How to fix greyed out files post updating to Sonoma

I updated to Sonoma 14.1.1 last night and all my desktop folders and files are now deleted. They are so deleted on my iCloud drive so I can't retrieve them and even my time machine doesn't work. What a horrible update!

It appears that they are all under the iCloud drive:

~/Library/Mobile Documents/com~apple~CloudDocs

That Apple would make that sort of BS change, without telling people, is beyond me.

I expect that sort of poor customer experience from ... nope ... no one does that to a user base anymore.

Ye! Thanks for that very helpful information and pointing out my weakness on my back up strategy. Cheers for adding some more full the fire.just what I needed this morning. not my point however. The point is that a major OS release should never have been released with such adverse affects on highly important files. Deleting files from Mac home drive and moving them to the cloud? Risky to say the least no? especially when Ableton Live project files can save to various folders on the local drive. I didnt delete them the OS update did. I pay for extra iCloud storage, and happy that I have 2tb of cloud storage! But why move (delete) some files from Mac HD, but not all! “Documents” and desktop” only. Fragmenting the files for Ableton live project is literally the worst thing that can happen.

I would be happy if it took a carbon copy of my ableton project files in their entirety and worst case I could launch the project file from iCloud. But even when I do that im

missing data / files with in project. Only way to fix this is in each Ableton file to manually search for each missing file route and manually load them onto each live project. And even at that it’s a lengthy and inconsistent process. I assume allot of user will suffer the exact same in the coming days.

I do regularly back up! But not in the last 4 weeks. So restoring to a 4 week old backup will loose tracks I’ve been working on the last few weeks. Which are the most important to me.

any way I’m not going to fix this by giving out of this forum. I do appreciate your support but it’s been Uber frustrating dealing with this.

Within the Finder press Shift + Command + Period to toggle hidden files on & off. I recall a thread on these forums where some files became hidden after the upgrade to Sonoma. IIRC, it may have been related to iCloud.

I am sorry if I upset you and I certainly understand your frustration. It is important for people to realize there are ways to minimize things like this occurring.

The following command in Terminal is supposed to unhide all regular files contained inside your Documents folder

chflags -R nohidden ~/Documents

It looks like these files became hidden, for some reason.

You can unhide them with a short command in Terminal.

Where are those files located? Are there many of them?

This may be used to determine the best course of action.

You can in principle unhide "everything" with a certain folder hierarchy with a single command, but there may be files that should remain hidden.

Omg.. i have the same problem. After the new update, I turned iCloud sync without thinking about it. They moved all of my files to the cloud. I turned the sync option off, moved my documents & downloads from the iCloud Drive (Archive) back to their original location, but now they're not all there. There are files missing in folders, maybe because the iCloud wasn't fully synced? This is a big issue :( I'm a music producers and many of my sounds are just gone... Does anyone know what to do?

Exactly the same problem, pretty sure it's an iCloud issue (for me, anyway). I've been synching to iCloud for a long time and it seems that any files that were NOT "off loaded" before the update are normal, and files that WERE "off loaded" before the update are now grey. Even if I download the grey files, they remain grey. But the drag to desktop and then cmd Z back into the folder fixes it. MEGA ANNOYING!

Also not interested in doing this folder-by-folder, file-by-file.

Dear Apple: what's the solution please?

thank you

You turned on synching with iCloud Drive. You should see them in the Sidebar under iCloud Drive.

If you do t want that, turn it off.

Add your Desktop and Documents files to iCloud Drive – Apple Support (UK)

Tonelaw wrote:

Why did i update? Now having the exact same issue. 40% of files missing from I all my ableton live 11 projects! This happened a few years back and i never got the files back! I hope to god there is away to reverse this update without losing files. I’ve over 3years of unreleased music literally thousands of hours spent! Never mind the hours I’ll need to spend to figure this out! Nice one Apple

If you have proper backups, then you should be able to restore from the backups. If your backups were not successful, then you need to rethink your backup strategy. Apple does include Time Machine software to make backups easy, but there are other third party options as well.

