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iCloud Drive not syncing locally

I started this Discussion because there are several started already with the exact same issue, so I’ve tried to find them all and post links to this Discussion, mainly because I have spent over 4.5hrs on the phone with Apple today still with no solution and this is my story.

It’s obvious from these other Discussions that there is a problem and Apple needs to fix this issue. Overall Yosemite is working fine excluding this one very big problem.

I have updated to all the latest software apps, iOS’s & OS’s.

My iCloud Drive is working fine on my iPhone 6 Plus, iPad Air & on iCloud.com.

My iCloud Drive is not syncing locally on my iMac.

My iCloud Drive on my iMac simply shows an empty folder or broken folders/files. If you place an item in there it doesn’t show up anywhere else and none of the items that are showing up on my iCloud Drive on my iDevices & iCloud.com will show up locally on my iMac.

Occasionally I have seen a handful of either Pages, Numbers or Keynote folders with my files with an iCloud icon & a dead progress bar next to them in my local iCloud Drive folder, but none of these files are accessible via their respective local app counterparts, they just appear to be frozen in time.

While on the phone with Apple and talking with 3 different representatives (including 2 Senior Advisors) they had me do a whole gambit of things which I have listed below, but none of them did anything constructive. I was told that my issue would now be sent to Engineering and I would have a solution in 1-2 business days.

Below are all the things that were attempted & requested by Apple to perform in no particular order. After each request the local iCloud Drive folder was checked and nothing ever changed.

1. Zapped the PRAM

2. Booted into Safe Mode (Extensions off)

3. Rebooted cable modem.

4. Rebooted router.

5. Rebooted iMac dozens of times.

6. Tried hardwired & Wi-Fi connections.

7. USB tethered to iPhone using LTE.

8. Signed out of iCloud account & logged back in.

9. Disabled iCloud Drive & reenabled dozens of times.

10. Created another Admin account and switched users.

11. Waited 24hrs+ and still nothing in local iCloud Drive.

12. Reinstalled Yosemite.

13. Repaired Permissions.

I hope Apple or someone has a solution for this very soon because it’s impossible to work efficiently when you can’t use your Pages, Numbers nor Keynote apps to create or edit documents locally.

The only thing they offered, which I was already aware of, was that I could download my documents from the iCloud Drive via iCloud.com and work with them locally or work with them online at iCloud.com. I’d prefer to work locally using my shared documents, but that’s exactly what I can’t do.

Please share if there are other things you have attempted and/or if you have also called Apple in utter frustration and if they offered any solutions other than what I have listed.

I’m willing to try anything at this point, but my guess is that there will be an update very soon to address this and other problems.

Thank you,

-Doren

iMac, OS X Yosemite (10.10), 3.5GHz Intel Core i7, 32GB, 27"

Posted on Oct 19, 2014 8:09 PM

189 replies

E. Mano

Level 1

0 points

Oct 20, 2014 8:40 AM in response to Doren_Sean_Michael

I start seeing some files on my second device. It looks like the syncing is going extremely slow ......... but it's moving. I think we just need to be patient.

I had one small test file copied after 24h and now I've uploaded a folder to iCloud Drive. It starts to sync the folder files on my 2nd device.

arausch

Level 1

0 points

Oct 20, 2014 8:47 AM in response to E. Mano

Patience is waiting an hour, not 24+.

Oct 20, 2014 9:08 AM in response to arausch

The problem was never on my iDevices nor iCloud.com, it's locally with my iMac. It's now been 48hrs and there is still nothing in the folder. Has anyone else reached the 48hr threshold also?

Oct 20, 2014 10:16 AM in response to Doren_Sean_Michael

Similar issues, although maybe not quite as catastrophically bad. I've got a Mac Mini, an iMac, and an MBA, all running Yosemite, an iPhone 6, and an iPad 3 (both iOS devices are running iOS 8). The iOS devices seem to sync okay with changes made on the Mini, and vice versa, but the iMac doesn't seem to be syncing at all with the other devices, nor does the MBA. Based on the original post, I'm not going to bother calling Apple and spending an entire workday trying everything short of replacing the main logic board to try to figure out the problem.

What's particularly annoying is that Yosemite just went through an extended beta period. Unfortunately, there was no equivalent beta program for iOS 8, so there were probably plenty of areas where Apple simply did not do sufficient QC in an area where things need to work flawlessly: file management. Some of the files I keep on iCloud are hundreds of pages long, and the notion that they may become lost or corrupted gives me chills. Apple advertises iCloud Drive as a way to safely and reliably work on your files on multiple devices. So far, it is neither.

cmaus

Level 1

20 points

Oct 20, 2014 12:51 PM in response to Doren_Sean_Michael

I found the solution on Yosemite!

Go to ~/Library/Application Support

Move the folder CloudDocs to the trash.

Kill the processes cloudd and bird using Activiy Monitor or Temrinal.

Your iCloud Drive starts downloading your stuff suddenly.

