Even though I only have "Desktop & Documents" folders selected through iCloud Drive settings, additional folders are taking up space on my MacBook Air Hard Drive

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Level 1

31 points

Even though I only have "Desktop & Documents" folders selected through iCloud Drive settings, additional folders are taking up space on my MacBook Air Hard Drive

I would like to transition away from my dual backup external hard drives I have been using for the last 12 years and become cloud native. I upgraded to the 2TB iCloud Drive storage amount and have 0.94TB of content that needs to be uploaded to my iCloud Drive. When I began to upload a smaller folder (~29 GB), I noticed the folder started to take away from my available MacBook Air storage space. This folder is outside of my "Desktop & Documents" folders. Even though I only have the "Desktop & Documents" folders selected through the iCloud Drive settings, this folder is being synced without my permission. Can someone from Apple explain why the operating system is not operating as advertised? Also, why is it difficult to be in parity with other storage providers in the market such as DropBox, OneDrive, Google Drive, who all allow you to select which folders you want synced to your local device, whether that be a mobile device, laptop or other computing device?

If some users want to only backup their mobile devices in aggregate, they should be able to do that. If some users want to only backup their flat files contained in individual folders, they should be able to do that without it affecting your local storage on your device. I would have much better peace of mind if I knew my files were in Apple's cloud rather than on one of my aging external hard drives that could potentially break down.

MacBook Air 13″, macOS 10.15

Posted on Dec 16, 2020 11:08 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

léonie

Level 10

200,645 points

Dec 17, 2020 12:09 AM in response to kaneumann

Perhaps this is a misunderstanding of the option "Desktop&Documents". Any folder or file you store on iCloud Drive will be mirrored on your Mac and downloaded to your Mac. The iCloud Drive folder on your Mac will always be in sync and identical to your iCloud Drive in iCloud. When you check "Desktop & Documents" it means that you are syncing not only iCloud Drive but even more - your Desktop and Documents folder in addition to iCloud Drive. Disable it, if you do not want to upload your Desktop & Documents to iCloud in addition to the other folders on iCloud Drive.

iCloud Drive is primarily meant for syncing between your devices, to keep everything identical and updated across all your devices. It is not not an external backup and not a separate external storage. With iCloud Drive you are having one central storage and all devices are updating their local copies from this central place. If you want to save storage on your Mac by keeping documents and data in the cloud, enable "Optimise Mac Storage": Then iCloud will automatically remove some documents from your Mac (that you have not used for quite some time) and keep them only on iCloud Drive, if you are running low on storage. This is fully automatic and you cannot control how much gets optimised. iCloud Drive will try to keep recent downloads stored locally for quite some time to reduce the amount of network traffic.

You can remove downloaded items from iCloud Drive, but keep the item in iCloud, if you ctrl-click or right-click the item on iCloud Drive and select the command "Remove Download". I am seeing this option on macOS 11 Big Sur, but do not remember, if it already has been available on Catalina.

Consider the documents and data on iCloud Drive as your working copies, nor a backup. You ned to keep a backup of iCloud Drive as well. Your Time Machine backups will not suffice, if you are removing download by "Optimise Storage", as Time Machine cannot backup the optimised items. See: Archive or make copies of the information you store in iCloud – Apple Support

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Answer 2

kaneumann Author

Level 1

31 points

Dec 17, 2020 12:16 AM in response to léonie

For the better part of five (5) years, users have requested the abilities I outlined. Apple needs to prioritize this request and make it happen. At this point, I have disabled the sync feature and will manually move the 0.94TB of files I need to secure them in Apple's iCloud. It would be optimal to have only selected folders synced to my device for regular usage. I do not want an algorithm deciding how to "maximize" my storage. I honestly only need about 5-6GB of regular files on my laptop. The other 900+ GB can be stored in the iCloud. I have a call scheduled for tomorrow to formally complain and escalate my request.

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Answer 3

LACAllen

Level 8

43,590 points

Dec 17, 2020 3:20 AM in response to kaneumann

Apple needs to prioritize this request and make it happen.

Tell Apple what they need to do at the link below.

Feedback for Apple goes here >>> http://www.apple.com/feedback/

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Even though I only have "Desktop & Documents" folders selected through iCloud Drive settings, additional folders are taking up space on my MacBook Air Hard Drive

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