iCloud Drive folder is not syncing on my new M1 MacBook Air.

I had the same issue with iCloud Drive feature on my new MacBook Air laptop (M1, 2020), macOS Big Sur, Version 11.2.3. iCloud Drive on the laptop didn’t sync files with iCloud Drive on the iCloud.com (web). I’ve got into this situation after my old MacBook Air laptop (2013) was damaged by the water spill and cannot be accessed any more. When the new laptop (M1, 2020) has arrived it was activated with the same credentials (Admin UID/PWD and AppleID/AppleID PWD) as the user on the 2013 laptop. iCloud Drive feature on (M1, 2020) laptop worked fine for Contacts, e-mails, Notes, Photos, iMessages, etc., but it didn’t work for the  iCloud Drive files. The complete new MacOS re-installation on (M1, 2020) didn’t help. The consecutive upgrades from Version 11.2.1 to 11.2.2 to 11.2.3 didn’t help either. I created a new Admin User and new AppleID account on the (M1,2020) laptop and iCloud Drive feature started to working as designed. However, the prospect of moving the files, Contacts, Photos, etc. from the original account to the new one was not encouraging. In addition, I would have to re-assign my iPhone and iPad registered with the original account to the new account and it would require re-installation of all none-default apps on those devices. So, I tried another scenario to fix iCloud Drive synchronization feature. I have changed the Admin PWD and AppleID PWD for the original user on (M1,2020) laptop. As a result the iCloud Drive feature immediately started to working as designed.

My recommendation for the Apple Customer Support (I worked with two Senior Apple Support Advisers) would be to try to changing Admin PWD and AppleID PWD for all scenarios when iCloud Drive sync feature is not working. For the Apple Software Engineering I would recommend to take a look at the new laptop activation scenarios when the user is entering the same credentials for the new laptop as they were established for the old laptop on the same account. The Migration Assistant (Finder->Application->Utilities->Migration Assistant) functionality might be also affected. Thanks for the hunch to DiZoE user from this discussion board https://discussions.apple.com/thread/252081633. 

[Personal Information Edited by Moderator]

Some progress...

I have noticed that the first time I enable iCloud, iCloud Drive doesn't have the "Options..." button

But if I log out and in again or restart it shows up:

By default "Desktop & Documents Folders" isn't checked:

That is enabled on my other MacBooks. I never bothered to check it, because I figured it would only add to sync time and was of no use until iCloud Drive started working.

Now I actually tried enabling "Desktop & Document Folders". Then I disabled iCloud Drive and enabled it again. For whatever reason, files started to appear.

On the older Intel machines, booth on Catalina and Big Sur, I think "Desktop & Documents Folders" was enabled by default when creating new test accounts.

I had the same problem after clean installing Big Sur on a Macbook pro 16" and after a week of troubleshooting (and 5 calls with Apple), I finally got iCloud to work thanks to this thread.

As others said here, for some reason Big Sur prioritizes downloading and curating (...) your whole Photo library, then starts downloading your Desktop and Documents iCloud folder. The trick is that your mac will not curate your Photo library unless you keep it plugged & awake.

My problem: I have a 100+ GB Photo library and 100+GB of iCloud Drive, so every time I tried a troubleshooting step with the Apple advisor (check-uncheck the box, create new user, format and reinstall the OS...) the process somehow stopped and it never went to a conclusion.

Solution: after the last resort of Apple support (a new clean install) I followed what people said here, namely

• plug the computer (with its original brick)
• check that documents and desktop are selected in iCloud Drive preferences
• [probably optional] uncheck-check iCloud Drive in preferences
• open Photo
• disable sleeping
• leave it plugged and connected for (in my case) c.a. 36 hours and sit watching Photo curating your library (finding duplicates, gathering favorites, etc)

=> today (day 3) I woke up and Photo said "curation completed" and my 120GB of iCloud Drive finally started downloading.

Jesus that was painful, I hope Apple fixes this bug at some point.

SOLVED! Thanks Peterdenb.

