iCloud Storage Confusion

iCloud caches data locally, as—even though the master copy is stored in iCloud—the data has to be at least transiently stored locally to be viewed/played/accessed. And iCloud will use local storage not otherwise occupied for its cache, growing and shrinking the cache as other local storage usage fluctuates, because free storage is wasted storage; storage that you paid for and are not using (as cache, here).

System Preferences > Display settings and Power settings are usually involved when a display blanks or when the whole computer sleeps.

It’d be a mightily strange and unexpected case to encounter any linkage here between storage usage and the display blanking and/or the Mac sleeping, too.

That’s a pretty old MacBook Air, if it has a hard drive. Last of those configurations were from ~2009, and those can’t get to macOS 10.14. So probably an SSD, which is massively faster than a hard disk drive, and also nowhere near as sensitive to bumps and knocks.

By the look of it, you’re on an old MacBook Air, and one now under-configured for your current needs (8 GB memory is marginal for an Intel x86-64 macOS system), and with some latent app corruptions. None of which should be surprising.

And as you’re aware, your disk is nearly full.

I’d remove Java if you’re not using that and would update it if you are, and remove the MLB add-on, and remove the Safari FB Plugin, and remove Microsoft Silverlight. MLB is the only thing here that’s flaky, but that Java is ancient, as is Silverlight, as is that plug-in. Old Java is not without its security hazards, too.

With the MLB stuff, there’s a plist left over that’s still trying to launch a tool that is gone. That plist can be deleted.

The installed Adobe software is somehow hosed, and that probably then needs to be removed and re-installed.

Similarly, the Apple suggestd app is also tipping over. The suggestd tool scans input from various local sources looking for people, contact information, events to be scheduled, and similar. A Safe Mode boot might clear those crashes.

The Google tools are using a whole lot of resources doing who-knows-what, and I’d usually tend to remove those.

I don’t see any Time Machine or other backups (EtreCheck can’t check that without full device access), just local snapshots, which usually means that the data involved here has no value, or can be easily recovered or regenerated or rebuilt. If he data does have value, get backups going.

This might be easiest to deal with via a backup, factory re-install, and migrate in the contents. But first try a backup, a few removals, and a Safe Mode boot (linked earlier).

gwesq wrote:

YES - It is an SSD _ early 2014 model.

THe screen does not blank out - it merely freezes. I guess my terminology shows my age!

Screen “freezing” that doesn’t involve the power settings or the screen saver settings isn’t an entirely auspicious sign.

How are you unfreezing it?

Are you possibly trying to use the mouse or trackpad to wake the display here and not the keyboard, because tapping a key (shift key, etc) is the usual path to wake from a sleeping display.

Might want to download and run EtreCheck, and share the report to he clipboard. Then open a new reply here, and then press the button that looks like a printed page (additional text, text attachment) to get a text input box big enough, and then use that text input box to paste the hardware and software configuration report here. That’ll give us a better idea of the configuration, installed apps, and info on some of the more common troubles that can arise.