Local storage space

Yes, I understand that I can do that but, as I said in my original entry to this thread, I'd rather not.

It's my understanding that iCloud and MacOS work together to try to mirror locally those files that the user has used the most in the recent past. I want to retain that behavior; I don't want to tell the system that any file or set of files should not be mirrored locally.

Also, I suspect that your solution won't solve the problem. Here's why: I have 1 tb total data in iCloud, and only 250gb of local space. So iCloud and MacOS decide which files to mirror locally. The algorithm is apparently smart enough to know not to mirror 250gb of data. That would completely fill local storage and therefore bog down performance. Somehow, the system decides how much free space to leave locally. In this case, it's leaving about 12 gb free. My guess is that if I tell it not to download some set of files, it will scrub the local copies of those files. But then it will likely say, "Ah ha! Now have more local space available. I'll download some OTHER files." If so, I'll be right back where I started, with 12 gb free.

I guess what I'm saying is this: The system somehow decides how much local storage space to leave free. I'd like to adjust the behavior such that that amount of free space is greater. I'm tempted to guess that such is not possible. But, on the other hand, I would guess that a lot of people are stuck in the situation in which I'm stuck -- i.e., unable to upgrade their OS because iCloud is not leaving enough free space locally.

If you are correct, it's a shame that they include the functionality I described, and that they tout it as available and useful functionality, but that they apparently didn't think it through sufficiently. Not that other providers are any better. I used to use DropBox on a Windows machine, and it was awful.

Sure, that's a solution. Although I'll point out that what I wanted was a Mini, and the largest storage available was, I believer 512.gb, only half of the size it would need to be to hold all my data.

Basically what you're saying is: iCloud doesn't work as advertised.

OK, I'm trying to do as you suggest, i.e., removing downloads. Here's a practical challenge I run into. I have to free up 12 gb of space. That means that I have to remove download on a bunch of files. What I'd like to do is pick a branch of the directory structure, remove download on that, and be done in one step. However, what I find is this: If a directory has within it some files that are downloaded and others that are not, when you right click on that directory, you are not shown the option to remove download. Apparently the only way you are shown the remove download option for a directory is if EVERYTHING underneath it is downloaded. Does anyone know a way around this?

Thanks. Unfortunately, my directory structure is very deep, the large files that have been downloaded are scattered all over the place, and I have to find a bunch of them. So your suggestion, while helpful (thanks for that) would be tedious to implement.

I've noticed that if I descend into the directory structure using the command line, files that are not downloaded do not appear. (In contrast, they DO appear in the Finder). So I've been trying to run something like:

find -type f -exec du -Sh {} + | sort -rh | head -n 5

from the command line to find the largest files (not directories, files) that actually are downloaded. Frustratingly, the implementation of "find" that is on my MacOS does not accomodate the "-type" flag (even thought the man page says it does).

Any ideas how I can get around this?

Beautiful. That worked. I was able to identify the biggest files and remove their downloads. The machine is updating the OS as I type. Thanks for your advice.