After my 3 day nightmare, I finally have my Mac. And it was the creating the new user that did the trick....BUT there are 2 other VERY important things you need to know to make this go smoothly. I had seen these in the developer forums, and they made the difference here. Just creating the new user alone wasn't good enough without the other two, mainly being plugged in.

1) Make sure you are plugged into power with the power brick and cord that came with the Mac. I originally had it plugged into my BenQ monitor (which also provides power) and it was not the same as using the brick that came with it. Power is the key to making all this setup initially happen. It just won't happen on battery alone. At least not fast, anyway when you have gigs and gigs in iCloud Drive.

2) Create the new user and log in to the same Apple Id. And enable Icloud Drive, etc. Once all is setup, delete the original user.

3) Photos Come First: For some reason, Apple prioritizes the downloading and "stylizing" of your entire photo library before it does anything else. I saw this on the dev board and it is 100% true. And your machine HAS to be plugged in while this is happening, or this whole process stalls--which may have been my whole problem, but I'm not going to go back and check again. I let this do its thing overnight... I have a huge photo library and it took that long.

After the photos were done, it's like I woke up to my current laptop. Everything was there. Every recent, every setting, everything. All I have to do is reinstall the apps. And like Peter said, it's fast--very fast--and much snappier than when I was originally wrestling with it.

I'm sure most people don' have huge amounts of files in iCloud Drive like I do. But I also wonder how many give up and send the machine back because they don't know to or can't find the tips and tricks we worked on together here?

Thanks everybody for your help! It was priceless. M1 Here I come! 😄

FINALLY!! Setting up a new macbook 2020 m1, after my 2014 crashed due to BigSur. Uggh. Multiple issues- some 3rd party apps couldn’t seem to connect to icloud (but other devices had no prob with same app), my mail

signatures disappeared and if I set up new ones they disappeared when I would close and reopen mail app on the macbook, icloud drive was most def not connected to icloud despite being on in settings and test documents weren’t syncing in drive from macbook nor uploading the few things I had previous kept in my icloud drive that could be seen in other devices, and I was getting multiple notifications a day on all my devices to relog into icloud with my apple id. I really thought it had to be related to icloud that multiple issues were happening with my new macbook, but hours and hours and multiple escalations with Apple Care and the notifications about logging into apple id stopped after logging out, restarting, and logging back into icloud on all devices, but info was still not syncing to multiple apps, including the annoying mail signature issue. Apple Care had me try many of the above changes, including restetting/relogging into all devices with icloud, new user, deleting all 3rd party programs/apps, going into safe mode w both the mail only and also the whole macbook with both users, but no change. I am current scheduled for like the 3rd escalation to engineers with Apple Care for next week.

This morning after reading this and seeing a few things not tried, I 1) plugged into original brick (checked and still no change), and then also 2) went to icloud in settings, checked that documents and files was checked (it was, but I checked that the other day when i noticed it wasn’t), and then 3) unchecked icloud drive (selected remove all info), it popped up that it would end when it finished uploading (hint that it was stuck as I have been using this for two weeks unsuccessfully), and I selected to stop the process and delete info. 4) checked icloud info again first and noted documents was unchecked again so checked it, then 5) checked the icloud drive to resync.

Almost right away everything was there, I checked my signatures and all my old signatures (that had actually never showed up before on the new macbook) were there. I assigned them to accounts, closed the mail app and reopened, and all were there. I checked my 3rd party apps that use icloud and they all were finally syncing.

Seriously, I can’t thank this discussion enough. After one macbook crashing 2 weeks ago due to Apple and BigSur, and 2 weeks with a brand new purchased macbook that wasn’t in the budget, I was close to becoming a non-apple user. And I’ve been a pretty loyal fan for a long time.

*much happier camper*

Hey again!

Try this:

Move this folder “CloudDocs” to the Desktop (Just as a backup). Restart the Mac, wait for the data to start downloading.

~/Library/Application Support/CloudDocs

Hopefully that does it!

To get there if you’re not sure, open Finder.

While holding Option on your keyboard click Go.

Then click Library, (Hold Option for the Library to show up as its hidden).

