iCloud Drive and CloudDocs - difference in size

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iCloud Drive and CloudDocs - difference in size

I'm running Sonoma 14.5 in a M1 MacBookPro.

I have a huge CloudDocs folder within my user Library/Application Support folder, at ~200GB. However my iClould Drive folder is less than 20GB (twenty!). I have also Photos to automatically store in iCloud (~70GB) with Optimise Mac Storage ON. SO in total, I should be using ~90GB maximum of my iCloud.

Why is the CloudDocs so big and taking almost half of my SSD capacity (500GB in M1 MacBookPro)?? I suppose CloudDocs is linked to iCloud but did not find a good explanation. Before there was a MobileDocuments Folder that locally stored iCloud files, but it seems to have disappeared in Sonoma, which I thik it uses a completely different iCloud operation, based on CloudDocs. But why is it so Big? What is it storing locally?

What can I do to control the size of CloudDocs? Any help will be appreciated.

MacBook Pro 14″, macOS 14.5

Posted on May 14, 2024 9:26 AM

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Answer 1

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domhenri Author

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May 21, 2024 8:39 AM in response to domhenri

What I did to solve the problem:

Eliminate all .part files in Library/Application Support/CloudDocs/session/i

I think these are files that were transiting in iCloud and that OS leaves behind when they are not anymore in iCloud (I use iCloud to keep files for a while before moving to another folders, files that can be very big, like movies: 2-10Gb).

Of course I did back-up all my iCloud folder in external disk before doing this.

No problem at all at the moment. And my HD has 150GB free now!

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Answer 2

domhenri Author

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May 14, 2024 10:20 AM in response to domhenri

Pictures of screenshots that illustrate the problem:

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iCloud Drive and CloudDocs - difference in size

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