iCloud drive version history / restore?

I see several reasons why it does not work...

In a cloud environment you access the files from several different locations (computer, mobile, ipad) and each might run a different program to access the file.

Take simple text files. There are virtually millions of applications to access text files, and to require of each of them to have versioning capabilities is a bit of a tall order.

With versioning in the drive (like for instance with Dropbox) you don't have to worry about making - and saving - changes you might later regret. Just hop into the version history on dropbox.com and look up the version you've now edited away.

As far as I can see iCloud at least has the ability to recover deleted files.

For now it seems the only way to get back to older versions is to have TimeMachine activated on your computer (and if you don't have it activated - no versioning in most apps)... and then pray you don't make too many changes on your iPad... or if you have several machines, hope you can find the right machine with the right version.

Oh, and hope your house doesn't burn down in the midst of all this... or your laptop gets stolen... there is a reason why people choose the integrity risks with cloud storage so it's a very silly proposition from Apple to then require local backups.

Hmmm nope, not exactly working the way I'd like it to....

iCloud Drive is not an off computer/online storage system. It's a syncing feature designed to sync files between devices that are signed into the same Apple ID and has iCloud Drive enabled. It keeps a mirrored copy of the files on the Mac so they can be accessed when not connected to the internet.

All Apple has publicly published about iCloud Drive is this FAQ: iCloud Drive FAQ http://support.apple.com/kb/HT201104

It does not mention versioning.

But versioning is a capability of the applications, that support it, not of the drive the documents are stored on. I see no reason, why it should not work on the iCloud drive for Mac documents.

I agree on Dropbox and OneDrive. iCloud really just is a half-assed attempt at creating a cloud file storage service. We're approximately 3 years into this software now and there still isn't even any sharing functionality. Literally the only helpful addition since the launch has been the option to automatically sync the macOS 'Desktop' and 'Documents' folders to iCloud. Which, of course, was also already available in other cloud storage software.

OneDrive has this capability too and is a cheaper storage option than DropBox. Especially if you need MS Office. subscribe to O365 Home and get 1TB OneDrive storage.