Then open Application Support, and you should see CloudDocs there.

If still having an issue after a restarting, relaunch Finder:

Apple > Force Quit > Finder > Relaunch.

If still having an issue, open Terminal in Applications/Utilities. Type:

“sudo killall bird” (without the quotes) and hit Return, enter you admin password and hit Return if prompted and see if it starts downloading.

Hope that does it!

The latest macOS 11.2 RC has this fix:

- iCloud Drive could turn off after disabling the ‌iCloud Drive‌ Desktop & Documents Folders option

This is exactly how I fixed the issue, turn off and on Desktop & Documents Folders. This means Apple might have already fixed this issue in latest macOS!

Hope this help.

Hey there! Please check out my post just before yours.

I worked on this with my buddies M1 Mac for a long while, hours of tests. This was the only solution that worked, and it was quite instant! Anyway here was my solution:

Move this folder “CloudDocs” to the Desktop (Just as a backup). Restart the Mac, wait for the data to start downloading.

~/Library/Application Support/CloudDocs

Hopefully that does it!

To get there if you’re not sure, open Finder.

While holding Option on your keyboard click Go.

Then click Library, (Hold Option for the Library to show up as its hidden).

Then open Application Support, and you should see CloudDocs there.

If, after the restart, after a few minutes, the data doesn’t show:

Open Finder > Go > Activity Monitor:

Search “bird” double click on the process and select “Quit”.

If the data still doesn’t show up:

Click the Apple logo > Force Quit > Finder > Relaunch.

For me, the data didn’t appear straight away, until I relaunched the Finder, after that, it was almost instant, I was stoked something actually worked.

For sure moving/resetting that folder was integral in the solution. Not sure however if it was quitting “bird” or “Finder” that finally did it, I believe it was relaunching Finder though.

I know this issue is stubborn, so feel free to give it a try, it only takes a few minutes! Good luck!

THANK YOU for posting this solution. I've had this problem on my M1 MacBook Air since it arrived a month ago. Apple Support had a case open but were not giving me any feedback.

I'd had the "brctl status" reporting "BROKEN STRUCTURE" all this time.

Last night I:

• Connected the laptop to power
• Created a new user
• Signed in to iCloud as the new user
• Opened Photos
• Turned on iCloud Drive with the Documents and Desktop option on
• In a terminal, ran “caffeinate -s” to keep the system awake
• Left it for 24 hours
• Came back to find iCloud Drive full 😀
• Switched off the Documents and Desktop option
• Deleted the original user
• Renamed my new user to my preferred username

And finally "brctl status" has stopped reporting "BROKEN STRUCTURE". (Photos still thinks it's curating my pictures, but they all seem to be there ...)

I had the following issue, icloud logged in, files not showing, no matter what I did, my system is a new macbook air m1 2020.

Finally, after days, I got it to work and I think it's the order in which you enable things.

First I went in system preferences -> apple id -> iCloud -> iCloud Drive, there I hit Options and enabled Desktop and Documents Folders and they appeared immediately but nothing appeared there, except a file that was owned by someone else and shared with me.

Then I hit Done, and disabled iCloud and re-enabled it again and checked brctl status and immediately saw that it was no more in the "BROKEN STRUCTURE" status and all the dir structure of my Documents folder started appearing.

Also brctl monitor -i was very useful and showed a lot of activity and showed me that files were downloading.

I believe that it's a bug in the code where some interdependent things are done in an incorrect order, like "activate icloud" and "sync docs" and probably because of that the structure is broken.

I hope this helps others to not waste days...

Apple, please update your testing procedures and please ensure we have a good product, that's what we're paying for.

Talked to Apple and they told me that Icloud won´t work properly if it it detects any issues that could affect security or stable connection or similar, and that I had to talk to my internet provider. Afterwards got on the phone with my provider and they said that some people were having the same problem with Icloud and, fortunately, changing the IP was solving it. They changed my IP and everything is back to normal now. Nightmare is over.

Creating a new user WORKS!

