Files app vs iCloud Drive

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Files app vs iCloud Drive

In Settings on my iPhone, I see that the Files app contains about 464 MB of “Documents & Data” but there is also something called iCloud Drive which contains 229 MB of “Documents & Data.” I’m confused because I thought these were basically the same thing, or rather that one had been renamed to the other. So why are there entries for both where both are taking up different amounts of space? Is the iCloud Drive app data simply a relic from a previous system version that can safely be deleted somehow? If so, how do I do that? (I’m currently using iOS 13.5 but I’m sure the phone came with 11 or 12.)

iPhone XR

Posted on Jun 30, 2020 1:39 PM

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Answer 1

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Winston Churchill

Level 10

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Jun 30, 2020 2:15 PM in response to jmoore104

Welcome to the Apple community.

Essentially they are the same thing, however files is the app that on your phone and the documents and data associated with it are those which are also on your phone. iCloud Drive refers to the documents and data in the cloud. The documents and data in the files app are a subset of those on iCloud Drive.

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Answer 2

jmoore104 Author

Level 1

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Jun 30, 2020 2:26 PM in response to Winston Churchill

Thanks for the reply. Sadly I’m still confused. If the Files app docs are a subset of the iCloud Drive docs, how come they take up more space? And really, why does any of it take up space on my phone? I thought the whole idea of the cloud is that the docs are stored on a server somewhere out there to free up space on your device. Finally, I still don’t get why the Files data would take up 464 MB on my phone and iCloud Drive data takes an additional 229 MB for a total of 693 MB, especially if one is supposed to be a subset of the other. Doesn’t this mean that the same documents are taking up twice the space necessary on my phone? To me, this is a very poor design because my expectation was that files stored in the cloud would not take any space on my phone.

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Answer 3

Jun 30, 2020 3:14 PM in response to jmoore104

I'm wondering if this isn't because you are looking at it through the offload on used apps section.

Take a look to see how much space iCloud Drive is using in the cloud: Settings ➔ Apple ID(Top) ➔ iCloud ➔ Manage Storage ➔ iCloud Drive. (Mine is 140 GB)

Then take a look to see how much space the data in files is using on your phone: Settings ➔ General ➔ iPhone Storage ➔ iCloud Drive. (Mine is 2 GB)

In regard to the files on the phone (in my case 2 GB) these are merely the most recently downloaded files from iCloud Drive, the longer I leave these the more will get deleted. Additionally, if I'm getting short of space on my phone the file management system will start automatically deleting recent files off my phone too.

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Answer 4

Jun 30, 2020 5:25 PM in response to jmoore104

The files app will also include other cloud storage you use like Google Drive files sync’d to your device, or Dropbox. iCloud Drive is just the files sync’d with iCloud.

My files app includes documents I have in OneDrive (2 accounts), Google Docs, iCloud Drive, DropBox. There are a large number of cloud services that various apps can sync with, and you can add those services to the file app to get to those files as well as iCloud Drive files.

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Answer 5

Jun 30, 2020 6:00 PM in response to Michael Black

Agh yes, I forgot about those, I don't think I've scrolled back that far since I first saw the files app, not using anything else but iCloud Drive.

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Files app vs iCloud Drive

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