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iCloud Drive not syncing.

After attempting to clear space from my Macbook M1 by uploading items to iCloud Drive, I've had nothing but problems.


It has said "Zero KB of 3.81 GB" for more than 15 minutes with no movement and nothing be added. One user suggested making the folder a Shared folder and that may help. I tried that and it's the same issue: Nothing is actually downloading to iCloud Drive. I have also tried it on the browser. I have also tried it with a VPN on and a VPN off.


Anyone have any other tricks for getting this to work?

Posted on Jan 15, 2022 4:59 PM

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Posted on Jan 15, 2022 5:37 PM

Has there been any progress on your upload to iCloud since you posted your question? It's likely that 15 minutes isn't long enough to judge the upload as a failure because it is a hefty chunk of data to manage and you might not get the feedback from Finder as soon as that.


If you have terminated the upload try it with a small file - a text document or a small picture. If that works then your connection to iCloud is satisfactory.


In any case, your intention to "clear space" from your Mac is in vain; you are not moving files to iCloud you are copying. iCloud is a syncing service not an offsite repository. If you want to remove files from your Mac you will need an external drive - indeed two for safety - because you can't achieve this with iCloud.

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Jan 15, 2022 5:37 PM in response to bennett241

Has there been any progress on your upload to iCloud since you posted your question? It's likely that 15 minutes isn't long enough to judge the upload as a failure because it is a hefty chunk of data to manage and you might not get the feedback from Finder as soon as that.


If you have terminated the upload try it with a small file - a text document or a small picture. If that works then your connection to iCloud is satisfactory.


In any case, your intention to "clear space" from your Mac is in vain; you are not moving files to iCloud you are copying. iCloud is a syncing service not an offsite repository. If you want to remove files from your Mac you will need an external drive - indeed two for safety - because you can't achieve this with iCloud.

Jan 17, 2022 8:15 AM in response to David McKinlay

Thanks for the reply, David.


It did eventually add those to the iCloud Drive, yes, but there is no reason it should take as long as it does to sync. Regardless, I would not consider this connection to iCloud "satisfactory", as this is a known issue that has been happening for years and hasn't been fixed. What a shame.


I am moving things to iCloud Drive and an external drive. Seems like iCloud Drive could use a name change. Maybe iCloud Sync. Thanks for the tip.


If anyone has any other tricks for getting iCloud Drive to sync faster, let me know!

iCloud Drive not syncing.

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