I had a number of issues, main ones around iCloud syncing, sluggish file handling in Finder (in fact pretty much impossible to use). All in all the first hours with M1 were more of a Microsoft experience than an Apple one, browsing for all the problems I encountered instead of enjoying a €1.600 premium product. Don't mess about switching iCloud on/off and certainly don't risk reinstalling OS before you've tried this. Everything synced as expected with the new user (deleted the old one) whereas before I did not get iCloud to sync for Contacts, Notes and Safari. And Finder works like a charm now.

Hey Stefan! Do your other devices sync iCloud Drive normally?

Also did the same happen in the new user? If so, I may take some of these steps, and some steps either way/

If Apple thinks your iCloud Drive data is preventing the sync, if you go to iCloud.com/iCloud Drive/Recently Deleted, is there data there? And if so, are you able to delete it from there, restart and try again?

I’d also even check the Trash on your Mac, and make sure to empty it, in case iCloud is looking for something that’s not there anymore.

(You can also check your iPhone, or other Apple device).

If the same happened in the new user, I’d probably also try safe boot:

https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/start-up-your-mac-in-safe-mode-mh21245/mac

And see if it starts to download.

Another good and simple step may be to select:

Apple menu > Force Quit > Finder > Relaunch, See how that affects it.

All of the results of course depends on how much data is stored in iCloud and on your Mac and/or other devices, some can take some time between steps..

Most times I have happened to see this, other data would sync fine, it was more of a conflict with the content on your Mac attempting to connect to iCloud and vice versa, which is why I mention checking Recently Deleted on both.

I’ve also found that disabling iCloud Drive on your Mac, choosing the option to NOT keep a copy, waiting a few minutes or until that process has completed, then disabling ALL internet on your Mac, then re-enabling internet then iCloud Drive is a good step.

Otherwise, you can restart the process:

Open Activity Monitor in:

Finder > Applications > Utilities.

On the CPU tab, search “bird” the hit the “x” on the top left to force quit the process.

I believe you can also still use Terminal, (In the same Utilities folder). Just type:

“Killall bird”

Or you can be more specific, there are a few locations iCloud uses in the ~/Library for this process, mainly Application Support, and Mobile Documents. But you shouldn’t need to specify.

Of course, I always archive my iCloud data before doing anything like that:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204055

Of course you could troubleshoot the network, (Such as connecting to another, or restarting your router, or creating a new network location, and even checking your Firewall settings, or other software you may use), but typically that’s not the case, but can be.

If you’ve already archived your iCloud data, you should be free to take any of those steps, up to and including, after saving your data:

Disabling iCloud Drive, deleting all the contents from iCloud.com, moving the data back from:

Finder > Go > Home > iCloud Drive Archive (Desktop/Documents), back to their original locations, the re-enabling iCloud Drive.

Hope one step works out, hopefully one of the more simple workarounds, (Besides updating of course). Cheers.

Ok, sharing my experiences and solution (thanks @Peterdenb @IdeaManFL)

New Macbook Pro M1 -> did not sync iCloud drive from laptopm to cloud or other way round.

Symptoms:

• iCloud drive not syncing with M1 Laptop,
• can access via browser https://www.icloud.com/iclouddrive/ on ios devices and previous
• Macbook intel with Big Sur (now traded in)
• iCloud photos, contacts etc -> no problem

What I tried (did not work):

- turn off icloud drive sync off, restarted laptop, turned back on-> no luck

- checked info in terminal "brctl status" and "brctl diagnose"

What I tried with apple support:(did not work)

- same what I did myself

- safe boot 

- created new user with same icloud account

- changed wifi connection to tethered LTE

SOLUTION: What worked for me (again thanks @Peterdenb @IdeaManFL):

- create new user (linked same Apple ID) AND stay connected to power supply (before was not plugged in)

- iCloud Drive sync worked on new account

Hi, same problem here, BUT WORKING NOW:

it helped me to turn off FIREWALL on MacBook Air M1 (settings - security & privacy - firewall (turn OFF))

log out from iCloud files (settings - up right Apple ID - iCloud - iCloud Drive (unmark / turn off) - same thing mark / turn on)