Back up your Mac with Time Machine - Apple Support

Also, it is best to test out upgrades before making them on the main system. You can install macOS to an external drive and migrate everything from your main drive or from a backup. These days it is also possible to install macOS to another APFS volume on the same internal boot drive (just give the APFS volume a unique name) if you have enough free space on the drive.

raggabass wrote:

No, they are gone. I back up on iCloud and the are not even on my iCloud drive.

iCloud is not a backup except on iOS for the iPhone. iCloud on macOS is only a file syncing service where any change made on macOS is reflected on that file on all your other devices. A backup will keep older iterations of your files so if you make a catastrophic edit or deletion, then you can use the backup to retrieve a copy of the file made before the mistake was made.

Apple includes Time Machine with macOS for making backups easy for users on macOS:

Back up your Mac with Time Machine - Apple Support

HiWTech,

I know this an old threadd but I came across it when looking for a related solution, you state, as other knowledgable people her also:

"iCloud on macOS is only a file syncing service where any change made on macOS is reflected on that file on all your other devices. "

I disagree a bit as Apple actually states on this page: What is iCloud? – Apple Support (UK)

that you have iCloud Storage.So it seems to me that iCloud offers syncing AND storage. The even sell you up to 12TB.

Good change that I do not understand the whole concept correctly, could you perhaps help me out in understanding this matter.

Many thanks in advance!

(BTW the problem I have is this downloading from iCloud to the internal Mac SSD, having 256GB. On my external SSD of 8TB I have now about 4TB and I want to have these files at work available (mainly PDF and pictures)

But ever so often I want/need to sync files and then this downloading to the interval SSD interferes, complaining about lack of space.

I would love to have all my files on iCloud available, as I want to stick to Apple software as much as possible.

iCloud at work cooperates fine with my PC there, Apple hardware NOT allowed. But don't worry about that now)

ofc17 wrote:

All of these files are missing (except the ones I recreated today). They show up in a search but are nowhere to be found.

https://discussions.apple.com/content/attachment/2041ae67-cbe2-4b66-83f7-67444dee62d2

Select one of these in the search results and press Command-R. What happens?

Why did i update? Now having the exact same issue. 40% of files missing from I all my ableton live 11 projects! This happened a few years back and i never got the files back! I hope to god there is away to reverse this update without losing files. I’ve over 3years of unreleased music literally thousands of hours spent! Never mind the hours I’ll need to spend to figure this out! Nice one Apple

Tonelaw wrote:

Ye! Thanks for that very helpful information and pointing out my weakness on my back up strategy. Cheers for adding some more full the fire.just what I needed this morning. not my point however. The point is that a major OS release should never have been released with such adverse affects on highly important files.

Well, it doesn’t do that. What happened to you we do t know.

Deleting files from Mac home drive and moving them to the cloud? Risky to say the least no?

Not risky at all because it doesn’t delete anything. When you enable Desktop & Documents syncing, hard links are created. Nothing is moved or deleted.

especially when Ableton Live project files can save to various folders on the local drive. I didnt delete them the OS update did. I pay for extra iCloud storage, and happy that I have 2tb of cloud storage! But why move (delete) some files from Mac HD, but not all! “Documents” and desktop” only. Fragmenting the files for Ableton live project is literally the worst thing that can happen.

I would be happy if it took a carbon copy of my ableton project files in their entirety and worst case I could launch the project file from iCloud. But even when I do that im

m

issing data / files with in project. Only way to fix this is in each Ableton file to manually search for each missing file route and manually load them onto each live project. And even at that it’s a lengthy and inconsistent process. I assume allot of user will suffer the exact same in the coming days.

I do regularly back up! But not in the last 4 weeks. So restoring to a 4 week old backup will loose tracks I’ve been working on the last few weeks. Which are the most important to me.

any way I’m not going to fix this by giving out of this forum. I do appreciate your support but it’s been Uber frustrating dealing with this.

That sounds like a problem with Ableton