You can make a difference in the Apple Support Community!

When you sign up with your Apple Account, you can provide valuable feedback to other community members by upvoting helpful replies and User Tips.

💡 Did you know?

⏺ If you can't accept iCloud Terms and Conditions... Learn more >

⏺ If you don't see your iCloud notes in the Notes app... Learn more >

Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply ask a new question.

Find status "downloaded" iCloud files

Context: I'm new to iCloud moving everything from Google Drive, because I'm hoping iCloud integrates with OS and just functions better overall. To that end I need to upload 1-2 TB of data to the cloud. As I have limited local storage I move a few hundred Gb at a time removing the files from my local drive as they become cloud based.


I have noticed however, that although I right click and click "remove download" many subfiles and folders remain downloaded. (Everything has uploaded, that is not the issue.) You can see in the screenshot I'm including that although the folder is marked with the cloud-based status, files remain downloaded in a subfolder. The undownloaded status indicator therefore seems to only mean not 100% downloaded, which is less than helpful.


Apart from Apple fixing this bug, I'd like a way to search for downloaded iCloud files in explorer and remove them as a group. How do I search for iCloud files with the downloaded status?


I've been able to expand subfolders and sort by iCloud status, grouping the downloaded ones I can see in expanded folders and then removing the downloads as a batch, but I have a lot of folder and subfolders and it's really annoying to spend so much time trying to find niggling files hidden deep in folders taking up my limited local drive space. Ideally there is a search I can perform and save and then run when I want to double check everything is removed from the local drive.


Thanks!



(Apple should have three statuses for iCloud folders cloud based, partially downloaded and fully downloaded. Also, we should be able to select and deselect folders and all their contents to be either downloaded or not. When I select a folder and "remove download" and files and folders with said folder remain on my local drive... this must be a bug, 100%. How can Apple think that users are to believe that all files and folders in said have not been removed from the local drive?)



Posted on Feb 15, 2022 4:09 AM

Reply
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Feb 15, 2022 4:28 AM

The management of which files if offloaded is done by your Mac. While you can remove downloads, the file may again be automatically downloaded by the system. iCloud is primarily a synchronization service, not offline storage; everything syncs to your devices.

Similar questions

4 replies

Feb 15, 2022 4:49 AM in response to muguy

Sorry that's just not true.


Besides this... You can manually select files to not be "downloaded" remaining only in the cloud. I can understand files used being redownload, that is not the case here. Also the system has no reason to download 15 GB or files I haven't used in years. The issue is not when the system redownloads files I need access to. The issue is that although I've tried to "undownload" files they remain become of a bug in how this status change is propagated to subfiles and folders.


iCloud is more than syncing everything to all you devices. Its also cloud storage and backup among other things.



Feb 15, 2022 2:27 PM in response to RicanStudio

We're talking about the same thing in optimizing files. Yes, older/larger files are offloaded first and you can indeed select to remove download. And, you large/old files wouldn't be downloaded agin. But, you'll find the control of those items is limited. I've often removed download for folders, accessed one file in the folder, and had the entire folder download again. And, recently accessed files seem to perpetually download again.


But, it remains that iCloud is primarily a sync service, not offline storage in the traditional sense since everything is still tied to your computer. If you delete a file on your Mac, it is deleted in iCloud too. For that reason alone iCloud is also not a good backup of the files on your system-- that's better left to Time Machine (although offloaded files do not back up in a Time Machine, or other party, backup).

Feb 16, 2022 6:43 AM in response to muguy

Thanks for trying to help, but I really had a specific question. How to do I create a search to find all iCloud "downloaded" files? It seems possible since you can sort for them.


Just to be clear, despite your protests. I want to use iCloud exactly as it's designed, to stream/sync/tie files to my system and access them through finder. My issue is the bug that makes it hard to remove 10s of GB of files.

Find status "downloaded" iCloud files

Welcome to Apple Support Community
A forum where Apple customers help each other with their products. Get started with your Apple Account.