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Apple’s new MacBook Pro features the incredibly powerful M4 family of chips and ushers in a new era with Apple Intelligence. Learn more >
Apple’s new MacBook Pro features the incredibly powerful M4 family of chips and ushers in a new era with Apple Intelligence. Learn more >
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Apple introduces M4 Pro and M4 Max. Learn more >
Apple introduces M4 Pro and M4 Max. Learn more >
Is it possible to have a folder on my iCloud Drive that's not visible on my Mac. With Dropbox I was able to have folders online that don't have to be visible on my machine, but now every folder I create on my iCloud Drive appears on my MacBook.
Hi philolckers,
You can hide a folder or file on your Mac by putting a period (.) at the beginning of the file/folder name. Linux, Unix, and other Unix-based OSes respect this convention as well.
To view hidden files and folders on your Mac, open a Finder window, then press Command-Shift-Period. Press this key combination again to hide hidden folders and files.
Hi philolckers,
You can hide a folder or file on your Mac by putting a period (.) at the beginning of the file/folder name. Linux, Unix, and other Unix-based OSes respect this convention as well.
To view hidden files and folders on your Mac, open a Finder window, then press Command-Shift-Period. Press this key combination again to hide hidden folders and files.
Ah, now that we know what you want to accomplish, a better and different solution appears possible:
Add .nosync (don't miss the dot there) to the end of a file or folder name to prevent syncing over iCloud Drive.
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8137146
That is much better than hiding something and having to toggle invisibility all the time. However, it is used in that linked context to stop a Mac folder from syncing to iCloud and not the other way around so I don't know if it works in reverse too. Realize that iCloud isn't really intended to be used as a hard drive in the sky, it is syncing storage so you are trying to work against its fundamental design. For what you want to do, Dropbox or a pure cloud storage solution may be better.
Hey there.
Ok, thanks for this. Just want to clarify, this will just hide the folder right? Essentially what I'm trying to do is having a working folder that continuously syncs to the cloud, but then another folder on the cloud that I move completed projects to. That folder must not sync with my Mac, as I would like it to only to use up iCloud storage space not any hard drive space, at all.
Thanks for the clarification. Unfortunately putting a period at the beginning only hides the file - it still lives on your internal drive.
I'm not sure if its possible to store files in iCloud Drive and not have them sync onto your Mac. The only sure-fire way I can think of is to put only the files you don't want on your Mac into iCloud Drive, then disable iCloud Drive in System Preferences -> Apple ID or iCloud.
iCloud Storage