Stupid, Apple, stupid!!!

Oct 20, 2014 3:27 PM in response to cmaus

I tried that and it still acts like it did.... nothing updating on Yosemite

Oct 20, 2014 3:58 PM in response to cmaus

Yes, I just tried that too. Did nothing. Too bad really.

rvansant

Level 1

0 points

Oct 20, 2014 6:47 PM in response to Doren_Sean_Michael

Look it console and found this:

10/20/14 9:41:20.377 PM bird[1621]: can't create directory at '/Users/vansantr/Library/Caches/com.apple.bird/session': Error Domain=NSCocoaErrorDomain Code=513 "You don’t have permission to save the file “session” in the folder “com.apple.bird”." UserInfo=0x7fd9d8c221a0 {NSFilePath=/Users/vansantr/Library/Caches/com.apple.bird/session, NSUnderlyingError=0x7fd9d8c21fb0 "The operation couldn’t be completed. Permission denied"}

followed by:

10/20/14 9:46:23.627 PM bird[1686]: iCloud Drive is not able to run, please run "Repair Disk Permissions" in "Disk Utility"

have run Repair Disk Permissions twice but I'm still getting the same error.

Now what?

cmaus

Level 1

20 points

Oct 21, 2014 6:18 AM in response to rvansant

My Console gives me this:

21.10.14 15:14:13,000 kernel[0]: bird[377] Unable to quarantine: 93

21.10.14 15:11:29,659 bird[377]: Got a connection error from the daemon: Error Domain=NSCocoaErrorDomain Code=4097 "Die Kommunikation mit einem Hilfsprogramm ist fehlgeschlagen." (connection to service named com.apple.cloudd) UserInfo=0x7fb99d988fd0 {NSDebugDescription=connection to service named com.apple.cloudd}

21.10.14 10:56:59,766 bird[377]: zone creation error: Error Domain=NSCocoaErrorDomain Code=4097 "Die Kommunikation mit einem Hilfsprogramm ist fehlgeschlagen." (connection to service named com.apple.cloudd) UserInfo=0x7fb99dc76540 {NSDebugDescription=connection to service named com.apple.cloudd}

21.10.14 15:12:12,243 cloudd[1780]: Stream 0x7fb2db254c90 is sending an event before being opened

rvansant

Level 1

0 points

Oct 21, 2014 6:18 AM in response to rvansant

After looking around I found that I was missing at least two folders in the /Users/vansantr/Library/Caches folder.

com.apple.bird

CloudKit

After creating these two folders and changing the owner to root iCloud drive windows in the finder no longer has the setup message and button but I still don't see any of my iCloud Documents and the cloud process still crashes. it's looking for a database called CloudKitMetadata. Clearly some setup script failed to run and so I missing this database and maybe some other folders. Signing out of iCloud and signing back in does not fix this.

Oct 22, 2014 11:30 AM in response to Doren_Sean_Michael

Same problem here. Quite disappointing that it is not working. Maybe it is time to stop updating to new versions like with windows os.

Oct 22, 2014 12:53 PM in response to Doren_Sean_Michael

I found that in my case, if I login to Yosemite in a different ( a test ) account, that iCloud drive worked properly. It seems like there is something wrong with my main account. Like some others, I spent hours on the phone with Apple. They had me run a program which collect a bunch of data and sent it to them. They said that engineering will look at the problem. I had previously run special applications (provided by Apple Engineering) on my Mac and IOS devices a few weeks ago which generated data which was sent to Apple under another Bug Report on this same issue. I have not heard back

Oct 22, 2014 7:07 PM in response to cartoonsmartllc

At this point I don't know that giving them a week to stabilize things is going to suffice.

I jumped head first into iCloud Drive with faith that Apple would not have relaunched their cloud services without making sure they worked perfectly. After reading all these complaints I have no faith in them whatsoever when it comes to cloud services. This is not your run of the mill, post-OS release bug. Apple has a long history of failure with cloud services going back to "iDrive". If after all this time and hype it still doesn't work, it never will.

Guess it's back to Dropbox. Apple isn't getting another penny from me for cloud storage.

dang314

Level 1

85 points

Oct 22, 2014 11:49 PM in response to freediverx01

In all honesty the best possible trouble shooting for iCloud has always been sign out and back in on the device in question. Backup your iCloud drive docs then sign out of iCloud completely. Sign back in and turn all the syncing back on then close your sys prefs window and see how the drive performs. Make sure there is no antivirus or firewall running on your system.

Oct 23, 2014 4:51 AM in response to dang314

This should just work. Why is it that I never need to sign in and out of my Dropbox or Google Drive account to get the sync to work? And those companies don't have anywhere near the access to the core operating system that Apple does. If Apple can't get iCloud to "just work" they should completely abandon these features and leave them to companies who can instead of wasting their users' time and jeopardizing their data.

I'm a long time Apple fan and proponent but I've reached the end of my patience with them as far as their cloud services go.

iCloud Drive not syncing locally