iCloud Drive won't turn off?

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43 points

iCloud Drive won't turn off?

I don't want to use iCloud. I just upgraded to Monterey and Apple defaults to enabling iCloud (even though my prior settings had not used iCloud). I was able to uncheck all the boxes for things iCloud wants to upload from my iMac, including all the Options under iCloud Drive, except I am unable to uncheck "iCloud Drive" itself. When I attempt to do so, it brings up this dialog box, and neither of the options is clickable, and the progress bar doesn't budge. It just hangs, and I can't even quit System Preferences or Restart. My only recourse was to use Activity Monitor to Force Quit System Preferences. Even then, the iCloud Drive checkbox remains checked. I don't know if any data was uploaded to iCloud in the short time from signing in to my Apple ID to unchecking all the boxes I could.

Is iCloud Drive down? Is this a bug? Or can anyone advise how to uncheck that box? My goal is to not use iCloud at all.

And as an aside, Apple really should make it easier to use Macs without iCloud. The tactics Apple uses as described above do not support user choice but make it very difficult to avoid iCloud.

Thanks.

[Image Edited by Moderator to Remove Personal Information]

Posted on Feb 5, 2022 3:57 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Red Ed Author

Level 1

43 points

Feb 6, 2022 2:20 PM in response to ryane77

Thank you Moderator for removing the earlier screen shot that had personal data visible. Below is an edited version of the screen shot (masked to hide personal data).

Meanwhile, I spoke with an Apple senior specialist who resolved my issue. When unchecking the iCloud Drive box, it asks if I want to delete data in iCloud from my Mac or download an archive of that data. I chose the download option to be safe as I didn't know if there was any data in iCloud. Apparently this choice, in conjunction with the fact that there actually was no data in iCloud Drive, confused the system and caused it to hang. (Apple might want to look into that as a bug.) Since the specialist checked my iCloud account and confirmed there was no data there, she advised me to choose the other option (delete from my Mac), which worked just fine.

So I'm all set. Thanks and hope this post (along with ryane77's helpful tip on how to check the contents of iCloud) will help anyone with the same issue.

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Answer 2

ryane77

Community Specialist

Feb 6, 2022 1:47 PM in response to Red Ed

Hello Red Ed,

Thank you for using the Apple Support Communities. As we understand it, you want to turn off iCloud Drive, but you're seeing a dialogue box that doesn't respond when you try turning it off. Is that right?

If you're seeing a progress bar that doesn't proceed at all, booting into safe mode might be a good start to see if that helps it in completing. Here's How to use safe mode on your Mac. Once you start up in safe mode, try turning iCloud Drive off and see if you're able to do so.

Regarding whether or not any content uploaded to iCloud while it was turned on, the best way to check that is to sign in to the iCloud website from Safari on your computer. From there, you can check iCloud Drive to see its contents.

Let us know what you find. Take care.

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iCloud Drive won't turn off?

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