Why is my computer storage showing full when I have a ton of iCloud storage available?

iCloud is a synchronization service, not offline storage. You do have options to optimize photo storage in Photos settings, which will reduce the quality of images on your device in favor of full-res photos remaining in iCloud. You can also elect to optimize Mac Storage (system Preferences > name > iCloud), which will offload your oldest/largest files that you sync with iCloud to cloud only.

Hey BLRick!

As said before, the Mac storage is what it is, if you buy a Mac with 500gb of storage, then that’s what it can hold.

iCloud storage is the amount of space you have in your iCloud account, (Apple’s syncing and storage service).

The good thing about having additional iCloud storage, is despite the amount of local storage your Mac can hold, your iCloud storage can help to alleviate the storage constraints on your Mac’s hard drive.

You can use your iCloud storage by using Apple’s Optimize Storage options:

Optimize storage space on your Mac - Apple Support

Use iCloud Photos to store photos in iCloud - Apple Support

Free up storage space on your Mac - Apple Support

Likewise, if you don’t want to use those services, you can also utilize external hard drives for extra local storage, they are a good and very helpful resource that I use for more storage, not only for Time Machine backups, but also to store Photos Libraries that are so large, they wont fit in my Mac, so there are a lot of options, depending on your preferences, hope that helps!

Connect and use other storage devices with Mac - Apple Support

To get documents and data off your Mac into iCloud, you have to tell your Mac what you want to be stored in iCloud. Data you store in iCloud will be synced to your other devices, where you are also using iCloud. First of all, you have to enable iCloud Drive in the "System Preferences > iCloud" and add iCloud Drive to the Finder Sidebar in the Finder > Preferences > Sidebar.

Now you can drag and drop documents and data from your Mac to iCloud Drive in the Finder sidebar. Or enable summarily "Desktop & Documents" and selected apps in the "System Preferences > iCloud" to store nearly all your data in iCloud. If you are having a large Photos Library you may want to enable "Photos > Preferences > iCloud > iCloud Photos" as well.

As muguy pointed out, this will not directly save storage on your Mac. The documents and data on iCloud Drive are synced with iCloud between all your devices and mirrored on your devices. To save storage, enable "Optimize Mac Storage" or "Optimize iPhone Storage", depending on your device.

When you use iCloud to save storage, there are three things to consider:

• Because of the syncing, the documents and data on all your devices will be kept identical. So you have to plan carefully, which documents and data you want t to keep in iCloud. For example, you can no longer remove some photos or documents from your iPhone without removing it from your Mac as well.
• The available storage on the your device with the least storage will be a bottleneck and will determine, how much you can store in iCloud at all. All documents and data will appear also on the device with the least storage. Keeping 2TB in iCloud will not be feasible, if you smallest device has only 32 GB of storage, as even the optimized data will need some local storage. If the device does not have enough enough storage to store at least the optimized versions, you will just be seeing blank thumbnails. It will be no joy.
• Once you are storing the documents and data in iCloud, the iPhone backup of your iPhone or iPad will no longer include the data that are in iCloud. Your Mac can still back them up with Time Machine, but only, as long as you are not using "Optimize Mac Storage". So you should make a backup copy of all your documents and data on an external volume on your Mac, before you enable "Optimize Storage". . And whenever you create new documents in iCloud, remember to make backup copies. iCloud is not a backup service, because you are working with the iCloud data and iCloud is only saving the current state. If you accidentally mess up your iCloud Data, there is no history to recovery the previous state. Only some apps, like Pages, support versioning.

AGREED! I'm in the same @#%! boat.. tasked to bildge water just to keep afloat.. (ie; My icloud has flooded & filled my internal HD to capacity leaving my system so bogged down that TimeMachine sank mid-backup to the external SSD purchased as a life-preserver!).. thats enough metaphors. I/we need a solution that doesnt involve deleting my files. Granted, my system is base level 8GB Macmini M1w/ only 500gb HD.. w/ 411.34Gb held hostage by iCloud Drive + (64.43Gb apps + 15.42 Mac OS) = 491.19Gb leaving 8.81GB available to receive as many 'quit unexpectedly'.. 'disk full'.. 'yellow triangles' a guy could ever dream for..

How do I get iCloud off my HD's limited storage>?

Even when I turn off icloud app storage options (desktop & docs, photos, etc) iCloud remains on my HardDrive.

I should add.. that when i attempt to

move/transfer/copy files

FROM: iCloud 2TB (541Gb : 2000Gb)

TO: Mac Mini M1 HD (491Gb : 500Gb -disk full)

-or-

TO: External SSD 1TB w/LBolt (612Gb : 1000Gb)

The "Preparing to move to' status bar gets caught in an endless loop w/o any progress

Hey there! Just an FYI, when you disable iCloud Drive, you will be prompted to save a local copy of all that data on your Mac’s HD. If you do, then all that data is stored in your Home folder > iCloud Drive Archive, so if you permanently want to remove it from your Mac, you can remove this backup folder as well. It’s just another safe guard Apple built to prevent people from accidentally deleting all their files. Hope that helps as well.

How are you moving the data exactly? Your Mac looks like doesn’t have the storage to fit all the files, so if you need to, can try to copy/paste, drag/drop directly from Finder > iCloud Drive to your external drive, (If go with copy/paste to be on the safe side). If otherwise, let me know.

How do I get iCloud off my HD's limited storage>?