCloud symbol and then log on to iCloud.com and delete them from there?

when I have a look at storage in "about my Mac" I see this curious difference between the size of my "documents" space and the total of the "documents" folder beneath it. Are those referring to two different categories of documents?

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