iCloud Drive questions

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Level 1

47 points

iCloud Drive questions

I'm looking at my iCloud Drive in a Finder window and have some questions.

In the side bar, my 'Desktop' appears twice. Once under Favourites and again under iCloud Drive. I presume these are simply two links to the same Desktop folder? (They show the same content).

In the iCloud Drive window, to the right of the Desktop folder, is a dotted outline of a cloud. When I hover over it, it says 'waiting to upload'. Why is it waiting to upload?

The 'date modified' is 'Yesterday at 12:15pm'. Which I don't understand because I've made several changes to files on my Desktop, so I was expecting this date to be only a few minutes ago. I suspect this 'modified date' is actually the date when iCloud Drive finished uploading my Desktop and Documents Folders.

But I'm now nervous that my iCloud Drive isn't constantly uploading/synching my Desktop and Documents Folders

MacBook Pro 15″, macOS 11.6

Posted on Feb 16, 2022 11:20 AM

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Answer 1

Sparky Marky Author

Level 1

47 points

Feb 17, 2022 10:52 AM in response to muguy

Thank you.

I've restarted my Mac a couple of times. And I've looked into the Desktop folder, but on my Desktop is a folder I've called Work and this has hundreds of folders and thousands of files. I can't really open all the folders to check all the files have uploaded.

It still says 'waiting to upload'. Interestingly the modified date has changed.

I'm wondering if I have a problem. I turned on iCloud Drive 'Desktop & Documents Folders'. It started to upload. I then changed my mind and turned it off (only a minute into uploading). But the files continued to upload. So I thought may as well go with it and turned it back on (it took hours to upload it all). Perhaps this has coursed an issue?

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Answer 2

muguy

Level 10

82,237 points

Feb 16, 2022 2:17 PM in response to Sparky Marky

The desktop is the same. One is just listed in "favorites," the other the iCloud Drive location.

You may need to dig into the folder to see what may still be waiting to upload. Sometimes, the system "forgets" to change the flag status on an item which is usually fixed by a restart. I've also been able to move the file to downloads (to remove it from iCloud) and then move it back to trigger the upload. This happened during an initial sync of hundreds of thousands of files whilst I was still working on the system. It's a little annoyance but a quick fix.

Unless you modify the "desktop folder" item, the modified date will remain the same. Simply adding files should have no effect on that date.

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