iCloud Drive "Desktop & Documents Folder" behavior?

Hello,

I'm not an expert or anything close to it. But, hopefully I can help answer part of your questions. I do have my Desktop and Documents folders on my iCloud Drive. I have the box for Optimize Mac Storage checked. What I've found is that everything from those 2 locations uploaded to iCloud. When you open a Finder window, and go to the Location (or if you've dragged it to Favorites) iCloud, your files will be there with the "download" icon available. I think this means you can choose if you'd like to have a downloaded copy stored locally, but also keep it in the cloud. I downloaded all my Desktop files, and some of my Documents files. If I understood your first question correctly, then the answer is yes. I no longer have a ~Desktop folder. My Desktop is now at iCloud Drive>Desktop, and not part of my hard drive directory. However, I can still open all my downloaded files when offline. Hopefully another user can answer your question about the local storage location.

I tried to test out a couple things for you, using a shared Numbers document. If you're offline, and open a file you have downloaded from iCloud, you'll get a pop-up in the corner that says, "You're offline, but can still edit." When you make a change, you'll get, "You're editing offline. If you share a copy, your edits may not be included." If you quit the application (Numbers), the change will be saved to the local file, but won't upload to the cloud until the next time you're online and you open that application. When I checked Finder, my Desktop folder had the dashed outline cloud icon. As soon as I opened the document again, this time online, it immediately uploaded, the cloud icon went away, and my edits were there. Another thing I tried was to delete an item from my Desktop by dragging it to the Trash, while I was online. Looking at my Desktop folder in Finder, the item was already gone. So, deleting in one location will delete it from the other.

For question 3, I plugged in my external backup disk and entered Time Machine. It looks like pre-iCloud Desktop and Documents syncing, everything was just as it was the day I backed it up. For current backups, the Desktop and Documents folders are grayed out in the Finder sidebar, so you can't select them, BUT, when you select your Home folder, your Desktop and Documents folders are there, and everything matches perfectly. The location at the bottom of the Finder wasn't the usual HD>Users>~, but HD - snap@somenumbers >Users>~. I didn't change anything about how I had Time Machine set up once I began syncing those two locations. I'm inclined to say that local files are stored somewhere, and they do get backed up, but I can only see it Time Machine.

I'm sorry I can't help with your last question. Please excuse me if I completely missed what you needed to know, I sincerely wanted to help. Good luck,

Jess