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

Top-ranking reply

graemeyer

Level 1

4 points

Posted on Nov 19, 2017 6:23 PM

There are multiple different "Library" folders on your mac, you need to make sure you check the right one (the user library) which is hidden. You can find this by launching finder, holding down the option key, and clicking go in the menu bar (the library folder you want will only appear in this list when you hold the option key). You should see the CloudDocs folder in there.

Can't believe this is an issue that has persisted throughout the OS X upgrades over the past three years. I spent 10 hours on the phone with Apple trying to solve this, finally found this thread and fixed it in less than 30 seconds.

View in context

189 replies

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.

jpa7578

Level 1

0 points

Oct 23, 2014 2:47 PM in response to Doren_Sean_Michael

Having issues as well. To keep the story short: Whatever folders and files I see in iCloud Drive in Yosemite are not the same as what I see in iCloud.com. If I copy files over to iCloud Drive, few of them at a time, it seems to work fine. But who copies files like that, right?

Been talking to Apple support reps for the past two days now. They have no idea, too, as to what's going on.

Oct 24, 2014 8:28 AM in response to Doren_Sean_Michael

Hi,

Same problem: my iCloud drive is empty.

I see a lot of cloudd crash logs in Console.app. Really a lot. And all of them with one error:

Application Specific Information:

*** Terminating app due to uncaught exception 'NSGenericException', reason: 'Error executing SQL: "begin exclusive" (8) (8/0x0008/attempt to write a readonly database)'

terminating with uncaught exception of type NSException

abort() called

I tried repairing permissions, killing bird and cloudd, deleting CloudDocs folder. Nothing helps me, my iCloud Drive is still not syncing:

lwr032

Level 1

15 points

Oct 24, 2014 12:09 PM in response to Doren_Sean_Michael

You are lucky that it worked with your iDevices. It hasn't worked with my iDevices or Mac mini or MBA. All iDevices are running iOS 8.1 ini and MBA are running Yosemite. I made a note in Apple Notes on my iPhone yesterday. It should have gone to my iPad, Mac mini and MBA by now. It hasn't. What's up with that and how do I get syncing working? All devices and computers have iCloud Drive turned on.

cmaus

Level 1

20 points

Oct 24, 2014 12:12 PM in response to Doren_Sean_Michael

Was the same for me. A lot of error messages in the Console.

But 2 days ago, my iCloud Drive started syncing suddenly.

Who knows what the heck is going on on our Macs...

Oct 26, 2014 5:03 AM in response to Allan Lovett

It's the same for me, I have spent around 9 hours to try to fix the problem.

At one stage not only I had syncing issues but I was not able to edit any of the iWork documents from my iPhone/iPad, I was keeping getting an

''Unknown error '' message.

Finally after reinstalling the iWork apps in all my devices, deleting the CloudKit folder, signing few times off and on from the iCloud account from my iMac,iPhone,iPad, I have got the syncing/documents editing working between my mobile devices and iCloud.com.

But when I open the iCloud drive on my iMac I just see an empty canvas?

Apple wake up!

Mitchla

Level 1

19 points

Oct 26, 2014 6:48 AM in response to cmaus

I tried cmau's technique and it started working immediately for me. Easy fix. (Thank you!) Files downloading now.

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.

Oct 26, 2014 9:13 AM in response to Mitchla

I will love to try cmaus's technique but i don't know how to Kill the processes cloudd and bird using Activiy Monitor or Temrinal.

Is it a complicated process?

I'll be very grateful if someone could post some step by step instruction on how to do it 🙂

Mitchla

Level 1

19 points

Oct 26, 2014 9:52 AM in response to rumpus2012

Really simple. Open the application Activity Monitor in your Utilities folder. Select those two processes and click the X button. Done.

Oct 26, 2014 12:16 PM in response to Mitchla

Instructions from Cmaus didn't work for me. I hope it will work with your problem 🙂

Oct 26, 2014 1:42 PM in response to karl.bomin

Thank you for the instructions, I just had a go but unfortunately is not working.

Oct 27, 2014 7:08 AM in response to Doren_Sean_Michael

For me, nothing worked with ending the processes until I repaired permissions on the startup disk. Then, slowly but surely, it started to sync.

lwr032

Level 1

15 points

Oct 27, 2014 9:33 AM in response to Cooldude9210

UUnfortunately it didn't work for me either. Any other ideas?

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iCloud Drive not syncing locally