Can I store some of my files in iCloud without sync

léonie

I've come back to look at this having resolved the other problems I was having - which were with Microsoft OneDrive. As you say, I am running Big Sur 11.1 but I can't see the option "if you have some folder on iCloud Drive, that you do not want stored locally, you can ctrl-click the folder on iCloud Drive and use the command "Remove Download" that you mention. It is not available when I right click on iCloud Drive folders in Finder. Where did you get that information from?

When I go to SysPrefs/AppleID under 'Optimise Mac storage' it says "The full contents of iCloud Drive will be stored on this Mac if you have enough space. Older documents will be stored only in iCloud when space is needed.' That clearly means that Apple will fill your little SSD to overflowing and only then allow (presumably) new files to push old unused ones off the SSD but keep them in iCloud Drive. No user control therefore - making iCloud useless as far as I'm concerned because I have found that this simply does not work smoothly or reliably.

The ability to mark files to be kept in iCloud and not downloaded to the Mac until individually required is the key missing link in the app IMHO. So I went to OneDrive after years of turning my back on Microsoft. I have the option there to mark any folder for storage only in the cloud or to be held on my Mac. As a result a 250GB SSD in the Mac becomes usable.

Ha! - that ducks a lot of issues! However, thanks for replying and I wonder if you can answer one last point.

If the software is deciding what is 'recently used' and what goes into the cloud am I left with any free space on my SSD - that is does it automatically leave a certain amount free?

Thanks Todd0213, that first statement clarifies things somewhat. However, without that predetermined limit iCloud clearly fails to work. I loaded a large batch of home videos into iCloud taking me way below my iCloud storage capacity but well above the capacity of my MacBook Pro's SSD. As a result Time Machine failed to backup due to insufficient space on my SSD.

So Apple's iCloud causes Apple's Time Machine to fail. No question who's fault it was then. iCloud has been going some years now - it's about time it became something genuinely useful. They're charging me for it nonetheless.

BTW - I'm doing all the things you suggest to free up space including using a NAS drive.

Thanks to everyone who has contributed to this thread - hopefully it's helping others as well as me. You're so generous giving up your time.

léonie - your advice is going to take some thinking about! If I understand you, having suspended Time Machine, I can upload a larger amount of files than my SSD can store to iCloud Drive (from another drive). Then when it has uploaded I can use "Remove Download" to prevent it downloading to my MacBook's SSD. If that's so the term "Remove Download" is very confusing (thank you Apple!). But if you're right it would solve my problem. I'll investigate this in due course but too occupied with other complications at the moment.

However, I'm not sure that creating a folder on iCloud Drive but excluding it from Time Machine makes any sense to me. My problem is to exclude it from my SSD.

So, dewkens, Apple misled you, probably not intentionally (?) but their marketing doesn't help the average punter to understand the pluses and minuses of cloud storage. And their apparent inability to support their use of small SSDs in their Macs with a cloud system that allows efficient use of the local SSD as well as sensible storage for the large quantities of files that even ordinary domestic users commonly have is a real let-down.

Beware though, most cloud providers are the same, they talk about cloud storage as 'backup' and don't highlight the reality that you've discovered: that if you delete anything from your SSD/HDD it's gone from the cloud as well.

A really helpful response - I couldn’t find this guidance at all so many thanks. However, I was not really expecting to find that Apple caters for my needs and I’m still not sure it does.

Here’s where my question came from: What’s the point of having more storage space in iCloud than on your SSD/HDD if every file in the cloud is copied onto your local drive? The key failure of Apple’s use of SSDs in particular has been their inadequate size (cut down for total product cost reasons).

The article you refer to lists four ways to manage storage on a Mac, the bottom two of which are really obvious and I do them all the time (empty trash & reduce clutter). I don’t use Apple TV or store any commercial movies/videos so the’Optimise’ option offers me nothing.

And so to ’Store in iCloud’. As far as I can see this leaves all decisions about what is on my small 250GB SSD and what’s on iCloud servers to an automated Apple system. I don’t like that for documents though I happily use iCloud Photos. My problem stemmed from pushing a large number of home videos (from a NAS) onto iCloud which promptly dumped them down to my SSD.

So the key questions for me are: Who decides what is stored in the cloud and kept off my SSD? And then: Can I get at those files subsequently on a selective basis under my control?

I’ve been using Microsoft’s OneDrive to store ALL my files because I am in charge of three choices: Which of these stay only in the cloud, which stay always on my Mac (and are sync’d to the cloud) and then have others I can download to the Mac when I use them. These last then periodically disappear back to the cloud. The key thing being that I control which of these groups any file is in with a simple click of the mouse against the filename (choosing the appropriate icon from the three as above) and being in control of my files is important to me.

Microsoft has the odd tedious aspect like filenames have to exclude special characters and there’s no doubt that when Apple gets it right their ecosystem is best used as a whole.

But . . can Apple provide for what I’ve described as my needs? I’m still not sure!

Ah ha! So here we go - I've got more files in iCloud Drive than my SSD in my Mac can store so I'm getting a message that my SSD is almost full. So presumably iCloud is not keeping enough free space on my SSD - which was the point of my last message?

Is it that iCloud simply doesn't work as well as promised or am I making some mistake?